The online medium provides the "best of both worlds" of broadcasting and print. With faster computers and Internet connection, it is now possible to deliver text, videos, and audio through an online media. Users can choose what they want. They may even opt to have news pushed to them via mobile phones --which extends the online medium further. The online media is at the "cutting edge" of journalism. While it won't replace journalism as we know it, it changes paradigms, mindsets, and business models. Online medium can deliver news quickly and around the clock. It provides an endless web of information through links and recently, blogs. Newspapers are now putting up video content, complimented with audio, which can be a short news clip or a streaming Internet radio program. Blogs have also provided another way to engage readers .
The biggest weakness of the online medium is accessibility and cost. Not all people have Internet access and computers. But mobile phones are becoming an alternative. Nonetheless, the online medium opens up opportunities for the news "business." It creates additional revenues (through advertising and syndication) for newspapers, television, and radio. With the online medium, they can have a bigger and younger audience born in a multimedia world. Traditional media that refuse to change remain the biggest threat to online media.
A paper titled, "Newspaper websites deliver local consumers" by the Newspaper Association of America, states a general trend in the US, which is now happening in countries like the Philippines:
The number of Web users visiting newspaper Web sites continues to grow—from 40 percent of everyone online in 2002, to 48 percent in 2004 and 51 percent in 2006.
In the "spirit" of convergence, a Philippine magazine introduced a new marketing gimmick in their magazine. It involves taking "snapshots" (using a mobile phone camera and a special software) of a bar code-like symbol placed in the cover of the magazine. The Tag Mobile System (TMS) -- as it is called -- will take the mobile phone owners to a special website (a WAP site) that will contain other information and goodies. As this blog states, TMS is:
TMS is a convenient way to download any form of multimedia into your mobile by turning your phone camera into a barcode scanner.Just imagine the possibilities. Magazines or any publication (actually the TMS works on websites too) can now push information via mobile phones. If you're using a smart phone, you could conduct transactions (say buy a product from the magazine or view more photos on your mobile phone). I remember an old article written by my editor Leo Magno years back. With convergence, content is now portable to any device/medium. With technologies such as TMS, content will be "spiraling" up and around all these mediums/devices. Thus he writes:
This consequently is redefining the word “media" as we know it. The flow no longer comes from a broadcaster’s or publisher’s point of view down to the audience, where the old communications model of sender-message-receiver is followed. Information flow in this day and age is no longer linear. With the participation of citizens -- the audience -- as both content consumer and producer, it has become multi-dimensional, spiraling up and around several evolutionary ladders of communications.
I know this is beyond the 300-word requirement for this week, but I wish to highlight this study I picked up from Poynter Institute.
Baltimore Sun's Nick Madigan wrote that College campus papers are becoming popular despite the dwindling newspaper readership. However, there is a growing number of students going online for news. Excerpt:
At the same time, college students are still reading the papers' print editions. A Student Monitor study says 76 percent of college students surveyed during the spring semester this year read one out of the previous five print editions of their campus paper. That number has remained roughly consistent for almost two decades, never dropping below the high 60s, said Eric Weil, managing partner of Student Monitor, which twice a year surveys 1,200 full-time students on 100 four-year campuses.
The difference now, he said, is that 38 percent of students regularly read an online edition of their campus paper, and they spend an average of 19 minutes doing so, Weil said.
Convergence in journalism involves the marriage of old and new mediums. "Mass media" is no longer enough to describe today's new media. The audience is growing because it is spreading virally through blogs and other social networking services such as YouTube or Flickr. Instead of the old paradigm of "one to many," the convergent media is now a medium of "many to many."
It also has gone "multimedia."
Blogs have allowed anyone to become a "journalist." Mainstream media is now embracing technologies, such as blogs, to deliver news. According to this paper from the University of Essex, titled "Blogging: personal participation in public knowledge building on the web,"
Blogs have emerged from a humble beginning to become a highly networked mass of online knowledge and communication. All kinds of research, from searching for the best price of the latest mobile phone, to more rigorous forms, are conducted through the blog medium.Blogs or blogging have become "cheaper" and efficient means to publish information on the Internet and deliver news to a bigger audience. This is just example on how convergence has spread so quickly worldwide. Anyone with an Internet connection, a decent computer, and a good command of English can become a journalist. Thus we've seen the rise of citizen journalism, which is now gradually being embraced by MSM.
I am Erwin Lemuel G. Oliva, a Filipino journalist working for online news portal INQ7 Interactive Inc. I write about technology most of the time. But I also do politics (especially on elections), business features, science, and youth-oriented stories. I've been a journalist since 1995.
Just like some of my classmates in Ateneo Center for Journalism, I'm an "accidental journalist." I started out with the goal of becoming a musician (read rockstar). But my dreams were shattered when I flunked an audition in a local college of music. Frustrated, I moved on and found myself writing for an obscure youth magazine (I couldn't remember the name until today). But it was my first break in writing, although that job did not last long. Eventually, I found a "real" writing job in a medical magazine. Published every month, I was assigned to chase medical doctors, organizations, and health officials. I graduated subsequently to writing feature stories, including one on "Bangungot" or Sudden Unexplained Death Syndrome, which was a myterious illness killing young Asian males in their sleep.
From medical journalism, I moved to technology journalism. I wrote for a local computer publication and submitted contributions to PC Week Philippines and the defunct Newsbytes.com of Washington Post online. In 2000, I was asked to join INQ7 as tech reporter.
Briefly, I'm married with two lovely daughters. I grew up in Baguio City, the summer capital of our country. I was named after German general Erwin Rommel, also known as the "Desert Fox."
