Assessing How the Internet has Changed Journalism

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Nov 4 · 5 min read

Introduction

In an effort to attract new viewership, journalism has been on the transition from merely reporting to developing into a form of entertainment. Going by the rapid growth of the social media’s function as an information source, the battle for an expansion of diversity in journalism, and the constantly increasing desire of instant content, the future of media has become more essential than never. The Internet is constantly growing to be the primary method of delivering information, entertainment, and news to the huge majority of people in the entire world. Mass media is taking a new form and shape with the migration and convergence of three conventional mediums (Newspaper, Television, and Radio) into a kind that is majorly based on the Internet, hence changing the face of media, journalism, and politics. This paper mainly aims at assessing how the Internet has changed journalism.

Impact of modern technology

Journalists and newspapers have had to alter or transform their production and distribution modes and source new ways to keep their audiences engaged and informed. Print media companies are presently in stiff competition with many online sources, where social media tech “giants” such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google, and Snapchat are coming up with new methods of dispensing information. Many scholars consider that new technologies have produced different changes into the field of journalism, transforming the news-generating processes employed by media companies and transforming the readership as well (Xu, 2015).

Firstly, modern technology has greatly transformed the printing mechanism of materials. According to Xu (2015), the direct impact of the new printing technology was that a bigger distribution of publications has been made feasible; it took roughly a year for an accomplished scribe to transliterate only two tomes until the employment of Gutenberg’s new technology hastened the printing process to just one book in a day. This implies that more publications can presently be done and supplied in less time, enabling the materialization of publications with enhanced circulations.

Secondly, broadcast technology has also impacted journalism, starting in the later years of the 19th century. Xu(2015) states that Arthur Burrows and David Sarnoff conceived the plan of applying Marconi’s telegraphy technology by offering other signals which transmitted news to mass populations. “Figures show that the rise of broadcast seriously impacted upon the press” (Briggs and Burke, 2009); in the US, the number of newspapers sold per house reduced from about 1.12 in 1960 to around 0.88 in the year 1974.

Thirdly, the internet technology has also impacted journalism by taking to another level. The rapidly growing technology that transpired in the late 20th century allowed the internet to turn into a new mould for journalism. In comparison to the hierarchical broadcasting that dominated the media from the 1960s, the internet uses a complex interconnection between its uses (Xu, 2015). According to some scholars, they have seen the many signs concerning the fall of the printed newspaper. For instance, Meyer indicates that the weekly distribution of newspapers in the United States has dropped to its lowest level since 1945, whereas the average everyday readership has dropped to below 50% of the entire population for the very first time since the 1960s (Xu, 2015). Going by the above statistics, Meyer foresees that printed newspapers will eventually lose their readership by 2040s.

Examples of the journalistic piece using new online storytelling

Fig 1: Snow Fall (NYT, 2012)

Snow Fall (NYT, 2012)

This is a good example of a digital-age journalistic piece released by the New York Times in 2012. It is a multimedia feature telling a story of the Tunnel Creek Avalanche via photography, text, videos, and animated graphics. It was described by Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism as “a breakpoint in online journalism”.

Challenges facing modern-day newsrooms

The switch from print mould to digital has not entirely altered the principal business model for newsrooms or media corporations. However, the main challenge that news corporations are facing today is that they can no longer maintain the huge financial arrangements and organizational structures developed during the period of profuse wealth (Nielsen, Esser, and Levy 2013). The reduction of the audience and death of growth in or decreasing advertisement expenditures make it more difficult for them to continue maintaining the scale and scope of operations.

Again, large corporations developed mainly through start-ups as well as acquisitions that diversified their businesses into a broad range of media operations, enabling them to raise the number of channels, sites, and titles they operate. Whereas this brought growth to the organization revenues, the number of audiences for these media corporations has lately become smaller since many other companies have joined the internet, television, and print markets and split the audience (Nielsen, Esser, and Levy 2013). According to Nielsen, Esser, and Levy(2013), the biggest media conglomerates now generally serve audiences which are thirty-to-sixty per cent smaller as compared to a quarter-century ago. The growth in terms of the advertisement has not only come to an end, but client expenditures for news are also declining, where the peoples’ keenness to pay for government broadcasting service has also diminished (Nielsen, Esser, and Levy 2013).

How newsrooms are overcoming the challenges

Modern newsrooms are currently adopting some of the practices and routines of legacy media, for instance, the daily news conference as well as utilizing a journalist’s professional expertise and sagacity of newsworthiness to deliver stories with precedence. Where practices and routines differ for digital-only organizations is the application of data analytics to determine audience receptivity to various stories. Where Facebook, as well as other social media platforms, offer new conduits to journalism, the present modern consumer does not think of working hard to get news.

Therefore, modern digital journalists are learning to write, report, as well as market their news. At the very least, journalists are learning to use SEO, in addition to being a sub-editor, audio-maker, video-maker, provider of information for graphics, and a presenter. Combining such skills help in keeping newsroom journalists most wanted and relevant. Most importantly, newsrooms are rethinking of the whole media business model and how it can create value for clients, for society, and for itself. They are focusing their efforts on how to provide information or news that is not available elsewhere, in better quality and form (Nielsen, Esser, and Levy 2013).

How newsroom might change in future

In future, most newsrooms might work to achieve maximum efficiency where they will employ artificial-intelligence-powered authoring assistive equipment which could enable media personnel to craft editorial content faster, elevating their thoughts with relevant content and using learned preferences to recommend more tailored storytelling to suit particular audiences. The future of media houses will comprise innovative, transparent, and tech-driven journalism which will engage audiences and make them an important part of their stories.

References

Briggs, A. and Burke, P., 2009. A social history of the media: From Gutenberg to the Internet. Polity.

Nielsen, R.K., Esser, F. and Levy, D., 2013. Comparative perspectives on the changing business of journalism and its implications for democracy. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 18(4), pp.383–391.

New York Times (NYT), 2012. Snow fall, the avalanche a tunnel creek. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/index.html#/?part=tunnel-creek

Xu, T., 2015. How has the Internet Impacted on Traditional Journalism in the Context of China? (Doctoral dissertation, University of Sheffield).

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