News as we know it is changing. Newspaper sales have been in steady decline for decades with the growth of new technology and new media channels. Communications professionals are required to encompass a range of media skills, transcending the traditional journalistic mould and gaining skills to help them flourish in a convergence driven industry. Journalists need to be savvy in not only one discipline (eg: print) as the media industry continues to move towards convergence, whereby news organisations employ several channels to disseminate news. Skills in broadcast, online, print and so forth are fast becoming essential skills in communications workplaces.
Online news is perhaps the most prominent source of news today, with its relative speed, ease and lack of cost making it an attractive option for accessing news. It allows the reader to peruse headlines in a simple format, and provides many features unavailable in other mediums.
The most noticeable advantage of online news is the speed with which events can be reported on. Owing to deadlines, printing time and delivery, print media reports yesterday’s news. Online news covers news as it breaks, with constant updates to the minute, meaning news can be spread to the public almost immediately.Another obvious advantage of online news is the potential for greater access. News sites can be accessed anywhere in the world, meaning papers are no longer restricted by regional or distribution boundaries, geography is no longer an issue” (Hume cited by Ingle, 1995, p.18). This ease of access, unrestricted by location has brought the world closer together in terms of information flow, leading to a better educated and informed society. Online news has a greater capacity for increased narrative and a larger news hole in stories.
Another advantage is that the news hole is endless. If you have the energy and time to put the material up, you can provide all the out takes, all the extra stuff that didn't make it into the old tiny news hole” (Hume cited by Ingle, 1995, p.18). Journalists are able to better develop their stories in the absence of a specified news hole, which may be a set number of paragraphs or centimeters allocated on a spreadsheet. Writing for the web means there is no constraints on length, thus greater narrative can be achieved in stories. In addition to increased story length, the internet as a medium offers a range of options to extend narrative that are not available to other forms. Hyperlinking online is the internet equivalent of delving through archives of old papers to find related articles. This is also beneficial to other journalists when researching stories. Hypertext can be viewed as “not only as a way to link from an index to a story, which is a very poor way of understanding hypertext, but as a new narrative form” (Pisani cited by Ingle, 2005, p.19).
With the increasing importance of online news, practitioners need to be aware of the online environment and the way in which it differs from print.
Sources
Goggin, G, (2006). “The Internet, Online and Mobile Cultures,” Ch.21 (p. 259-278) in Cunningham, S, & Turner, G, The Media and Communications in Australia. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin.
Ingle, B, (1995) "Newspaper vs. on-line versions: a discussion of the old and new media." Nieman Reports 49.n2 (Summer 1995): (p.17-21). Retrieved from Expanded Academic ASAP website Gale. The University of Newcastle Library. 2 September 2009
http://0-find.galegroup.com.library.newcastle.edu.au:80/ips/start.do?prodId=IPS
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