• Categories

  • Uncategorized

• Archives

  • September 2008
  • August 2008

• Blogroll

  • WordPress.com
  • WordPress.org

• Admin

  • Register
  • Log in

It’s safe to say that the creation of faster telecommunication systems and the internet have revolutionised the way that journalism and the media are projected.

Journalists are now expected to write, film, photograph and record many aspects of their stories when traditionally they would have only had to write. This is shown in the below YouTube film, where two employees at the New Castle News in America are embracing the digital revolution.

As you can see, photographer Erika (Mihok) Galvin is now a multimedia journalist. She takes digital photos, shoots video and conducts interviews, and even writes a weblog.
While the newspaper is still fully-functioning, and produced daily, the company is combining this with digital media, in order to reach a larger audience outside their community.
As mentioned in several of the previous blogs, The Geelong Advertiser is also adopting this process, working in both the traditional form of newspaper journalism and the digital online side.
Large media companies are now facing pressure from smaller community papers, who are also trying to cater to their increasingly fragmented audiences.
The face of journalism will continue to change as technology progresses, and as a result, it seems that the multiskilled, multimedia journalist, will be the one who gets the jobs. That is why it is so important for us, as journalism students, to embrace this change.
Journalism will never just be print, video or radio. It will continue to grow and expand through the internet and online technology, and therefore, the need for multimedia skills has never been so great.

This week a seven hour siege occurred in Norlane, Geelong. Whilst not the best news to hear in the small town that you live, the Geelong Advertiser’s efforts to cover the story were taken to the next level.

Participation in their online blog was done by journalist Daniel Breen who continually updated the blog every 3 minutes or so, when new details of the siege occurred. This demonstrates how so called ‘print’ media can be converted into online content, showing that media convergence exists not only in the form of online stories but frequently updated blogs.

This is also a good example of how ‘citizen journalism’ can basically be undertaking by professional journalists when they are under pressure. In this particular circumstance one would assume due to the short length of each blog post by Breen that he was under constant pressure to keep the public updated with whatever information he could get. His online blogging during the siege continued from 4.14pm till 8.01pm. The complete blog updates can be found here,

http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au/article/2008/09/22/18491_news.html

The Geelong Advertiser is one of the many newspapers that are keen to establish themselves as online journalists as well and within such a small community they do this quite well. Also on their website is video footage taken by an onlooker of the fire that broke out at the Norlane home. This also demonstrates how they oblige to get the community involved in their news-making process as well.

There seems to be a trend at the moment for media organizations to scout the internet (namely YouTube) when looking for stories. A current example was on Wednesday 17 September, when the Geelong Advertiser covered a gang attack that took place in Geelong and was featured on the YouTube website. The newspaper took stills of the footage and placed them on the front page, hoping to catch the culprits. The week before, the RSPCA urged people to come forward after footage was released on the internet of a young man attacking a kangaroo.

More and more people are using the internet to broadcast what is happening in their lives. I’m not condoning these attacks, but the fact that people are posting these videos on the internet, because they believe that people want to watch it, is quite sickening.

As far as I know, there are currently no guidelines regarding what people can post on the internet as blogs, videoblogs, or podcasts.

Some blogging companies may have restrictions on what can be posted, however, and YouTube recently announced that they were going to start removing certain videos from their site, including terror-training videos and instruction videos about how to make bombs.

It seems the times of people posting whatever they want onto the internet- good or bad- may soon be at an end.

‘Readers write their papers…’

It’s not just the major daily newspapers that are jumping on the online bandwagon and it seems the lower key the paper the more attention they try to receive. In July this year Geelong’s own Geelong Advertiser had an event running where readers of the paper could decide what would make the front page of their next issue through an online voting system.

It seems that with the revolution of technology, newspapers are doing their best to stay afloat with these changes and are creating ways for the community to become more involved. There’s no doubt the Geelong Advertiser is taking this ‘online age’ very seriously. As quoted in July’s Australian, Editor of the Advertiser Peter Judd said “We wanted to see whether our readers would be good editors and would they make the right choice for a commercial news organization which has to sell newspapers,” he says.”The choice they made was a good one.”

This brings the question to mind should readers remain readers? Why should readers have the right to be editors? Shouldn’t that responsibility be left to the professionals?

Answering these questions seems like a difficult task, especially when we are living in a world where a mobile phone is equipped with every communication feature under the sun. Hopefully a medium can be found for both readers and the journalists who don’t want to take a back seat to these readers.  

Sarah Palin’s reputation was found murdered early this week. The prime suspect is internet blogging…

Regardless of political persuasion, the attack towards Republican Vice-President candidate, Sarah Palin, leaves a bad taste in the mouth. The controversy highlights the power the internet has. If the pen is mightier than the sword, than a frequently visited blog is a weapon of mass destruction. It was falsely reported (both online and in traditional media) that Palin’s infant son was actually the son of her 17 year old daughter. This accusation forced Palin to make an official statement declaring herself the mother, and that her daughter is currently pregnant. This may have fatally wounded the Republican Party’s bid for the White House.

Still have doubts of the power of the blog? Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton is known in the music industry to have the ability to either make or break a pop artist or group (Perez Hilton, by the way, is also currently obsessed with Palin, and has published several blogs speculating the recent controversy).

And that’s the rub. Should the media pay so much attention to blogs? Are they as reliable as we think? (Perez Hilton.com announced proudly on August 17 2007 that Fidel Castro had passed away…he’s still alive).

