Throughout the past 5-7 years news reporting and its future have been directly affected by social media.

The new generation of news readers are getting their information from social media sights like Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook. These social media sights are implementing news features into their apps in order to increase their use. Snapchat has added featured stories which showcases many popular news outlets such as CNN, ESPN, Daily Mail, etc.

Twitter has implemented something similar. Its called Moments and contains news content ranging from the presidential debate to the World Series. Features like this increase the usage since its a one stop app; allowing people to receive daily news and interact with other people.

According to a Pew Research Center article, about 30% of Facebook users receive their news from Facebook out of the 64% U.S adults who use the site. This means half of the United States population is receiving their news from a social media site.

Another big thing that has been seen recently, since the incorporation of social media into the news world, is that users are reporting the news. There are still the prominent news sites on social media but now regular people are able to report news as well from their mobile devices. What they witness themselves they are able to post in the form of stories, images and videos.

Pew Research Center found that, 14% of social media users posted their own photos of news events to a social networking sites, while another 12% posted videos. This has been evident in recent events such as police brutality, alleged clown sightings, and recent North Dakota pipeline protests in NYC.

Social media sites will be the new way of news reporting because they allow people to interact and discuss news events taking place around the world. Sites such as Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook allow to voice their opinions on events while capturing what happened.

Some people may say that this ability causes social media sites to be an unreliable source of news, but how is this different than a news network like CNN? News networks have been known to be biased which is the same risk faced from getting news from sites like Twitter. Despite the unreliability of some there are still trustworthy journalists out there.

In the future of news reporting more and more people will be getting their news from social media sites as well as contributing to the news themselves.