International & Online Journalism
The ever expanding character of the internet has already led to the explosion of digital medias and new multimedia tools are coming in almost on a daily basis. In this fast-developing context, and also as a career choice, I have decided to build my portfolio for this assignment solely on a web foundation. In terms of journalism, “the ability of the web to allow publishing in near real time gives online newspapers some of the qualities of a broadcast operation” (Thurman, Journalism in a non-linear, screen-based environment, 2005, p. 239). This is partly the reason why I have opted for an online portfolio of news stories, but also because I wanted to explore further the various options the web can offer me as a journalist. Also it goes almost without saying that “to fully exploit the online medium it is necessary to have a good understanding of the technologies” (Thurman, 2005, p. 227).
Furthermore, I also wanted to acquire deeper knowledge about online audiences. For example, it has been put forward that, “online, it is not possible to assume that your readers will be technologically equipped to be able to read all or parts of your publication at all” (Thurman, 2005, p. 231). Therefore, it almost becomes compulsory for any web journalist to be aware of the “how’s” and “what’s” of these new tools in order to reach an audience at all.
Finally, I have grown extremely fond of the social value of the internet, and particularly the many possibilities to integrate, and even work alongside, the audience. Ever more connected, the internet has unleashed a whole new opportunity for citizen journalism and it has been pointed that “the demand for stories and opinions from the grassroots has grown” (Thurman & Jones, 2005, p. 253).
So, what are the major differences and variations in web journalism? This is one of the crucial questions I have set myself the task to answer throughout this module. “There are many journalisms” (Keeble, 2005, p. 268), and I would go further saying that it also applies to web journalism. But whether online or on print, “journalism relies on a few basics for its quality — good story selection, sound research, compelling storytelling and a readable style” (Holmes, Writing Online, 2008, p. 132). An online feature, just as in print, must be written “in the way that’s right for the publication, its editor and its readers” (Adams , 2008, p. 45).
I have therefore opted to cover three different stories, on three different mediums, in order to fully appreciate and analyse the differences. This paper is then split in three parts. The first one focuses on the problem of pollution in the French capital, and blogging was the medium I decided to choose. In the second story, I have decided to cover the Panama papers scandal from a social media perspective using users-generated-content through storify. For the third part of the portfolio, I picked the Panama papers again, but this time to publish a more “opinion style” article on Medium. The overarching objective here was for me to explore further the differences of various web platforms and come to determine in conclusion, which medium fits in a particular journalistic context.
The blogging platform
https://sustaimably.com/2016/04/15/paris-over-1-5-million-people-exposed-to-high-pollution/
As I have long been interested in development journalism, the first story I decided to cover was regarding the annual report on Air quality in Paris and its suburb areas (AirParif, 2016). As the blog sustaimably.com has now been running for several months, it has built up its own community of readers, and writers, interested in development topics. With Paris being the place were the COP21 agreement was signed, the release of the report attracted the interest of several medias, including the French Paper Le Monde.
With the release of such an important document, already attracting mainstream papers, the newsworthiness of the story in relation to my blog became evident, it would fit perfectly, and readers already expect this kind of topics to be covered. In this particular context, my choice of the subject, and the story, was guided by the fact that it ticked several important boxes, in terms of timeliness, newsworthiness and even the platform. Also all bloggers are not necessarily journalists, “the blog format has been increasingly adopted by mainstream news organisations” (Hermida, 2009, p. 269), and one of the reason is the communities that are built around these. The use of blogs by mainstream medias demonstrate the importance of an online community, the interaction between readers and writers, and generally speaking, a more social form of journalism.
Blogging provides specific opportunities for journalists not necessarily available on other platforms. For example, “whether they are fictional or not, narratives in blogs differ in several ways from traditional print or cinematic narratives” (Rettberg, 2008, p. 126). Even if there must be many reasons for that, the inter-connected character of the internet is definitely an important factor. Blogging allows for a much more social experience. I believe this greatly explains why “increasingly, journalists and pundits take their cues about “what matters” in the world of weblogs” (Drezner & Farrell, 2005, p. 86).
Blogging, within this module, but also throughout the whole year, has turned out to be a much more comprehensive experience than I had expected. As a journalist it has been an incredible learning curve as it has helped me to get a real sense of what is an online community and how to interact with an audience online. The open character of the blogging platform, which allows for public comment and participation to a story, also plays a crucial role in keeping journalists in check. While there has been many debates regarding blogging and journalism, I think it has rightly been pointed that “blogs haven’t disappeared — they have simply morphed into a mature part of the publishing ecosystem” (Kabadayi, 2014), and even if all bloggers are not journalist, the platform allows for some potentially great pieces of journalism.
Storify, social media and users-generated-content
https://storify.com/juliensueres/why-the-p
For the second story, I decided to cover the Panama papers scandal in order to tap into the momentum the media created. As a subject, its newsworthiness was obvious as a big part of the world was talking about it. With so much content about it already available online, I realised that a user generated compilation would allow me to cover the story in a comprehensive way. Reflecting upon which tool to pick for such a story, Storify became a primary option as it allows for an easy compilation of content, directly accessible from the various social networks.
The pace at which journalism is evolving, as well as the web technologies, means that “global news can be produced from anywhere and by anyone” (Williams, 2011, p. 43). So a “professionally compiled digest” (Williams, 2011, p. 171) using Storify is a brilliant way to organise, classify and make sense of a story which had been buzzing all over the web. When a story creates so much noise online, it automatically generates a large amount of content. In turn, it can make it more confusing for a reader looking to just get the basics of the story.
