Crossing boundaries of new media and journalism: Opportunity or Crisis?

“How many times you read newspaper per week?” Well, it is kind of old-fashioned question to learn about newspaper readership. 

It is supposed to be asked “How many times you read online newspaper every day?” For today’s phenomena, many readers are more likely to scroll down an online newspaper rather than flip through the printed newspaper. I am also one of them who like to subscribe to online newspaper daily.

The new form of online newspaper is known as ‘networked journalism’ are increasingly visible in Malaysia’ society. We are being informed that this new form of journalism is emerging in line with the spread of new media platforms of all kinds such as bloggers and ‘user-generated content’ of citizen journalist. The gradually reduce of traditional reader has bring in the decline in circulation for all mainstream media. Perhaps, it is no longer to see the old folk reading the newspaper while drinking the kopi-O in the kopitiam after another 10 years? Then the journalist is struggling to adhere to both their professionalism and creative idea of how to increase readership to compete with the citizen journalist.

In 1997, Utusan Malaysia had launched its online version of ‘Utusan Malaysia On-Line’. It is Malaysia first online newspaper to enable reader to read exactly replicas of its printed newspaper. Until today, Sin Chew Jit Poh, China Press, The Star, New Straits Times and other mainstream media have also joined the online newspaper to stand firmly after the emergence of new media.  

The Star online portal (Image Source: http://www.thestar.com.my)

Working practices have slightly transformed because of highly demand to keep update for instant news. Journalists may still have feature stories to write but multi-media platform to feed: Twitter, Facebook, web, blogs. If you ask me whether the flourishing of bloggers as the citizen journalist will weaken the influence of mainstream media? My answer is blogging won’t wipe out journalism because journalism requires skills and concrete resources that bloggers are lack of. But it can improve the practice of traditional media to take the new forms of reporting.

The journalist takes the challenges to collaborate with the social media for the source of breaking news. The engagement of mainstream media with the content from social media networks such as Flickr, Twitter and YouTube has been included in online newspaper. However, the relying of journalist on the social media untrue sources is lead to the reader heavily criticized on misleading information and questioned about their professionalism. The reader believes the mainstream media to report the solely solid gold facts. So, take it in wise way, journalist should use the social networks intelligently to see what others know but avoid the untruthful information.

In short, to all the online users not only the journalist, own checking and verification are still need to happen in the use of social media too.