So before anyone else in the courtroom gets a chance to digest the results of a court case, a journalist seems to be immediately on Twitter updating the public on the happenings, moments later they are following the comment with a full blown article, all online in a matter of minutes.

The court case Trudi attended was David Bourke Vs the Attorney General. The verdict of Mr Bourke being found guilty of murdering his wife, Jean Gilbert was announced around 16.45 on Monday 30th of March. At 17.13, the Irish Times had a tweet, “Man who stabbed wife found guilty”, then the follow up article was published at 18.08.

She notes the usefulness of Twitter to keep up to date with breaking news stories and clearly brings to light the immediacy of news today.

Mariosa tells us how this site keeps us up to date in the world of digital media, noting all from the latest fads, like Twitter, to the best blogs. It gives us a positive look on blogs, something seen as a “threat to the profession” by some and that some journalists have been plain wary of.

I like her link to the Guardian’s article “To the average Joe, blogs aren’t cutting it” where it confirms that while blogs are expanding rather rapidly, they are still a minority sport and compared to other online phenomena such as You Tube videos and social networking sites blogs have not developed along the same lines.

Mariosa goes on to question the credibility of blogs and perhaps this is why they aren’t as popular. People perhaps see them as more informal and may therefore trust the news articles more. However, with more and more blogs popping up every day, and more journalists experimenting with them, perhaps they will soon reach the same levels of success as the social networks etc. Their credibility will be a deciding factor in this success though.

But as Niamh notes, there is an element of sadness in the loss of those dusty pages. The image of the reporter/ researcher as an investigator, sifting through these old papers is gone and replaced with the reporter glued to a computer, almost everything available online, and with this it sort of loses some of the appeal. There is no doubt that it is more practical and in these days when there doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day, it’s probably more necessary.

The project which is being undertaken by the National library in Wales is due to be finished in 2012 and to cost £2m, a pound for every page they hope to digitalise, estimating there are 2million pages to be done.

Niamh’s blog is up to date on the digital media and gives another example of where our future as journalists is headed.

By the end of 2008 American daily newspapers had slashed jobs by 11.3% and in 2009, as we know, the situation is worsening with entire papers going under, cutting huge amounts of staff or resorting to being solely online. But for some reason there has been an increase in the amount enrolling for undergraduate journalism courses. The University of Georgia reported almost 200,000 students enrolling in 2007, an increase of 41.6% from 1997. Even last year, universities such as those at Columbia, Maryland and Stanford saw significant increases in the amounts enrolling.

UW Madisons Journalism School has had to turn down 55% of applications over the past three years due to space limitations but they have upgraded curriculum to include the more technological approach that’s engulfing the profession. They include more multimedia aspects as well as the fundamental techniques in writing and reporting. They say “the idea is to give students a strong, multifaceted foundation.”

The article goes on to give the opinions of the students on recruitment in the field and on the schools themselves. Some are positive about it, like Tom Lea, a sports journalist for online publication badgerblitz.com. Others like Ashley Spencer, a graduate at Madison, seem somewhat regretful about choosing this profession saying “I think journalists are completely undervalued and work very hard for very little pay”.

There will always be a place for news in society, it just seems to be  the medium that’s changing and we have to adapt to these changes. William Bleyer, who is said to have started studying journalism at Madison in 1905, said that “the future of journalism depends on the character of our newspapers.” However Katy Culver, staff member at Madison has adapted this, saying, “The future of our democracy depends on the character of our journalism. It’s not tied to a medium. It’s tied to the practice of going out and seeking information, skeptically challenging institutions and maintaining accountability. That’s the nature of journalism.” So while Journalism essentially remains the same, as long as we keep up with the times, it will always be there, just through different forms.

The comments were not moderated and it wasn’t long before twitter users realised this and took full advantage to post comments on whatever they wanted, budget related or otherwise. The Guardian posted some of their favourite comments. One comment really sums it all up “Silly paper messing with technology it doesn’t understand #budget”.

It seems that newspapers need to be more careful using new technology and less naive about the public. With information being sent almost in real time these days, especially through Twitter, this type of error can spread like wild fire and could have polluted their page until the Telegraph had it removed. Twitter on this type of website, without safeguards, perhaps isn’t the best idea, perhaps it would have worked better if safeguards were initially installed.

