Week4 - Who will pay for Journalism? Is it just about money?

Thanks to the new technology, we are in a new era in terms of communication and unfortunately the news industry, particularly print, have been very slow to change the way they do business.

The new technology might be the greatest achievement in the 21^st century. Though this technology, a great change has taken place in people’s daily life. Before the use of new media technology, people had to seek information from the traditional tools, such as print media. In contrast, the new technology gives people more flexibility in getting news and sharing information, such as online news website.

In addition, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have made news a more participatory experience than ever before. People share links of news stories by e-mail, post articles on their Facebook and other networking feeds and tweet them on Twitter -- often following up by discussing the articles on message boards and other sites.

This shows that traditional media is largely affected by the new media. Through this week’s seminar presentation, we found that more and more people tend to get information from the new media, and it seems to be the inevitable trend of the twenty-first century. New media is more time-saving, space-saving and so on. However, this does not mean that the mainstream media will be completely replaced by the new media. In the past, because of the dominant influence of mainstream media, advertisers are willing to spend money on the mainstream media as most people were getting information through newspapers. According to Warren, “one of the basic principles of free press demands from newspapers to operate in a competitive market, where they depend on advertising clients to make profit” (Warren, 2010). Today, although the new media occupies a great position, a majority of people still believe that the mainstream media represent the professional news reporting and deeper investigative reporting, for instance, senior citizens and middle-aged people still subscribing to newspapers.

After all, we haven’t experienced a communication revolution like this probably since the print media was invented. But I don’t think that means automatically that the print industry is doomed. I just think it means that they are going to have to rethink the way they do business.

Reference

Warren, C., 2010, The Future of Journalism, Life in the clickstream II, Our Audience, P32-33, viewed on 23^th of May, The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia.

Week 3 - Journalism as a Public conversation in the 21st century; what is the role of the citizen?

‘Citizen Journalism’ is a concept that can be defined as the idea that every citizen takes an active role in the news reporting. It is embodied in the idea of everybody’s participating in news area, which means that everybody plays a proactive role in the process of news gathering, reporting, analysis and dissemination.

Sometimes called ‘grassroots journalism’ and citizen journalist believe that they provides a higher standard to news organizations and provide news from different angles and views.

The rise of citizen journalism is due to the Internet, which transforms common people from a passive audience of traditional media into active participants in creating news and comments. Thus, the citizen journalism is often related with the new forms of media and includes everything from passionate letters to the editor and comments on blogs and news websites, to bloggers scooping stories exposing doctored or omitted facts from mainstream media reports.

However, not all the countries and areas in the world can achieve the goals of citizen journalism. Take China as an example. We all know that there is a strict government control in china in order to achieve the harmony of the society. In other words, the Chinese government has long tried to keep a tight rein on traditional and new media to prevent any challenges to its political authority. This has often entailed, watchdog groups say, strict media controls using monitoring systems, shutting down publications or websites, and jailing of dissident journalists and blogger/activists. Take my own experience as an example, if people talk about some sensitive words or issues by using the Chinese chatting tool ‘QQ’, the words will blocked by the servicer.

In addition, most citizen journalists are from ordinary citizens, and most of them are non-professional journalists, and thus, the news credibility of citizen journalist is far from the professionals. Unlike traditional media, as most professional journalists have a high quality in education, citizen reporters are from different variety of classes, education levels and occupations. And this leads the reports from citizen journalist are lack to depth and accuracy.