Is Journalism in Decline or Being Reinvented in the Digital Age - Essay Example

Is journalism in decline or being reinvented in a better form in the digital age? Introduction Journalism is such a profession that cannot work without trust. It is totally built upon that element and the quality of discussion has a direct relation with how reliable the news is. Communication in society can be conducted in various ways and it may have different functions Harold Laswell had proposed three functions of communication in society. These include: surveillance of the environment; correlation of the components of society; and transmission of the social inheritance. Journalists normally are doing the first which is surveillance. They report whatever is happening around in the world. Online news sites are available in abundance and the users can get all kinds of information at any time. However, there are some who are “afraid” that they might come across scams and spam and, therefore, the huge amount of information available to us today proves to be very daunting. The second of Laswell’s functions comes into play here which is the correlation function since it is about responding to the environment. Digital reporters make sure to include depth and interpretation in their work in order that the normal regular news consumer may be able to make out whatever is going on. After the journalists find out the information they need to select the best one to investigate and then report. This is the last of Laswell’s function transmitting the social inheritance. Through this they are able to carry out communication regarding the values of the society and this can be done through multimedia and interactive presentations. Journalism in a Digital Age Better journalism can be achieved through better regulations and such is the case for digital age as well. These regulations are required in order for the elimination of all kinds of negative aspects. The basis of journalism is news production and distribution. The role of journalism in the society is that of an actor as well as an arena. It is the role of journalists to report the events taking place around the world and also bring out the wrongs going around. It is by means of journalism that it is made sure that the country is free. And now that the society has digitized to such a great extent the information is flowing around very rapidly, and here a journalist’s role is extremely important and critical (Artwick 6). Digital journalism basically means journalism that is originated from the internet. Individuals are getting the power of technological innovation and are being able to spread the news and information to the masses. Through digital journalism it is possible to create a new media landscape that would be easily accessible to everyone. There is a wide difference between internet and broadcasting but TV and radio channels have been able to set up online activities immediately. Due to the fact that these medium have traditional content, they have led the multimedia services within the same framework like online newspapers. Besides, since they are able to use the novel technology and media without having to make heavy investments on new equipment, the broadcasters are becoming an interest as study objects. Advantages of Digital Journalism Journalism is definitely becoming better as there is more and more advancement in technology. Journalism is always recognized with newspapers and manual work where the journalists have to actually go to the scene and write and report news. With the digital age in progress it is difficult for some to imagine that journalism would be able to continue. However, such is definitely not the case. Digitalizing journalism is an option and a very good one at that. Like Marshall McLuhan said: “technology is turning the world into a global village”. One example is that of newspaper editors. They can actually utilize technology to its best and for their work. For example they can check out the camera viewfinder via the internet and thus advise their photographers as to which camera angle they should take and what kind of shots he wants. All this can be done from thousands of miles away. Such is the advantage of digitalizing journalism. Journalism is not under any kind of a threat from technology; in fact, it makes sense to use the digital phenomena to the best and improve and reinvent journalism. The digital age is aiming at changing journalism and for good. Any person at all just needs access to the internet and he is able to access online personalized news services and even filter out the kind of stories that they want. News organizations use internet to regularly and continuously update their overseas news. Basically digital age has allowed users and customers to access the news whenever they wish and the kind they wish for. Besides making everything much easier, digital age has made journalism interactive as well. Before digitalization journalism was a one-way process and the editors, reporters and photographers had to be trusted with whatever material they provided. However, now with technology there is a great possibility of discussion and debate of all the kinds of issues. Through digitalization journalism is coming to terms with a novel idea of writing and editing. Previously journalism was traditional which meant that writing was basically linear storytelling and this is known as the inverted pyramid (Herbert 2). Through such a process the readers, listeners or the viewers were given a summary lead together with details arranged such that the most important one was put first. This method was good enough for the printed pages. However, it cannot really work on computer screens. Thus, there is the hypertext that allows the journalists to write online stores with various dimensions. They now have the ability to structure the stories in any way they wish and even the readers can then sort it out according to their personal convenience and requirement. For instance, maybe one reader is more interested in the sidebar while the other clicks on the set of definitions of the technical terms used and still another goes to the related feature regarding the main story. Readers can go through all stories published online in their own ways. Online stories are pretty much different and easier to approach as they are normally established upon how the concepts and ideas have been associated while traditional journalism has more of a logical and analytical method to it. This is not all. Through computers journalists can very easily search for facts. Still, this does not mean that the journalist simply copy pastes every facts from the internet; they need to double check from verifiable sources to make sure that they are genuine since new information is being dumped onto the internet every minute. Through digital age journalists have a lot of sources of information (Mollgaard 8) and it may also be said that this information is actually being transferred from the government