Who killed the newspaper?
Published on
Story by
Jane Thyrring
European media production is not just for journalists any more. The young people of Europe are well educated and interested in their sourrounding society. Therefore they want to participate themselves in the production of medias, and they don't want to wait for slow journalists to discover new things - so they do it themselves.
Citizen journalism - this term was unknown in just recent past, now it has become a very common expression. People who are not journalists publish their blogs, post photos on sites such as Flickr, they communicate on MySpace, Facebook.. they are taking away our audience - the readers. Are they stealing our jobs? It may seem like that.
However, professional journalists are starting to appreciate citizen journalists because they have realized that these people have some impressive ideas, opinions and come up with amazing stories. It is a new trend that publishing houses actually PUBLISH the best blogs in printed newspapers.
There is debate that the psychical form of the newspaper will cease within 50 years. The Economist had a useful article about this, titled: WHO KILLED THE NEWSPAPER? Everything is going online and this is becoming a threat for the newspapers. In the future, newspapers are set to be so-called E-papers, digital papers which will be able to connect to our computer and update content.
Many things are happening in the media sector, for sure. With the internet-boom newspapers are experiencing biggest trouble in the history. Will everything go online? Will people only read articles online? Will radio and TV be purely online?
What will happen to citizen journalists? Professional journalists could profit from them! Just like it is starting to happen. Journalists are realizing that citizen journalists can inspire them with ideas and it's up to the professional journalists to make a quality piece out of the idea and quote the blog.
This can be the future - to cooperate.
Citizens partipate, make ud their mind and they create new media, but is that a good or a bad thing for 'regular' journalist? Is this the beginning to the end for professional journalism when more and more newspapers and television invite the citizens to make their own stories and to participate in creating media ? Luckily not, we think!! Citizens journalism is great in many ways because it includes the readers, viewers etc. But profesional journalist will still be needed to make the overview of the enormous amount of information. Journalist will still be needed to be critical about the citizen journalism and to make sure that the citizens aren't doing spin in the papers. Therefore journalists should not be afraid of blogs and other kinds of citizen journalism - in stead we should use the citizens participation to come up with new and great journalistic ideas.
- Kristina Havasova and Jane Thyrring