This week’s readings focused
primarily on digital media’s implications in terms of democracy and political
engagement, and how it’s changing, and what it means going forward. Several of
the articles also discussed the ever-increasing role of citizen journalism.
I particularly enjoyed the article that
examined Facebook’s role in the 2008 presidential election. The study detailed
the intensity of engagement and breadth of participation in Facebook postings
on the presidential candidates’ Facebook walls that year. I’m doing a similar
study for our final paper in this course, but analyzing the candidates’ use and
management of social media in 2008 and today. Herbert Gans (2010) proposed that
news and blogging websites helped contribute to the large number of young
people who voted in the 2008 presidential election. Social networking sites are
helping young people become politically engaged more than ever before, and the
ways that people are spreading political information is continuing to develop
and change every day.
There was a significant
theme that linked several of the articles. The authors all believe that
declining advertising revenue and failing traditional media organizations has
fueled the growth of citizen journalism sites. Gans said, “The arrival of new
and competing communication technologies, the decline of the news audience and
of advertising revenue, and the resulting closure of several newspapers” is
worrying traditional journalists about the future of news (p.10). He details
what he a vicious cycle through which traditional outlets provide news, but lose
audience and income, while news websites that are social or citizen driven are
gaining larger audiences, but still not pulling in significant advertising
income. Likewise, Lacy et. al. (2010) state that while readers seem to be
making “the slow transition to digital newspapers, advertising lineage is not”
(p.34). These changes have set the stage for others to provide community
coverage in places where newspaper coverage may be lacking.
As Gans says, the Web is
becoming the “main home for the consumption of news” (p.11). I agree with Gans’
assessment. Even though the newspaper business has suffered, Lacy, et. al.
(2010), found that citizen news and citizen blog sites can complement newspaper
websites, but are not a sufficient substitute for the news and information
offered by traditional news sites.
There are reasons why
citizen-based and social-oriented sites can’t meet the needs of the traditional
news consumer. Those who work for newspaper-based sites and news-oriented sites
are journalists who are trained to report on news events. They are experienced
at detailing facts in a story as well as weaving together a mixture of facts
and eyewitness reports. More often than not, citizen-based or social sites rely
on third-person accounts or rumors about events, often repeating gossip instead
of facts.
The biggest challenge for
the newspaper industry and other news-oriented sites is finding ways to
increase advertising revenues. The notion that so many things on the Internet
are now free and should remain free is a key stumbling block. Some sites,
including many popular sports and recruiting sites, require readers to pay a
subscription fee. Some newspapers also are doing this. Readers are offered a
few paragraphs of a story but must pay a fee to get the full content. The LakeCharles American Press and the Ruston Daily Leader are two such papers in
Louisiana.
In order for the newspaper
industry and other traditional outlets to keep up in the digital age, they will
inevitably have to continue to adapt and change what they do to maintain an
audience and increase revenue. Though there are certainly issues, newspapers
aren’t going anywhere. Not just yet anyway.
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