Assessing How The Internet Has Changed Journalism

6 min readNov 2, 2018

In an attempt to lure in new viewership, news media have begun to transition from reporting to becoming a form of entertainment. With the meteoric rise of the social media’s role as a news source, the fight for an increase of diversity in the media, and the ever growing desire of immediate content, the future of journalism is more important than ever. Ask yourself, why do I think the way I do? Where do my political views originate? How do I prove them? Most likely, it is due to the biased portrayal of issues in the media that we consume. Now, compare your views to your reporting entity. More than likely, they are the same.

Thirty years ago, if I told you that the primary means of communicating and disseminating information would be a series of interconnected computer networks you would of thought I was watching Star Trek or reading a science fiction novel. In 2018, the future of mass media is upon us today; the Internet. The Internet is and will only grow in the future as the primary means of delivering news, information and entertainment to the vast majority of the globe. Mass media as we know it today will take a new shape and form in the next few years with the convergence and migration of three legacy mediums (Television, Radio, Newspaper) into one that is based on the Internet and will replace these mediums forever changing the face of journalism, media and politics.

Impact of technology

Newspapers and journalists have had to change their distribution and production models and source original methods to keep their audiences informed and engaged. Print companies are now in competition with a large number of online sources. Social media tech “monsters” such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Google are creating new ways to dispense news. As noted in a report by Madelaine Drohan, “It started in January when Snapchat, used by 100 million people to share photos and short videos, started Discover…Facebook, with its estimated 1.6 billion users, caused a splash when it launched Instant Articles for mobile devices.” Evidently, traditional print newspapers cannot compete with the web. The large decline in ad revenue, and the rise of competition have caused a significant drop in profit for traditional print newspapers and resulted in their regression, and transition to online publishing.

New Storytelling Mediums

At first, the evolution of the internet as a broadcaster of news seemed only to mean journalists would have slight adjustments to their role. However, as time progressed, there has been a fundamental change in the formatting of broadcast news and has also changed the way consumers expect to receive their information. “Traditional TV news may not exist in 15 years’ time, but media audiences will continue to crave real stories,” says James P. Mahon, news reporter at Chattanooga, Tennessee’s WDEF News 12. “It’ll probably be on a cross-platform basis, with bitesize stories, in a visual and engaging manner in real time. Our transition to Periscope and Ustream shows how news is not relevant to an audience at 6 p.m. when it happens at 2 p.m. They want their Twitter and Facebook feeds fed. And why shouldn’t they? Millennials are on their phones hours a day. Many choose to buy Wi-Fi packages and not cable.”

While consumers have changed the platforms in which they get information, newsrooms have changed the mechanisms they use to present the news and gather it. Facebook and Twitter are now immersed in this new development. Newsrooms have combined all different types of social media platforms to create live blogs which will have videos from, on-the-ground sources, interviews, images and live feeds from any major catastrophe or event. Following the explosion at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, CNN news had a dedicated live blog which contained minute by minute updates with every form of information, all fuelled from social media platforms — Manchester bombing.

Revenue Model Challenges

The changeover from print form to digital did not entirely change the primary business model for many news corporations at first, trading advertisements to finance the journalism delivered to readers. Periodically, it seemed that the potentially vast scale of an online audience might compensate for the decline in print readers and advertisers. However this business model is crumbling piece by piece, as Facebook and Google gobble up digital advertising, as a consequence, digital journalism created by numerous news institutions has began to look insignificant.

Publishers that are funded by algorithmic advertisements are now thrown into a race to try and find any lingering audience, like a scrapheap of potential funding— wildly binge-publishing without verification of facts, pushing out the most bizarre articles to hike clicks. However, this colossal scale tactic can no longer guarantee adequate earnings.

Potential Solutions

Web video provides a powerful monetisation contingency because (a) audiences want it and (b) the pre-roll advertising can be embedded into the content. “Video is the first form of journalism where we have figured out that when somebody watches it — no matter where they watch it — the business model travels with it,” according to Raju Narisetti, senior vice president and deputy head of strategy at the new News Corporation. For that reason, The Wall Street Journal — a former print-only publication — is now producing about 1,600 videos or 120 hours of video a month, making it the largest producer of video in the world outside of a television newsroom.

Since 2016, the BBC Business Unit has been trialling with ‘news you can use’, an approach which impersonates tutorials and informational videos popular with YouTube viewers, in a bid to engage a mass viewership on social media and try promote the interest in news, business and current affairs. Dougal Shaw, video innovation journalist at the BBC, created CEO Secrets, a weekly video show where the audience are given business advice from acclaimed entrepreneurs. The series was easy to produce, but the great draw was that is is securing viewers from a range of mediums such as Facebook, BBC News and BBC World News TV. His interview with model-turned entrepreneur Lily Cole gained over 700,000 hits on the BBC News website in the first 48 hours.

Changing Newsrooms

Modern digital newsrooms have adopted some of the routines and practices of legacy media such as the daily news conference and using a journalist’s professional skills and sense of newsworthiness to prioritise stories. Where the routines and practices differ for digital-only newsrooms is the use of data analytics to track audience receptiveness to stories. With Facebook and other social media providing new pathways to journalism, the modern audience doesn’t expect to work hard to “find” the news. Today’s digital journalists must be able to write, report and market their stories. At the very minimum, reporters need to know how to use SEO to their advantage. Today’s reporter is also a sub-editor, video-maker, audio-maker, provider of data for graphics, and creator of presentational aspects of a story, including headlines and thumbnails. Combining all of these skills can keep the newsroom journalist relevant and most importantly wanted.

Assessing How The Internet Has Changed Journalism

Impact of technology

New Storytelling Mediums

Revenue Model Challenges

Potential Solutions

Changing Newsrooms

Bibliography -

Word Count — 1180

Footnote —

Written by Paraic Sullivan

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