SPANISH FORT, Ala. — Stephen Goforth believes the challenge for aspiring journalists looking for success in a field that seems to evolve by the hour is to remain relevant without mistaking fleeting pop-culture trends for industry standards.

“You have to be OK with ambiguity,” said Goforth, author of “Media Shift: Journalism in a Connected World.”

Goforth is the son of Spanish Fort-based Goforth Media Inc.’s president and general manager, Wilbur Goforth, and got his start in radio as a disc jockey at the age of 12 in Georgia. He earned his bachelor’s degree in communications and philosophy from the University of South Alabama and his master’s degree in broadcast journalism from American University in Washington, D.C.

“I helped to start the three radio stations with my father that he still runs, but I dealt with the programming, while he spent more time with the money,” said Goforth, who still records occasional commercials for the radio stations and produces the company’s monthly newsletter.

“Because of my research for the book and my classes, I keep the Goforth Media radio staff updated on developments in their industry and other areas of interest to them,” he said.

Goforth, who spent seven years at CNN as an anchor, writer and producer, is now a University of Mississippi journalism professor and penned the textbook, currently in its second edition, to address shortcomings he identified in available “Introduction to Communications” literature.

In a field judged harshly by an outlet’s timeliness, Goforth said “Media Shift” is intended to offer interesting, applicable and relevant glimpses into the 24-hour news cycle.

“It’s not just that a lot of the material was outdated, but in the true spirit of academia, a lot of it is overwritten, and I was bored, and I knew if I wasn’t into it the students weren’t going to be either,” he said.

And that’s precisely why “Media Shift” offers a little something for everyone from print and broadcast chapters to the role the Internet has played in altering and optimizing news delivery, the onset and explosion of social-media tools and the shift toward embracing global media, made particularly poignant by the democratic coup during the past two weeks.

Goforth said in an industry maligned by the drive to be first, the instinct to adopt the latest technology prevails, but success is ultimately determined by the outlets’ ability to monetize the advances.

“Control the money, and you dictate who survives and who fails,” he said.

So while social media masterfully connects audiences on a global level, user loyalty is to the process not the product, and media outlets must remember reach is important but sustainability keeps the lights on.

“You have to learn to navigate the mind-boggling number of options out there in a reasonable way, but you also have to remember, these advances aren’t just the newest tools. There has been a fundamental shift in the way the world works,” Goforth said, noting current students raised entirely in a computerized age know nothing but instantaneous access to information.

“This context has changed fundamentally how people relate to each other and how they relate to media,” he said.