The Internet’s impact on the future of Journalism

As netizens, we are definitely able to feel the changes which the Internet has brought forward to us. The major one, which has the greatest impact on journalism, is convergence. The Internet has encouraged a shift in who creates, distributes, and ultimately owns the news. This phenomenon of convergence can be supported by the emergence of increasing number of online news sources.

Journalism is the profession of reporting, photographing, or editing news stories for one of the media. Traditional journalism includes news and information transmitted via the newspaper, magazine, radio, and television. Citizen journalism, on the other hand, emerged from web 2.0, are news and information provided by citizens, or rather netizens, like us. They can be found on websites, such as YouTube, IReport, Twitter, DigitalJournal.com, and All Voice.

One example of citizen journalism in Singapore is Stomp. Stompers are allowed to post pictures, videos, their views and comments on this particular website. When I viewed this website, I had several thoughts, one of which is that, stomping with personal conscience is not a virtue that every stomper has. For instance, some stompers made the effort to “blur” the faces of the person in the picture, while some intentionally enlarge it to show the public.





Stomp has brought about several advantages and disadvantages:
• Immediate reports of what happened, no delay that may interrupt with what exactly took place
• Serious news, as well as, ridiculous news which professional journalists may not be interested in
o Eg. PSP game so engrossing that this guy forgot to zip up his pants
• Like the traditional journalism, it provides a forum for public criticism and compromise
• Anonymous, thus, there is no obligation to verify and give the truth, or keep the news comprehensive and proportional. Therefore, there is no loyalty to the citizens.
• Practitioners may or may not maintain an independence from those they cover, as they might make use of this medium to divulge a secret of a friend or relative, whom have offended them
• It does strive to make the significant interesting; however, it may not be relevant.





In the near future, I believe there would not be freedom of speech or action anymore because everyone would be restricted as they are afraid of getting on the news for making a wrong comment or a wrong gesture. However, when it comes to reliable news, I believe print is still dominating, because not many people are willing to pay to read news online, and 82 percent of people in New York, with preferred news sites said they would look elsewhere if their favorite site starts demanding payment.

According to Rupert Murdoch, we should “embrace progress!” rather than resist it, to avoid destruction. However, because sometimes “progress” moves too fast for us to catch up, we are unable to decide for ourselves what change to embrace and what not to embrace.