Lesson 16: The Impact on Journalism PDF

**THE IMPACT ON THE JOURNALISTIC PROCESS AND TRADITIONAL MEDIA** **Lesson Overview:** In this lesson, we will examine three ways the internet has influenced traditional journalism: speed, connection to the audience, and more competition. **Learning Objective:** At the end of the lesson, the stud...

**THE IMPACT ON THE JOURNALISTIC PROCESS AND TRADITIONAL MEDIA** **Lesson Overview:** In this lesson, we will examine three ways the internet has influenced traditional journalism: speed, connection to the audience, and more competition. **Learning Objective:** At the end of the lesson, the student will be able to: - Identify the different types of online media, including news websites, blogs, social. media platforms, podcasts, and online video sites. Like print and broadcast media, online media run news stories, human interest stories, commentary and analysis, consumer reviews, and feel-good stories and other stories like breaking news stories, threaded discussions, data visualization and user-generated visuals; and - Discourse about how the internet specifically affected newspapers and how it makes money, how they employ people and how they share the news. **Main Lesson:** **SPEED** Journalists or even regular people can post to the internet at any given time. And this means journalists must work faster and faster to keep up. Pressure to be the first to publish a story isn\'t new. Even before the internet, being first was part of competition between news sources. However, the internet has made this situation worse. Generally, when someone rushes to complete something more mistakes are made. These mistakes can cause huge problems when we are talking about inaccuracies in the news. News organizations need to remember the principles of accuracy and truth. Which are more important than being first to break the story **CONNECTION TO THE AUDIENCE** Before the Internet, the audience received the news from the news programs and newspapers. Nowadays, the complete opposite can happen, people can send news programs, videos from their cellphones of events happening in real time. Additionally, with social media people, have more ways to connect with the news now more than ever. For example, TV news suggests Twitter hashtags or invitations to join the discussion on Facebook. People feel empowered when they can share the news with others and share their thoughts with the news. **INCREASE IN COMPETITION** The third way the internet has affected the journalistic process is through an increase in competition. With the internet, it\'s become a lot easier and cheaper for channels to broadcast their programs. While having choices is generally a good thing, especially when talking about the news, we as the audience have to be critical of what we read or see on the Internet. Remember, being a critical thinker means being curious or wanting to know more and being skeptical or questioning whether to trust what you see. Just because somebody can post a video or start a blog, it doesn\'t mean that that news story has been verified, or that it\'s accurate. News media in general needs to be able to adapt to confront these new challenges. **HOW NEWSPAPERS MAKE MONEY** This is about the business side of print media. In the US, newspapers are a business. They need to make money. What do they need money for? They need to pay journalists, editors, and other employees. They need to pay for paper, ink, and the machines that print newspapers. They also need to pay the people to take newspapers to people\'s homes every day. In the days before the internet, newspapers made money mostly through advertisements. In fact, 80% of money made by newspapers was from advertisements. **Subscriptions**, or money made from people who pay to read a newspaper, was only a small part of the money needed to run a successful newspaper. **HOW THE INTERNET DISRUPTED TRADITIONAL MEDIA** In the late 1990s and early 2000s, more and more people started using the internet for all sorts of reasons. Businesses decided that the internet was a better and cheaper place to advertise. Between 2005 and 2009, newspaper advertising dropped 44%. This incredible drop forced newspapers to make some very difficult changes. The first area that changed because of the loss of money was staffing. Before the Internet, 50% of the newspapers\' **budget**, or the plan for spending money, was spent on paying people who worked for the newspaper. With this huge drop in advertising dollars, newspapers were forced to reduce their staff by 25%. This resulted in fewer stories on fewer topics. The newspaper just could not print as many stories with fewer journalists on staff. Another effect the Internet had on newspapers was a change in the way people received the news. Before the Internet, newspapers had teams of people who picked up the paper very, very early in the morning and then drove to neighborhoods and left a newspaper on the door of every person who had paid for it. Sometimes people sold newspapers on busy street corners or newsstands on bookstores. It cost a lot to distribute or share the news this way. Once the internet became very popular, lots of people stopped reading paper copies of the news, instead they went online. Internet publishers could post stories immediately. They did not have to wait until the next day to print a story and readers preferred to have their news quickly too. **Enrichment Activity:** **Answer the following questions:** 1. How social media affected the way journalists gather and verify information? 2. What are the challenges and opportunities brought by citizen journalism and user-generated content? 3. What ethical considerations arise from the use of advanced technologies such as deepfakes or AI-generated content, in news reporting? **References:** Ceciliano-Jose (2010). *Campus Journalism and School Paper Advising.* Manila, Philippines: Rex Book Store Saleh, Naveed (2013).The *Complete Guide to Article Writing: How to Write Successful Articles for Online and Print Markets.* Ohio, USA: Writer's Digest Books Keeble, Richard (2006). *The Newspapers Handbook.* New York, USA: Routledge Rich, Carole (2010). Writing and Reporting News: A Coaching Method. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Soriano, Marcelo Jr.F. , Velina, Lieza B. Undergraduate thesis,*" The Newspaper Reading Habits of Sophomore AB Engliah Students.* Pangasinan State University, Lingayen Campus. 2018 Bravante, Errol C. , et al. Undergraduate Thesis," *Student Publications of Pangasinan State University-PSU-Lingayen Campus.*2018. [[www.cyberjournalism.net]](http://www.cyberjournalism.net) [[www.freedomforum.org]](http://www.freedomforum.org) [[www.writerswrite.com]](http://www.writerswrite.com) [[www.journalism.net.com]](http://www.journalism.net.com) [[www.npc.press.org/about/ethics.cfm]](http://www.npc.press.org/about/ethics.cfm) [[www.cyberjournalist.net]](http://www.cyberjournalist.net) [[www.journalistoolbox.com]](http://www.journalistoolbox.com) [[www.powerreporting.com]](http://www.powerreporting.com) [[www.newspaperlinks.com]](http://www.newspaperlinks.com) [[www.natpress.org]](http://www.natpress.org) [MOOC English Journalism]