Blog 9: Internet and Journalism

Question: WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF PRINT NEWSPAPERS?

Answer:

Since my group is doing on Internet and Propaganda, i personally feel that the rise of internet has led to a new platform for politics, terrorism and journalism. What's more, even in my Media Effects class, issues like how the traditional print media are losing money, its value etc are being raised. It makes me realise just how fast and rapid technology is changing the world, changing our consumption of news.

It is evident in the recent elections how internet has shaped and changed the way politics work.

I believe that what makes the internet so outstanding is the fact that it is Interactive. Providing us the ability to engage instantaneously with people from all over the world in both print and on video.

As the internet moves into the next stage of broadband and wireless, TV is transformed into a genuine two-way medium.
Journalists will be able to read e-mails off their wireless phones as they come in, live on air from almost any place in the world.

The videophone - a concept that seemed like science fiction five years ago - will become more robust and versatile, and as more people get high-speed internet access, the viewing figures of webcasts will grow.

A question then comes to mind, Google News VS traditional newspaper- Allies or Enemies?

We have learnt that Google News aggregation is entirely automatic, using algorithms which carry out contextual analysis and group similar stories together. Articles on Google are ranked based on "how often and on what sites a story appears online," and "based on certain characteristics of news content such as freshness, location, relevance and diversity.

BUT, publishers of newspaper think otherwise and are resentful of Google News and other similar web structure. Main problem: publishers do not feel that the click through rate to articles is high enough, and thus any additional advertising revenue that they would gain from extra viewings of individual articles will not compensate for the income they lose from readers not going direct to their newspaper websites.

So, how can newspapers tackle these problems, which are all the more relevant in this time of financial crisis?

One example could be for newspapers themselves to provide more aggregation, such as the NYT's Times Extra page: an alternative homepage which includes links to articles from other sites under the Times' own stories.

OR

As quoted by the Automated Content Access Protocol, a coalition of newspaper, magazine and book publishers led by the World Association of Newspapers, "content owners in control of their online content in a way that is conducive to developing new online business models, putting new, high-quality content on the net and to maximizing the benefits of the relationship with search engines."

Hence it is evident that the internet has revolutionised the way that people read news, and aggregation and linking is undoubtedly going to continue to be a part of the news landscape. People in our generation like to be able to get news from many different sources around the world, and young readers like us have grown up with online news will have less loyalty to individual newspapers.

Therefore, a way for newspapers to gain an advantage is to offer a clear editorial voice in its selection of articles and how they appear, which is one of the aspects of newspapers that readers value highly.

The issue is whether it will be newspapers themselves or third parties which manage the system.

The future of newspapers is evident and we have to embrace it and not deny it...