Cannot Say We Didn’t See It Coming

Nobody can say we didn’t see it coming… 

The advent of electronic communication has created a culture fragmented and disjointed, a nation wandering over a virtual landscape, searching for scraps of information; attempting to satisfy a basic human desire to find a sense in the world.

Journalism supplies a foundation to indulge that need.

By providing a view into the workings of society, journalism offers individuals the tools to be productive citizens. On the Internet, the quality of data has an extra dimension. Online news can manipulate the limitations of time and space by establishing a stream of data, from which a user can access on their own terms. It also changes the expectations of the audience.

Presented with a current of material—both instantly accessible and constantly available—the digital audience not only wants to know, “What happened?” but also, “What happens next?”

It embodies a search for the “next big thing.” The ability for online journalism to merge spatial conceptions in a virtual world has far-reaching effects.

Journalism on the Web is not journalism, as we have known it thus far. It creates a different order of content. Speed is not so much the issue, as is the development of news that extrapolates and anticipates. It is not the practice of journalism has changed: traditional news media are still involved in its practice in some cases, and in other cases, they are not. Newsroom practice remains largely unchanged: journalism as a process is intact. The difference the web makes to journalism is that it fully brings to bear the development of news as that which brings the future into the present… journalism trades in futures. (Jones, p. 117)

To be successful in providing content for a digital audience, the journalist must go beyond the basics of traditional reporting. It is more than just the five W’s and “How.”

Providing a journalistic voice online goes further than merely adjusting writing styles to appeal to a shortened attention span of the reader, skimming through a story to “pick out” the most fascinating parts. Success rests with a keen understanding of the interactive nature of the Web.

In history, each new medium creates a set of skills that are ideal for storytelling in that medium. For the Internet, these skills include answering the question, “Where is the relevance?”

The recipients of this news and information tend to be more than just passive receivers of content. Internet users are not referred to as “couch potatoes.” In fact, to describe them as “recipients” may be misleading: They are more appropriately described as “information seekers,” comfortable with search and navigation strategies on the Internet and with other aspects of computer-mediated communication (CMC). (Kawamoto, P. 5).

Appealing to a changing audience base is the foundation of creating an online brand, which includes monitoring the trends of our information-based society. When beginning to develop a brand it is essential to have an awareness of the effects of newer technologies on the habits of the audience.

To be aware of the beliefs of the audience and what they want from their news. Web based journalism assumes a deep-seated need for self-importance on the part of the audience; a desire for them to be a part of the discourse.

Even if the Web becomes primarily a commercial medium for electronic commerce, e-mail, and commercial news and entertainment fare, it will also be a haven for all sorts of interactive activities that never existed in the past. In particular, the Web’s openness permits a plethora of voices to speak and be heard worldwide at relatively minimal expense. (McChesney, p. 29)

The nature of the Internet, and online news, reflects the changes in how we think. It is another way electronic communication has allowed humanity to gather vast resources for understanding. Marshall McLuhan noted the evolution of electronic media and its effect on the thought process. It was an extension of our own bodies and minds.

Men are suddenly nomadic gatherers of knowledge, nomadic as never before, informed as never before, free from fragmentary specialism as never before—but also involved in the total social process as never before; since with electricity we extend our central nervous system globally, instantly interrelation every human experience. (McLuhan, p. 358).

Journalistic branding can be closely associated with the currency of reporting—credibility. The two are connected in that they speak to a degree of trust on has in the provider.

To be effective online, it is a matter of choice. Not only of choice in subject, but success in connection with the reader also lies in choices in framing. Providing news framed in a way that can appeal to the hurried consumer.

Managing the flood of information to give it coherence and relevance offers a very different challenge to journalists than does by merely relaying new information. It requires additional steps and skills. The issue, when we move beyond merely relaying facts in some routinized order, becomes one of framing. (McCoombs and Merrick, p. 81)

In examination of the shattered concentration of the virtual news consumer, few can say we did not see it coming.

For decades, visions of a landscape of instantaneous electronic records have foretold the media convergence we are enjoying today. Many agree that the rise of wireless communications and the Internet have brought radical changes to the ways we disseminate data.

However, even though the changes have come at what we perceive as lightning speed, they do not represent an unforeseen consequence. Technologies such as electricity, the printed word and movable type proved humanity’s ability adapt to new methods of interpersonal communication.

