Reflection on “Inside the News Media”
Thinking back to the start of the semester, I honestly can’t remember what my exact expectations were before the course. I took the course because it sounded interesting, like I could gain some form of deeper insight. Well, what can I say, it was indeed a very interesting course and I did develop a better understanding of the news media.
The last few months were interesting, thats quite an understatement actually. There was so much talk about fake news, state financed propaganda, alternative facts and how almost all established media outlets were wrong about Trump not being able to get elected as president. So much happened, so much to talk about, so much to analyse. We could have talked about fake news for the entire semester without it getting boring, simply because there are so many facettes to this topic.
At the beginning of the semester we were given a ‘toolbox’, a set of information on how to analyse the way news media works. Personally, I always loved to be up to date with the news, be it politics, science, whatever. But I was missing the means to understand what the deeper reasons behind the way of reporting of certain topics were. During the semester I learned more about the organisations behind the news and with the deeper insight into the driving force, I could check my own media consumption and was able to not only broaden it, but also question my way of media consumption.
We will certainly see drastic changes in the media landscape in the next few years. News media organisations will need to be more and more competitive, more agressive. The business is, after all, not just about keeping the masses informed, it is about making money. And when making money becomes harder and harder, new business models must be developed and old ones will sooner or later vanish. How much longer will printed newspapers exist? Will online, on demand news replace them completely? Or will they keep a niche market?
I don’t know how or when all these changes will happen, but they will happen. But one thing I know is that I can now follow the news and their changing environment with a deeper understanding.
