Lecture Two: New News

In this lecture, we began by discussing old news mediums, or old media - those derived from an industrial paradigm such as newspapers, magazines, radio and television. These were created to be instruments of mass communication, each with their own specific market - for example, a gossip magazine may specifically target young females whereas certain newspapers may specificially target people in the finance industry.

Then, we began to discuss new media - starting with the internet/web iterations.

Web 1.0 - 'The Information Web' was the beginning. It was basically an extension of old, offline media - newspapers, television etc - only this way, information could be constantly surrounded with ads; a gold mine for marketers. This stage basically involved companies repurposing content for web use instead of print use (sometimes referred to as 'brochure ware').

Then came Web 2.0 - 'The PROD-USER Stage' - the type of web communication so many of us have grown to know and love - where the users are also the producers; thus the birth of social media. The main focus of this iteration is on social groups, for example facebook, twitter, instagram etc. Web 2.0 is interactive and involves microblogging (short blog updates like those we see on Twitter). Society is currently on the verge of moving forward from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 - 'The Symantic Web'.

 The next phase of the web that we are moving into is being referred to as the 'symatic' web. It involves making sense of all the information gathered through packets like metatags to create machine-readable meaning. It means we will be able to ask our search engines multi-layered questions and get accurate answers. For example, soon we will be able to ask google something like, 'Where can I see this specific movie at this time, then get a pizza, all for under $20?' (as an example from one of our JOUR1111 states). The rise of smartphones will play a big part in this - as most information produced by the semantic web will be most useful on the run. The focus of the symantic web is on individuals, and hyperlocalising advertisements and news programs to suit the individual. There are a lot of upsides to this; however, one downside is that it may promote ignorance regarding matters that may affect people overseas or matters that are not of great interest to the individual, but are still important.


We also talked about some issues that may affect journalism in the future - such as entitlement. Many people believe journalism is a dying industry. Marketers no longer have to pay to advertise in newspapers, as the web is cheaper and much more effective in a lot of cases. The classifieds have died with the invention of ebay. Web news is free, opposed to newspapers, and is readily available to all. So now, how do we make money from quality journalism? Some companies are putting paywalls up on their online news sites; meaning you must subscribe for a small fee in order to view content, however this has not entirely solved the problem. With more and more news companies losing money/going broke, investigative journalism (in my view one of the most important types of journalism) is facing serious threats, as investigations require a lot of money and time to properly carry out.

None of us can be sure what will happen in the future of journalism.
But in my opinion, as long as us journalists keep producing quality stories that are relevant and interesting to our readers, journalism will never die. It will just change and adapt with future developments as all other industries do.

I found this lecture included a lot of very interesting information; it made me a little worried that I may be planning to start a career in a dying industry. But as I said above, I believe quality writers will be able to keep this industry alive. Those who write for a passion, those who write so they can communicate with the world about things they believe are important, won't care about making buckets of money anyway.

Until next time,
Lauren.