Sky News has also caught on to the Twitter phenomenon with its very own Twitter correspondent. They look through twitter comments for breaking news stories. Oprah Winfrey also joined the world of Twitter after posting her first tweet live on her show.

All but the Wall Street Journal seem to be declining as they have seen a 0.6% gain in readership perhaps with their content of business and finance being so relevant to the current economic climate. Levels of decline have also varied considerably between papers. For example the New York Post declined 20.6% and the Chicago Sun-Times only 0.4%.

Factors other than people migrating to the Web have been outlined by Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at the Poynter Institute. factors like a reduction in free newspaper circulation, “junk circulation” like those at trade shows and in schools. Also an increase in prices for revenue, like the New York Post increased their price from 25cents to 50cents and saw a decline of 20%, perhaps partly due to this.

USA Today, the paper with the largest circulation in America noted a drop of 7.5% and put part of it down to cut backs in hotels delivering free newspapers to rooms.

The New York Times itself has had a smaller than average decline at 3.6% but it’s website is doing well, all clearly indicating the transition journalism is undertaking.

The editor, Isaac Ahmed Fadlallah, of newspaper Al- Wifaq, clashed with Yasir Arman from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement after his remarks, particularly on flogging as a punishment for adultery, which he felt non- Muslims should not be punished under even though Islamic law has been imposed across the whole of Sudan since 1983.

Northern Sudan is mainly Muslim while the South is mainly Christian or aminist and tensions over this as well as over disputed boundary areas with oil reserves are rife.

The newspaper is somewhat Islamist driven with close ties to President Omar Hassan al- Bashir’s National Congress party and it’s closure is said to have been brought on  by General Sallah Mohammed, head of the Sudanese National Security and Intelligence apparatus.

The editor, who previously wrote for al-Ra’ed, another pro- government paper,  is being asked to refrain from writing. Closure for the newspaper is a deserved punishment.

The person to download the 1 billionth application was a thirteen year old boy from West Connecticut, USA. He was awarded a $10,000 gift card for iTunes, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule backup system for the Mac, and a MacBook Pro, according to an article on informationweek.com

However, it’s not all good news for Apple’s applications with it’s ‘Baby Shaker’ game coming under obvious scrutiny this week being described as ‘deeply offence’ by Apple themselves. The game, reported by BBC News, ‘sparked outrage from childrens groups and brain injury foundations’. The game invloved quieting crying babies by shaking the screen until red x’s appeared on the eyes and was rightly removed two days after it went on sale.

After cutting 5,000 jobs in January, Microsoft reported $290 million worth in severance charges. Revenue for the company is also down approximately $800 million according to bizjournal.com.

Their alleged anti-competetive practices are still an issue with the EU, and Microsoft’s Chief  Executive Officer Steve Ballmer, admits that ‘the economic downturn was making life difficult’ as reported by BBC news. On a lighter note, a new Windows 7 will be released to replace Windows Vista, so while profits are down at the moment, perhaps it won’t be long before they are back on track and making billions more.

“We’ve clearly hit a point now where we’ve seen the audience migration to the Web accelerate” said Amy Mitchell from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Previously online only news websites were only allowed to enter for awards in the categories of breaking news coverage and breaking news photography. Since 2006, newspapers with websites were allowed to submit website content to all 14 categories, but websites for print magazines and broadcasting outlets are still not allowed to enter.

While the Project for Excellence in Journalism had concerns over the decline in standards and values that may arise with online journalism, they are optimistic about the opportunity to “tell stories in a multi dimensional way.” There are now more modes for conveying the news, from the usual text, to numerous photograph galleries, videos etc and far more interactivity, even between the journalist and their audience.

Robert M. Steele, Professor of Journalism at DePauw University, Indianna notes how the inclusion of these online only news websites brings to light the “discussion about the distinction between basic information and substantive journalism”, perhaps giving more recognition to what is genuinely good journalism found online.

Steele also says that it ” gives further weight to the role that digital journalism plays in this era”, which could well be a more substantial role in the near future.

The New York Times received five Pulitzer Prizes.