to the journalists. That means the modern journalists have new opportunities and they can take advantage of this technology. These modern journalists have to check out which information available on the internet is actually a part of news and which cannot be used. Ethics still have to be considered (Demir 539). One such way of having information about everything is to take part in discussions and groups as through those means a person can stay updated regarding various topics. Besides this a journalist has to his disposal other research tools such as email and internet search engines. In fact information is so much in surplus now and so easily accessible that just anyone can become a journalist in this digital age. Among the very first products of digitization was word processing and it entered the newsroom very rapidly followed by spreadsheets and databases used to store and analyze information. After that there were revolutions in the sources for information and the force was the internet. Databases and connected networks are extremely important for a journalist as one can find every type of document news and information via the databases. Thus now the journalists in the digital age do not have to actually waste time to find and disclose data; rather they can simply fight through the vast sea of information and select whatever is most appropriate to them. Here a journalist would need to have a very clear know-how about what exactly he wants as that would determine how he sifts through the available information and finds out the needed parts. Stating it very simply, a journalist has to go through three stages in order to get his news done right. First of all comes the idea or concept behind; followed by finding the data that would be appropriate and lastly is writing the story. Internet is available very openly today and journalists can very easily locate and gather information. Following that they need to select verify and write and the product that turns out at the end depends upon how creative the journalist is and how much experience and knowledge he has. Critics against Digital Journalism However, there are critics of online journalism and they have their own arguments against it. These critics feel that the Web cannot distinguish between real and fake journalism. According to their point of view the Web pages can possibly pose an opinion as news, therefore, there will be no value of truth since just any person being able to access internet can easily post whatever they wish. What the critics wonder is whether the digital journalists need to consider this issue because there is a huge majority of population all over the world who rely on the internet for news (Artwick 13). They feel it is even more important to make sure about their commitment to truth in this digital arena. Besides, there are Weblogs or blogs which are updated regularly and again these are just opinions of random people not actual journalism. Because information is available so widely media can propagate rapidly and there may be certain users who prefer to stay away from some kind of topics that may be discussed by some sites (Glodeanu 136). It cannot be said, though, that online journalism is all that bad. Online journalism is a means of opening up novel means of storytelling and the primary ways are through technical components of the new medium. This is to say that online journalists are then able to show a variety in their work that is they can use text, audio, video and images. Although Tom Phillips, the senior vice president of Starwave’s creation, feels that the digitalization will not work properly and can never replace journalism, he also says about Web that “This medium does a reasonable job at everything” (Harper) and besides the data being available to everyone on Web, even those people can reach it who cannot access a newspaper or television. Agreeing to him regarding the importance of digitalization, Nicholas Lemann, the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, says “As much as we groan at budget time over how heavily we are investing in technology, we can afford to get ourselves much closer to professional levels of production on the Web than we can in the print or broadcast media” (Teaching Journalism in the Digital Age 60). From research it has been concluded that technological assets of new media are not given any or at least not enough attention in online journalism (Krumsvik 4). Bolter and Grusin have said that such an occurrence is due to remediation. They say that media is to be evolved and this process is automated where the driving force is the strive for transparent immediacy. Conclusion Digital journalism, although progressing each day, has not yet made its rules and regulations and one reason behind this could be that it is as yet a recent craft. It needs time to develop after which universal laws and procedures can be set up. However, in spite of everything, the most important part of digital journalism is not the technology but the basic rules of traditional journalism. Lou Ureneck is the chairman of the journalism department at Boston University and when questioned regarding the way journalism should be taught to students he made it very clear that journalism is not about digitalization or technology rather it is the “journalistic value system” and the basic structure on which it should be founded should be idealism and skepticism because this is “what makes someone a good journalist and they are what lift this work about the trivial” (Teaching Journalism in the Digital Age 60). Points added are in red (digital journalism) Yellow highlight is how journalistic practices are changing due to digital processes and institutional shift. References added are in blue Works Cited Artwick, Claudette Guzan. Reporting and producing for digital media. John Wiley & Sons, 2004. Belam, Martin. Journalism in the digital age: trends, tools and technologies. 2010 April 2010. 04 March 2012 . Demir, Muge. "Importance of Ethic, Credibility and Reliability in Online Journalism." European Journal of Social Science 24.4 (2011): 537-545. Fenton, Natalie. New media, old news: journalism & democracy in the digital age. SAGE Publications Ltd, 2009. Glodeanu, Antonio. "The impact of digital communiication in politiical journalism." Journalism Studies 12 (2011): 135-138. Harcup, Tony and Peter Cole. Newspaper Journalism. SAGE Publications Ltd, 2009. Harper, Christopher. Journalism in a Digital Age . n.d. 03 March 2012 . Herbert, John. Journalism in the digital age: theory and practice for broadcast, print and on-line media. Focal Press, 2000. Krumsvik, Arne H. "The Role of Journalists in a Digital Age." Aprl 2008. 04 March 2012 . Mollgaard, Matt. "Reflecting the new realities of the digital age." Pacific Journalism Review 13.1 (2007): 8-18. Ordonez, Sandra. OurBlook Roundup: Journalism Will Survive in Digital Age. 04 May 2010. 04 March 2012 . "Teaching Journalism in the Digital Age." Nieman Reports (2007): 59-60. Read More