Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Changing times, Jennifer Carbert


Journalism 2.0 is emerging in the online world and changing the ways in which people consume news and facts. Journalism 2.0 creates a new dynamic in which backpack journalists are becoming dominant because they know how to include text, video, and audio. There is also a change in the perspective of citizen journalist. Official news sites are inviting readers to leave comments, create blogs and share stories using social media interaction. The new Journalism 2.0, although not eliminated the need for journalists and solid facts, will change the way news is gathered, composed, and received.

Today consumerism has changed. People no longer go to the street corner to pickup the newspaper, instead they go online and find the stories they want to read. Readers scan the material to see if there is anything relevant before actually reading the material. "In radio and television time is limited. In print journalism space is limited. But on the Internet there is essentially an unlimited amount of time and an unlimited amount of space. The limitation is the attention span of the Internet users," said Vinton G. Cerf in his article How the Internet is Changing the Concept of Journalism
.The online world also lends itself to a more diverse media setting. Previously news could be found in either audio, video, or print. With the Internet and Journalism 2.0 all three of these factors can be combined to create a compelling story. CBC is a great Canadian example of a news agency which has adapted to online. CBC combines the text of the news, audio from the radio, and video from the television.


A large majority of news sites also offer a chance for readers to become interactive. Instead of writing a letter to the editor and waiting for the response to maybe eventually make the way into the newspaper, responses can be posted, read and responded to by many almost instantaneously. With interaction a new dynamic of deciding which sources are trustworthy and which are simply rambling on a certain topics has become prominent. Many sources do research and have trustworthy information, but not all, sometimes the information is completely fabricated as Jayme stated very well in his previous post Independent Journalism when he said, "Since anyone and everyone has access to the Internet, you can't just assume a blogger who does no fact-checking is going to be giving you anything other than his outlandish opinions. The responsibility falls on both the reporter, to maintain his credibility by stating sources for information, as well as the reader, for insuring what they are reading is, in fact, fact". The reader must decide which information is trustworthy.


Journalism is in the infant stages of online development as Karen Zypchyn would say. We are still learning how best to adapt information gathering for the Internet. Combining audio, video, text, and images along with linking and creating an article that is scannable and searchable are all things which the 2.0 Journalist must consider on top of double checking facts and validating sources. The future is both scary for journalists and exciting to see what is coming, the era of backpack journalists who can be versitle in every medium and gather information quickly and accuratly is on the horizon.

1 comment:

  1. If someone had never heard of the term "Journalism 2.0" before, I would refer them to this blog post. This is a very good overview. You covered all the main points! I agree that the CBC is a great example of an online news publication that truly reflects the ideas behind Journalism 2.0. I'm sure Karen Zypchyn would appreciate that statement, and the fact that you quoted her at the end! I did find one sentence that was a little confusing, grammatically-speaking, in your first paragraph:

    "There is also a change in the perspective of citizen journalist."

    I am not entirely sure what you are trying to say with this sentence. I would try and rework it.

    Rather than that, I thought it was a very informative blog post. Great work!

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