MIT professor Ithiel de Sola Pool predicted a new era of media convergence as far back as the early 1980s.

The explanation for the current convergence between historically separated modes of communication lies in the hability of digital electronics. Conversation, theater, news, and text are all increasingly delivered electronically. … Through these mergers electronic technology is bringing all modes of communications into one grand system. (pp. 27-28)

In the coming era, the industries of print and the industries of telecommunication will no longer be kept apart by a fundamental difference in their technologies. The issues that concern telecommunications are now becoming issues for all communications as they all become forms of electronic processing and transmission. (Poole, p.42)

 

To find warnings about encroaching technology, you can also go back further. Plato, in the story “Phaedrus,” sees the written word as having profound changes on human thought.

In the dialogue with Phaedrus, Socrates laments on how writing does not represent truth, but offers a facade of truth.

…they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality. (Plato, Jowett translation, 1994)

As history has shown, any innovation in communications does not necessarily result in the abandonment of the other forms. Television was not the death knell for motion pictures or radio.

In finding its way into our social fabric, television found its niche and once it established its prominent cultural position, TV exerted a powerful influence on our culture, changing the way we consume entertainment and information. Television laid the foundation for the behavior patterns that makes the Internet appealing, and now the Web is poised to change the game once again.

In the 2008 survey of virtual library usage conducted by the University College London, the Internet is an alluring siren for users as they skip and float through a constant barrage of data. Not only is there the wealth of information, but a wealth that is also instantaneously accessible.

While we have highlighted differences amongst scholarly communities in this paper it would be a mistake to believe that it is only students’ information seeking that has been fundamentally shaped by massive digital choice, unbelievable (24/7) access to scholarly material, disintermediation, and hugely powerful and influential search engines. The same has happened to professors, lecturers and practitioners. Everyone exhibits a bouncing /flicking behaviour, which sees them searching horizontally rather than vertically. Power browsing and viewing is the norm for all. (UCL survey, 2008)

What makes the Internet revolution unique is in the way computers and wireless devices incorporate features of other forms of media, but in increasingly fragmented and disjointed ways.

The Internet is only the latest in the shattering of the modern attention span. This fragmentation has been a concern for scholars for quite a while. Every facet in Internet content offers the user a basis to limit attention span.

On the screen, there is the printed word, but text is in motion. Online video elements provide the ability to pause, or jump to, any point in the presentation. All of these contribute to a sense of fragmented thought, consuming data in small chunks.

Calm, focused, undistracted, the linear mind is being pushed aside by a new kind of mind that wants and needs to take in and dole out information in short, disjointed, often overlapping bursts—the faster, the better…Most of us have experienced similar sensations while online. The feelings are intoxicating—so much so that they can distract us from the Net’s deeper cognitive consequences. (Carr, p. 10)

The new landscape of technology and the developing “convergence” poses challenges for today’s journalists. Print journalists cannot pigeonhole themselves on a single platform to provide content or be comfortable with the unique features of only one avenue of communications media. In the age of convergence, it is not enough to expect a story to appear only in print—stories now can be simultaneously published online or adjusted for broadcast or video elements on the Web.

Today, we are using devices that constantly compete for our attention, both for information and entertainment, forcing an even greater merging between the two.  The use of wireless devices, carried at any time, has skyrocketed.

They have become another of McLuhan’s “Extensions of Man.” In the case of wireless devices, due to encroaching omnipresence and portability, they are a more literal extension.

…the same observation can be made about all the extensions of man, whether it be clothing or the computer. An extension appears to be an amplification of an organ, a sense or a function, that inspires the central nervous system to a self-protective gesture of numbing of the extended area, at least so far as direct inspection and awareness are concerned. (McLuhan, p. 173)

As of May 2010, a Pew survey of mobile usage found 59 percent of adult Americans access the internet wirelessly. Wireless usage brings portability to journalism. News is now accessible to an audience anytime and anywhere, and with text alerts and e-mail updates as close as one’s shirt pocket, news content increasingly demands the consumer to pay attention.

With the accessibility of news content, news and entertainment struggle for the user’s time. In addition, unlike radio or television, Internet, e-mail and texting are less likely to be relegated to an ambient background.

