Principles of Multimedia Blog Post 2

I’ve reached that point in the semester where time and motivation are winding down but deadlines and assignments are becoming even more relentless. There are only a few more weeks separating me from the blissful unscheduled days of winter break yet these last few weeks may prove to be my downfall. I’ve been hitting constant roadblocks of unreturned calls and last minute interview cancelations for the last two big journalism assignments I have and I’m starting to lose hope in pulling everything off on time.

I’ve been trying to avoid the distractions of social media sites but as a journalism student it’s nearly impossible. I’m literally required to tweet for class. So while twitter has become a new form of procrastination for me, tumblr still remains my go to website for wasting time.

But amid hipster photographs of flowers and cute gifs of cats are news posts.

Though tumblr may not be as convenient as twitter is for fast minute to minute news updates it has it’s own advantages.

Tumblr is designed to display pictures so it has more capabilities in that sense and can allow for longer photo explanations and captions.

However, it’s very easy to manipulate posts on tumblr. Reblogging a post gives a lot of freedom for editing content and reposting can make it difficult to trace the source of information.

One of the best news tumblrs I follow are the Reuters blogs. Reuters has three different tumblrs; one on general news, one focused on politics, and one for pictures.

The blogs are fairly new; photography and politics began in October and April, respectively. This perhaps is the biggest challenge of news organizations on tumblr. Many are new and breaking into the tumblr community to gather a following may be difficult when the majority of people are on the website with the expectation to look at pictures of their favorite actors or find funny memes.

However, I think that if news organizations embrace tumblr the way they’ve embraced twitter, it could once again change the way we practice journalism especially in the areas of multimedia and photography.