Week 6: Online: a New Journalism, Content and the Rule of the Search Engine

The topic in brief
The past few weeks have been about the the evolution of and shifts made by journalism. This week is about examining the position of journalism in its "new" abode online. The internet has provided a platform for journalists to equip themselves with tools and skills for online journalism. One of the tools which is the rage of online journalism is blogs. Blogs can be a newsgathering and reporting tool. They represent "unfiltered news available to a global audience" (Quinn & Lamble 2007). This means that journalists can monitor blogs to know what the global news readers are interested in knowing. Journalists can also find different angles to the stories in order to convey to the global news readers what they do not already know from those blogs.

The rapid updating of news online has made journalists realise that they have to be competitively skilled in online journalism and the pressure to differentiate themselves professionally from bloggers has increased. As a result, journalists cannot avoid multi-tasking today. Sales (1998 cited in Tapsall 2001, p. 251) foresees a future in which television journalists are equipped with many skills and where, within fifteen or twenty years, "journalists will be shooting and cutting their own stories".

In this week's seminar by Melissa, Gena, Amanda, and I
Since there were many presentations made for this week, the following are the highlights of what were shared:
Melissa talked about the question of "are blogs a threat to online journalism?" of which the reasons for its importance has already been discussed above. The most interesting point she made was "individual needs journalistic common sense". This works both ways for journalists and the audience. Journalists themselves have to ensure the credibility of information they have gathered from blogs or websites and whether the information is true or bogus. The audience is responsible for filtering the news soaked in from blogs and websites and the onus of finding the balance in views is on themselves. Blogs do not necessarily impose a threat on online journalism when they help to stimulate and retain interest on the issues pursued by online journalists.

Gena's take on online journalism is regarding its boundaries or lack thereof. She raised the concern of "overwhelming" freedom where too much freedom for both journalists and news consumers have often led to uncertainty in accuracy and credibility of news and information.

Amanda made us rethink whether online journalism is just another form of journalism by drawing our attention to the advantages and disadvantages offered by the different journalistic forms. Online journalism must be paid attention to because of the positive and negative effects it has to journalism on the whole. One of the concerns she raised was the desensitised citizens who have become addicted to rapid updating which mostly occured because of their fellow bloggers instead of the professional journalists. It is problematic if credibility is shifted from professional journalists to citizen journalists.

As for my presentation, I explored the wonders and shortcomings of the search engine which in my opinion is an important tool for newsgathering. Journalists need to know how news consumers search for information if they want to stay competitive online. By knowing how to search for information in both the mindset of a professional journalist and of a news consumer, online journalists will be able to achieve high accuracy and interest in their stories.

Conclusion
It is interesting to see non-journalists going through the same journalistic process as professional journalists when posting news online. It is even more interesting to see people "getting their news without really trying" (Quinn & Lamble 2007). What can be learnt from the two interesting points is that journalists might be robbed of their profession if they do not equip themselves with online journalistic skills which citizen journalists/bloggers possess.