Creating a product both informative and appealing is the task of the digital journalist. The online audience “surfs” over a webpage, searching for emotional points of entry. This dynamic poses a dilemma for those who want to strike out a voice on the Internet. They must not only offer compelling storytelling—as with any other medium—but also stories that provide credible information, positioning them as voices of authority.

Online reporting is more personal and individual. A Google search can bring the entire writings of a journalist for comparison and contrast. This makes consistency in writing and tone an important consideration for your brand.

These are the challenges of the online world: supply information in a timely manner, maintaining relevancy to constantly shifting allegiances of a fickle virtual audience, and resist trap of superficial writing in the rush for immediacy.

“The current diversification of communication channels is politically important because it expands the range of voices that can be heard: though some voices command greater prominence than others, no one voice speaks with unquestioned authority.” (Jenkins, p. 219)

With a mindfulness of the trends towards a splinted attention of the online audience, what can be done to reconcile the desire for immediacy and the need for thoughtful reflection? How can a journalist strike out a digital voice and become a credible point-of-reference for accurate information?

“Branding functions as an assertion of corporate conscience, an ongoing guarantee of good behavior towards consumers. Purchasing a brand reassures, offering the buyer a ‘predictable and secure’ environment. Brands establish valuable “social capital” prompting trust. Trust is central online.” (Wilson, pp. 143-144).

“Predictable and secure,” in the business of journalism, refers to providing a product that meets highest degrees of integrity and accuracy. Ethics are paramount in establishing an online brand, for there are few second chances in the instantaneous virtual world of interaction.

After understanding the new rules of the game, branding begins with a strong grasp of the written word. Storytelling skills are essential to any journalist, especially one who works for an audience that is less interested in the past, and always looking to the future.

This facet of digital journalism is no different from what reporters faced with the advances of past eras—“be it the printing press, telegraph, telephone, wireless communication devices, fax machines, tape recorders (or) satellites.” (Kawamoto, p. 167).

Knowing the importance of interactivity in the Internet universe, journalist must benefit from the trends that foster online inclusiveness. Story ideas, leads and research come from a working knowledge of the avenues of information flow of the web.

Using social media such as Facebook and Twitter as a launching point for the “pulse” of the people. However, the main pitfall of online reporting is the preponderance of opinion, without facts to support them.

Computer-assisted research can help keep reporting accurate and well timed, as long as there is limited reliance on highly opinionated sites such as blogs and message boards. Of this the reporter must be aware, as described by Neil Postman:

The concept of truth is intimately linked to the biases of forms of expression. Truth does not, and never has, come unadorned. It must appear in its proper clothing or it is not acknowledged, which is a way of saying that the “truth” is a kind of cultural prejudice. (Postman, p. 22-23)

Multi-media elements are most attractive features of the Internet, and utilizing them can give a brand the appeal to the “flashiness” of the technology. Knowing and applying the right mix of visual and text elements to grab attention is essential to any successful brand.

It is not just a matter of tight writing, but also a matter of composition and visual appeal.

In addition to individual journalists, news organizations are also embracing technologies to stay relevant. Markets serving smaller populations are beginning to utilize “hyperlocal” websites—such as AOL’s Patch—one of the innovations used to maximize effectiveness in a new technological marketplace.

These micro-websites can be built to focus on a single neighborhood or issue and are supported by larger media outlets. Marketing hyperlocal sites is through a combination of social media, traditional marketing and word of mouth. Bloggers work with established news providers and provide an opening to develop an individual online brand.

New News Organizations (NNO) is another plan, fitting media groups into web-based platforms serving larger metropolitan areas. The NNO would utilize emerging technologies and fostering cooperation between independent journalists, citizens and organizers to report on various aspects of community life. Bloggers and hyperlocal publishers work with the NNO and collaborate by means of the network of journalists and other providers.

The opportunities for revenue streams through creative new plans also give the reader a sense of timeliness; that journalists are “keeping up with the times.”

This feeling is also essential in developing a presence on the Web. The newness that accompanies the communication revolution can be the secret of online success.

Changes in the methods of communication should not be mistaken for a shifting of priorities of journalism. The basics of good reporting, no matter what innovations the individual journalist faces, do not change with the times.

The human side of journalism—good interpersonal communication, a commitment to public service, a respect for reliable sources, and a sense of obligation to seek truth with fairness, balance, and context—represents timeless skills and values. Simply put, journalists must continue to be intelligent and ethical people.