As I started to dig into this internet cacophony in order to select which content I would use to make it into a story, I realised that “the selection of news, what is left out as well as what appears, is often filtered by the stereotypical assumptions that are held of the people and the part of the world they emanate from” (Williams, 2011, p. 136). As “stories come about through a variety of different sources“ (Wheeler, 2005, p. 57), the selection process in itself is a skill which, I know now, must be part of the modern journalist tool box.
The great advantage of Storify is the fact that it allows you to search through a whole range of web platforms and networks, all in one place. As it has been pointed, “Twitter is becoming established as a short-form news platform” (Crawford, 2011, p. 118) and so this is the place where I decided to look first. It is accepted that Twitter “is a barometer for revealing everything, from the occurrence of natural disasters to the public perception of political candidates” (Murthy, 2013, p. 51). It did help me a great deal during the researching step, even if in the end I didn’t use much of its content in Storify, the micro-blogging platform allowed me to better assess what the buzz was all about on the social networks. It was via twitter that I was able to find further original content from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ). As it has been pointed, “a story is considered newsworthy if it has one or more of the following attributes: timeliness, proximity, prominence, relevance, unusualness, conflict, impact, emotion” (Kolodzy, 2012, p. 17). During the exercice, I realised that to cover the Panama papers scandal through Storify, and using users-generated-content, it would tick most of the criterias as defined by Kolodzy for a sound story, but most importantly, it has given me valuable experiences and skills which can be transferred in various journalistic contexts.
Medium
https://medium.com/@juliensueres/panamapapers-an-arrow-through-the-opacity-of-tax- evasion-fa9ccb7656f7#.wc3i7wana
For the third story, I looked at a way, or platform, which would allow me to express my opinion without diminishing the audience reach capacity. As I was researching further into the Panama papers scandal, I wanted to emphasise the fact that what was new about the story wasn’t the scandal surrounding tax evasion and tax paradises, but rather the size of the leaked documents. The point I tried to make is that once the buzz starts to come down in the medias, there are many chances for the scandal to go forgotten, as it happened in the past. In fact, there is little new about the Panama papers, since the issues of tax evasion and offshore companies have been around for years.
I decided to use Medium as a platform to publish such a piece. This platform offers many advantages from a journalistic perspective. First, it facilitates audience engagement by encouraging readers comments and responses. “The publication and annotation of content by readers has always been a fundamental part of the history of the web” (Thurman & Jones, 2005, p. 252), but Medium has developed this concept to a whole new level. While “corporations, governments, international bodies and NGOs around the world are adept at using the media and managing information for their own ends “ (Williams, 2011, p. 135), I realised Medium offered me a great opportunity to express my opinion on a particularly important topic. As it has been pointed, “change brought on by electronic media threatens the viability of traditional ways of reporting the news but offers promising new ways of disseminating information” (LAZAROIU, 2009, p. 157) and this is exactly Medium’s promise of an open-minded and accessible platform. Secondly, the “three core practices of tagging, linking and browsing” (bruns, 2008, p. 172) are highly encouraged on Medium, and participate in its success as a platform where almost no effort are needed in terms of audience reach. Medium has made blogging easier, by taking charge of the classification and categorisation of writing. All that is left to the user is to write, and once the right tags have been selected, Medium will make sure the content is accessible for those interested.
While “we still need reporters on the ground to ask and answer questions….networks of witnesses, participants and experts add to the news in ways not possible before” (Carvin, 2013). The innovation Medium has brought to the universe of blogging means that journalists have now one more tool to engage with their audience. In the fast paced world of internet, “journalists have to learn new ranges of skills to be able to do their job — and some of them are not necessarily things that their predecessors would recognize as being journalism” (Holmes, Hadwin, & Mottershead, 2013, p. 210). Indeed, Medium can sure be used for all sorts of creative writings, not always news-related, just like blogs. But it also has a great potential in journalistic terms as it offers journalists the opportunity to reach an audience which is already there and ready to engage on a topic of interest.
On a professional level, it has been pointed that “you also become much easier to discover” (Greenberg, 2015) since the system of tagging has been optimised. As I am well into the process of building my online profile, the prospect of Medium to display my articles to such a large audience is obviously of primary interest.
Finally, if “the news media’s influence on public agenda setting and communities’ understanding of issues and events makes them a major social power in their own right” (Romano, 2010, p. 3) then Medium surely participates greatly to this process as it has become a popular place for journalists and news writers to publish their work while ensuring a maximum audience reach.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to reetirate the objective of this paper, which was to explore the various forms of web journalism. To do so, I opted for three different news treatments of my stories. This was of primary importance since “online it is essential to understand the technologies used in the electronic publishing process and, furthermore, to understand something about the adoption processes (at a reader level) of those technologies” (Thurman, 2005, p. 229). Through blogging I have experienced the joy of writing about a topic of my choice to an interested audience, or online community. Sometimes, “if an event or issue is too complicated to unravel, it is more likely to be spiked in favor of one that is easy to understand” (Niblock, 2005, p. 79), and so the blogging platform offers this opportunity to “unspike” a particular story or topic. Working on Storify, after going through the challenging process of learning how to use the medium, greatly benefitted me as it unveiled the journalistic power, and use, of the social media and user-generated-content. This social aspect of modern journalism, through the use of social media, is of particular interest since it can greatly improve the human element of storytelling and reporting. Finally, Medium has allowed me to discover a whole new generation of writers, not necessarily interested in the technological bits, but rather in telling a story subjectively, from a more humanist perspective. Looking at how international news organisations make use of these three different web formats, blogs, Storify and Medium, it has appeared clear to me that even if the exercise did present many challenges, the acquisition of such skills is likely to remain an asset, which I hope will serve me well in my career.
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