Citizen Journalism and Traditional Journalism

Our future is online, and so does the profession of journalism.

With the revolution of technologies in our modern world, the Internet enables everyone to become a publisher and alternative sources are becoming the main choices of news provider. With the human desire and curiosity on dramatic and ecological fronts, the current journalists from both the traditional media and new media are faced with increasing pressure and demands for a NEW STORY, instead of news story. Furthermore, the new media/social media allows readers to post their comments on an online published news story, and yes, I admit that reading these comments posted for the online news pieces tend to be more interesting than those that were written on the letters to editor column on a hardcopy newspaper. However, I must say that this is when the read beomes bias, in which readers are obsessed with entertainment, and the 'boring-hardcopy' nature of the traditional journalism is losing its readership to these online interactive social media and personal blogs. The main reason is every writer has the freedom to express their opinions at an instant speed on these social media, such as Twitter and Blogspot, and the comment threats had became more interestng and entertaining when more readers were involved. On the other hand, it takes a day for a newspaper publication to publish the opinion pieces wrote in by the public, and due to the limited publishing spaces, not all commented pieces are published.

Advanced technologies is a good thing however, in my opinion, I feel that it brings more problems than good to us, especially in the field of journalism. The reason is although online citizen journalism is more interactive, engaged to readers and the comments are much more personal, but I feel these personal comments are inadequate for citizen to have an objective understanding for a full picture of the news story. Traditional journalism checks on clarity of content, good language usage, conducts interview in a proper procedures and produces a detailed narration of a news story. Hence, when I flip through a hardcopy newspaper, I feel more satisfactory to see well-written colums of features and news stories with photographs. On the other hand, although the comments made by citizen journalism of the social media is more simplified, lesser words to read especially for young readers, who prefer convenient short sentences and have less patience to read a full story, and readers can participate and contribute their comments, its 'just people sharing their trivia" without any back-checking of facts after all! Thus, personally, I will choose to go for quality instead of speed. Suffice to say, the frameworks of traditional journalism is so different from online citizen journalism, preceding paragraph were made possible with traditional journalism, and I must say, without traditional journalism, we will not be able to see the outlines of the news stories, let alone the details. Thus, although traditional journalism guides readers through a boring linear narrative rather than a more conversational approach, people should take this as the grace of professional journalism and accept this important journalism function.

Internet has indeed lower the standards and good quality of a good professional journalism. If we continue to produce news story, or rather a NEW STORY based on individual decision and collective policies on it, we will dramatically accelerate the downfall of good traditional journalism. After writing this blog, I am much aware of what citizen journalism is all about and will be greatful for efforts from traditional journalism when I flip through a newspaper.

Globalization and Localization

There are many debates on media globalization as its cultural implications had taken on huge changes in terms of communication and technologies. Also, globalization allows diversity in information exchanges and creates major social and cultural changes in societies. Thus, with the revolution of technology such as the Internet, global journalism practices had changed in both information production and in information consumption.

It is definitely an advantage for global journalists that they now have access to so much more different media sources, and are exposed to greater varieties of opinions and world views on the current affairs than before. However, in my opinion, I think that global journalism were being practiced in developed countries than in developing countries, and the reasons are the political power, media ownerships and the cultures of recipients. In the current world, countries which have more conservative and traditional societies either resisted or accepted the process of globalization. However, I still feel that traditional ways of ruling a society cannot be ignored in the face of globalization, globalization cannot be isolated from localization, and they should work together dialectically. The main reason is both processes are seen as the integrated parts on the shift towards global reality that characterized our world today.

This is especially important for country such as Singapore, whereby it is a multi-racial society that consists people from international countries of all over the world. Therefore, the interplay of the globalization and localization is necessary to us, as we do need information from the rest of the world in order to help us to maintain and substanciate the religious and racial harmony in Singapore.

Who will pay for journalism?

The journalism world is still arguing between to-charge-or-not-to-charge for both their online and off-line news content. Advertisers have always been the ones to cover for the production costs of news publications. Can newspaper publications which had spent years of giving away their news content for free starts charging for it now? In my opinion seeing this issue from a Singaporean perspective, this is not going to work base on the very typical fact that the word 'FREE' is Singaporeans' favourite 4-lettered F-word! Also, currently we have free newspaper for the public at the SMRT stations (Singapore Mass Rapid Transit), which are 'Today' and 'MyPaper'. Besides, they can even get tons of related news online for free on the Internet as well. Therefore, I do not think so one will want to pay for news/information which they have been getting for free all these while.

Other questions for us to think about will be: Are there enough people whom do regard these news to be of value that they would pay for? Even if so, for how long and how much will these people willing to pay for their newspapers? I think the main concern with regards to the above questions is young generations are growing up with the huge influences of digital technologies. This gradually leads them to not having the concept of newspapers as a source of information since these information can be retrieve from the Internet for free. The explosion of cyberspace of the Internet will very likely to cause the omission for both off-line and online advertising prices, therefore, leads to the decline demands for traditional journalism. Hence, it does not matter if the news content should be free but what matters is will people pay for it. Looking this issue from the economic perspective, the Internet will continue to pull audience and advertisers away from traditional news media outlets, even Television and Radio industries as well. The instant connectivity nature of the Internet is putting increasing financial and social pressure on the processes of news productions of the traditional newspaper publications. As a result, besides just reporting on papers, more and more reporters or journalists working at the newspaper publications will have to do double, or even triple amount of duties. They too, need to do photographing, online bloggings and twitter updates every day on the social networking sites as well.

As a whole, I think in the current advertising-based system, it makes survival very difficult for print publications that solely depend from sales alone. Also, even if such publications survive, they will not be receiving enough media coverages and attentions from the public. The main reason is advertisings adverts do attract public's attention at most of the time! For example, the food and breverages promotion advertisements from NTUC (National Trades Union Congress), and mobile phones advertisments from Singtel. I feel that advertising, just like media ownership, acts as a news filter and affects the types of news aditorials to be publish on the newspapers since the threat of withdrawal of advertisings do affect editorial content. Thus, I feel advertisers should pay for journalism more than the consumers. Also, with regards to consumers should pay for online news content, newspaper industries should have started the policy way much earlier rather than now.