Core values of journalism are still needed in the digital era
Newsweek chooses all digital vesion for surving in the new age of Internet.
Newsweek, one of the most famous internationally magazine, announced to cease publishing a print edition from his age of 80 on Oct 18. The final print edition of the weekly current magazine will appear newsstands in America for the last time.
Most people and experts read this as the ending time of the print media or traditional media, as we are facing the increasing power of the Internet media. Print media have to adapt to the changing situation, even to give up the original form of publishing.
José Luis Dader, professor of journalism from Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Spain, talked about opinions on this in the interview. He said print media experience a steep decline worldwide indeed. This decline is faster in countries like the United States. Some experts predicted it would disappear completely by 2042 at first. Lately many experts have predicted that the disappearance may happen before 2020. In other countries such as Spain and especially Latin America are thought that the decline is much slower because of the more traditional way of life, and the total disappearance will arrive ten years later than the countries which are more technologically advanced.
He didn’t believe that the disappearance of the news paper is the main issue faced by journalism, but the possibility that journalism could disappear, which can be expressed through print, online, or audiovisual in theory. However, the problem is that, the online media expansion, may be declining over the number of journalists who are still necessary for good coverage of today. This leads to the reduction of the variety of journalistic genres used in the production replacing the core values of journalism (synthesis, verification and prioritization of news). The truth is we have too many simple accumulation of current briefing notes, but without sufficient verification or hierarchy (which is more important and why), etc.
He indicated that the transformation of the traditional media may still have different alternatives, but they have to make sure their final destination. It is for example the possibility that, as an "old-fashion” newspaper", may be replaced by some online media which do not deserve the title of "journalism". However, some new media of high quality (but elitist and minority), they practice good journalism which citizens need to inform themselves, and they reject to do the boring copy. The spread of these media is done both through online multimedia (computer, tablet, mobile), as even small paper editions, which are sold a high price.
Yang Lu is a reporter from Chinese Social Sciences Today.
Chinese Social Sciences Today, No.372, Oct. 29, 2012