Journalism 2.0: Assessing How the Internet has changed Journalism.

Priya Rajput
Nov 1 · 5 min read

By Priya Rajput.

Growing up at my house, we had four meals a day, Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and the News. When I was a kid, every morning the newspaper was delivered at our home still smelling fresh newsprint, and in the evenings, without fail, my parents would turn on the TV to watch the news at 7 o'clock sharp.

As I was growing up new technologies came in. The invention of the internet, mobile phones, iPad etc, left the newspapers and the evening news far behind. It has drastically changed how journalism is now accessed and shared.

Various online platforms have provoked people to watch news stories online. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram even Snapchat attract people’s attention with all the juicy news stories.

Official newspapers sites like the BBC, The Guardian or The Irish Times have their pages, With all the new technologies the amount of people actually paying any kind of physical news ( Newspapers or Magazines) has declined in the last 10 years.

Journalist Aleks Krotoski, summarizes her concern in a news article in The Guardian newspaper,where she says “More generally, technology has improved the processes of identifying stories that are newsworthy. Feeds from social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter provide a snapshot of events happening around the world from the viewpoint of first-hand witnesses, and blogs and citizen news sources offer analytical perspectives from the ground faster than print or television can provide. Paul Mason, economics editor on BBC's News night, uses these tools to get an angle on what’s happening and what’s important. “If you are following 10 key economists on Twitter and some very intelligent blogs,” he says, “you can quickly get to where you need to be: the stomach-churning question, ‘OK, what do I do to move this story on?’” ( Source 1)

Furthermore, the rise of free, incompetent based journalism brings many doubts related with basic business to mind: how can a newspaper make money if virtually all news today is free? Whereas, if the online newspapers start charging the same price as the newspaper people would move back to the most traditional ways.

Hiawatha Bray stated the problems which takes away the readers from the newspapers or books where he said, “The lack of readers in the newspapers is because of the collapse of the advertising revenue. People do as much as ever, they just don’t pay for it and the advertisers are no longer paying for it.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2sVXOddVLw (Source 2)

Bob Franklin mentioned a very interesting solution in his 2012 article/analysis piece “The Future of Journalism”, where he said: “ The erection of pay walls to protect against unpaid access to online materials offers a seemingly delightfully simple and increasingly adopted mechanism to “monetize content”; a related alternative is for readers to buy the appropriate app for their tablets. Murdoch has led the way with The Times in the United Kingdom; the New York Times promptly followed his lead. There are many reasons to doubt the efficacy of such a business strategy, not least the fact that online subscribers generate only one-quarter of the revenues which the buyer of the print version of the paper produces. But it is clearly significant for the business culture of the news industry that major corporations are rejecting the notion of “giving the news away”, along with the suggestion that readers will not pay for the news which is freely available and readily accessible elsewhere.

Similarly, the suggestion that good journalism costs money increasingly sits at the center of new business strategies, irrespective of whether the revenue stream required to fund such journalism derives from the profits of private/corporate media industries, a licence fee to deliver public service news, crowdfunding , levies on the profits of communication corporations , public subsidies or voucher schemes which allow citizens to choose the news organisations which will enjoy funding .

The ethical issues experienced in the field of internet which is too hard and even impossible to control have gained a more destructive nature in journalism.

Fake News still remains a big issue in the online world. Tony Silber in his article, “Survey Of Journalists Suggests Accuracy Is More Important Than Being First” stated the outcomes where they found out,

  • Being 100% accurate is more important than being first on a story.
  • Social media complicates the work of journalists in several ways.
  • Social-media algorithms are the technology disruptions most likely to change how journalists work.
  • The press release is the most trusted form of communication from PR pros. (Source 4)

Internet has also made massive progress in the fields of journalism, It has both pro’s and con’s. Online media can be more reliable if it’s constantly updated and the news is edited properly.

Sometimes this may mean sifting through a dozen Google search result pages to get the answer you are looking for, but even then, this is far less strenuous than what one would need to do to find a source decades ago.

You have to have a big vision and take very small steps to get there. You have to be humble as you execute but visionary and gigantic in terms of your aspiration. In the Internet industry, it’s not about grand innovation, it’s about a lot of little innovations: every day, every week, every month, making something a little bit better. Day You Innovation” – Jason Calacanis

Journalism is a fragile field. In conclusion I’d like to add Incase to save this for the new generation who wants to be a journalist it should be kept away from the corruption. Also, the old methods like the practical methods should be brought back. Every student studying journalism should be sent on the events where they wanna write a story about. Also the use of shorthand should be mandatory. At the same time maintaining a balance with the technology too, but not relying on it with everything. Practical work makes a person perfect. Each and every person will have to adapt to this fast growing phase in journalism, accepting the technological progress. Technology can be very helpful if it’s used for the good in every field.

Word count 1032

Bibliography/Sources:

Source 1 :

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/feb/20/what-effect-internet-on-journalism

Source 2:

Source 3:

Source 4:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonysilber/2018/04/24/survey-of-journalists-suggests-accuracy-is-more-important-than-being-first/#378ba7237b29

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