The internet has a power that can reach many and isn’t regulated — that’s largely the appeal for online journalists. However, for all the top quality journalism featured exclusively online (such as Kevin Site’s Hot Zone), there are the false reports and fabrications that mislead.

“OhmyNews does not regard straight news articles as the standard. Articles including both facts and opinions are acceptable when they are good.”

– Oh Yeon Ho, interviewed in Japan Media Review

This is an unorthodox approach towards journalism. But what is good? Surely good is subjective, so one man’s good is another man’s mediocre.

http://english.ohmynews.com/ArticleView/article_view.asp?menu=

&no=382680&rel_no=1&back_url=

This article is exceptionally good, by most people’s standards, with quality reporting and shrewd analysis. However does everything published on OhmyNews maintain such a high standard? The danger of user generated news is the possibility of inaccurate reporting. Quality control is essential with media, and OhmyNews is apparently taking the appropriate measure regarding editing.

Three quarters of OhmyNews users are male – does this reflect journalism? Or does this represent global conventions, where males have much stronger opinions than women (that’s a broad comment on society — I’m not sexist…I don’t think…)? The largest defined contributors of OhmyNews are students, who make up 19 per cent, followed by white collar workers, who total 15 per cent of OhmyNews contributors. Strangely, journalists only number seven per cent. The generic group “Others” occupy over 40 per cent of OhmyNews.

It’s like the journalistic equivalent of grassroots activism – normal, everyday people contributing for a realistic look at issues affecting normal people.

Citizen journalism strikes again…

Last weeks Green Guide in the Age included an article titled ”Every Tom, Dick and journalist”. It outlined how not only has citizen journalism become more prevelant in recent times but how it brings about the issue of citizens more interested in capturing a ‘story’ than phoning emergeny services.

This brings up the issue of should gaining a story take precedence over helping people in a crisis? There is no one answer to this question. However it has been outlined in this specific article that when a citizen captured a horrific event they are considered heroes. But if it is a journalist who captures it they are labelled ‘callous’.

Not only this but citizen journalism also blurs the lines between professionalism and ethics. As pointed out in this article by journalist Maree Curtis, just because you have a camera does not make you a journalist or filmaker.

That being said it is evident that many people disagree with this. The footage of the recent QANTAS downfall was all captured by people on board the jet. Does that mean journalists should fear their jobs being snatched up from under them? Doubtful. Citizen journalism does not mean one is equipped with the ethical knowledge or professional courtesy that trained writers recieve through their studies.

Journalism is not just about being in the right place at the right time.

The Olympics- Achievable on all platforms

With the arrival of the Olympic Games in Beijing, and faced with China’s strict privacy and censorship laws, journalists have had to be even more resourceful when uncovering stories and publishing/ broadcasting them.

Some websites, such as ones with links to the banned religious sect the Falun Gong, have been inaccessible as well as any that could be tied to Tibet, the Dalai Lama or other ‘national concerns’.

A story about this can be found at http://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/InfoWeb?p_product=AUNB&p_

theme=aggregated5&p_action=doc&p_docid=12247A1D3578BC68&p_

docnum=4&p_queryname=4

But despite these problems for journalists currently covering the Olympics in China, news organizations have been able to work the Olympic Games to their benefit, taking full advantage of multimedia journalism to get their stories across.

A good example is The Age, which has a whole section on its website devoted to Olympics news, photos, videos, blogs, schedules and results, as well as articles about how the Australian Olympians have done in their respective events. They have also attempted to make the Olympics section interactive for their audience, with an Olympic quiz and a daily poll.

The Geelong Advertiser website also has a section devoted to the Olympic games, where you can track the progress of the Australian Olympians, especially those that come from, or have links to, Geelong. The Addy newspaper also has a daily liftout of the Games that features photos and articles.

So it appears that despite the tough laws of China that restrict their own media output, Australia’s journalists are able to use the Olympics to their advantage when working across different multimedia platforms. They are able to utilise the components of convergent journalism to their advantage, and as a result, reach wider, fragmented audiences.

Quality journalism dies in cyberspace, though few mourn its passing…

Editors, according to cyberjournalist.net, are mostly conflicted or worried about the internet’s role in news. This is largely because the way people consume news is changing.

The changing way audiences consume news means journalists must also change. Last week’s video about the Sydney Morning Herald’s multimedia journalists highlighted how newsgathering is changing. With the aid of new technology, journalists can gather information with greater flexibility and publish it on a website shortly after.

The title of this blog is tongue in cheek, however, there are real questions of accuracy and quality within multimedia journalism. With the potential of such efficient multimedia publishing, editors would surely demand more stories done just as fast. When stories break–such as the controversy beginning late Sunday night surrounding Collingwood footballers Alan Didak and Heath Shaw–initial online reports can be conflicting. In this example, (although the footballers lied to the club and the media) reports often had vague references to an unnamed “friend” of Shaw. It wasn’t until late afternoon on Monday that the truth was reported, that Didak was the only passenger involved in the drink driving incident.

Multimedia news is merely a response to the fact that today’s news consumer is exceptionally time poor, however news consumers still need accurate reporting. Journalists must attempt to maintain quality and increase production to keep up with the internet’s demand, lest journalists lose audiences completely.

• Recently Written

  • The Future of Journalism
  • Geelong Advertiser tackles up to the minute blog…
  • YouTube footage is becoming a media trend
  • Group Blog Week 6
  • 10
  • Oh my what a leap forward, OhmyNews!
  • Group blog post 3
  • Group Blog Post 2
  • Group blog post 1