Who is Shaping the News?

Katy Culver, a “glass is half full kind of a girl,” wanted to start this fifth and final session by downplaying the threats of new media and looking at some of the benefits.  As an example, she cites an award-winning story from the Mke Journal-Sentinel which came, ultimately, from a suggestion by a citizen journalist.

This sentiment that technology is the bad guy has not just been the dominant one today at the conference, but is widespread at actual newspapers as well (at least, in my limited experience).  I’ve heard editors and reporters occasionally lamenting the good old days before the Internet and cell phones, and while I sympathize a little, still shudder to think how I’d get by in such a world.  (And I’m not even a member of this current, millennial, constantly twittering and texting generation.)

Is the reluctance of newspapers to embrace and exploit the latest technologies particularly bad, or is it on a par with other industries slow to adapt to change? Is this mostly negative view of it also usual across careers, or do newspaper folks (and journalists in general) particularly despise new technology and its ill-wrought effects?