. . Online Journalism (Online content author, Digital journalism):
Definition/Meaning & Principles
(Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Minor edits by Eric Gondwe) Contents
* A Introduction
* B Major Areas of Journalism
* 1 Work outside traditional press
* 2 Legal issues
o 2.1 extra-jurisdictional enforcement of plaintiff-friendly laws
o 2.2 Right to reply or refactor, net-wide approaches to defamation
o 2.3 Oppressive regimes
* 3 News collections
* 4 See also
* 5 References
* 6 External links Introduction
Online journalism is defined as the reporting of facts produced and distributed via the Internet.
As of 2009, audiences for online journalism continue to grow. In 2008, for the first time, more Americans reported getting their national and international news from the internet, rather than newspapers[1], and audiences to news sites continued to grow due to the launch of new news sites, continued investment in news online by conventional news organizations, and the continued growth in internet audiences overall, with new people discovering the internet's advantages for convenience, speed and depth.[2]
However, the professional online news industry is increasingly gloomy about its financial future. Prior to 2008, the industry had hoped that publishing news online would prove lucrative enough to fund the costs of conventional newsgathering.[3] In 2008, however, online advertising began to slow down, and little progress was made towards development of new business models.[4] The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism describes its 2008 report on the State of the News Media, its sixth, as its bleakest ever.[5]
Despite the uncertainty, online journalists are cautiously optimistic, reporting expanding newsrooms. They believe advertising is likely to be the best revenue model supporting the production of online news.[6]
An early leader in online journalism was The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. Steve Yelvington wrote on the Poynter Institute website about Nando, owned by The N&O, by saying "Nando evolved into the first serious, professional news site on the World Wide Web -- long before CNN, MSNBC, and other followers." It originated in the early 1990s as "NandO Land".
Many news organizations based in other media also distribute news online, but the amount they use of the new medium varies. Some news organizations use the Web exclusively or as a secondary outlet for their content. The Online News Association, founded in 1999, is the largest organization representing online journalists, with more than 1,700 members whose principal livelihood involves gathering or producing news for digital presentation. [7]
The Internet challenges traditional news organizations in several ways. Newspapers may lose classified advertising to websites, which are often targeted by interest instead of geography. These organizations are concerned about real and perceived loss of viewers and circulation to the Internet. B. Major Areas of Journalism
Professional Journalism Issues:
News • Writing style • Ethics • Objectivity • Values • Attribution • Defamation • Editorial independence • Education • Other topics
Journalism Fields:
Arts • Business • Entertainment • Environment • Fashion • Medicine • Politics • Science • Sports • Tech • Trade • Traffic • Weather
Journalism Genres:
Advocacy • Churnalism • Citizen • Civic • Collaborative • Community • Conspiracy • Database • Gonzo • Investigative • Literary • Muckraker • Narrative • New • Opinion • Special Interest • Peace • Visual • Watchdog
Journalism Social impact:
Fourth Estate • Fifth Estate • Freedom of the press • Infotainment • Media bias • Public relations • Yellow journalism
Journalism News media (channels):
Newspapers • Magazines • News agencies • Broadcast • Online • Photojournalism • Alternative media
Journalism Professional Roles:
Journalist • Marketer • Reporter • Editor • Columnist • Commentator • Photographer • Presenter • Meteorologist • Production Manager • Intern: 1. Work outside traditional press
The Internet has also given rise to more participation by people who are not normally journalists, such as with Indy Media (Max Perez).
A research study conducted by Pew Research Center for The People & The Press offer a classification of newspaper readers and the movement of online readers. Around 46% of Americans are classified as Traditionalist. This means these people rely on traditional media sources like TV, newspaper and radio. Those in the Integrator category rely on traditional media as well as increasing internet news. This is around 23% of Americans. This is category is mostly of the baby boomer generation. The category that is now seeing an increase is the Net-Newsers. This is around 13% of Americans who rely mainly on the internet for their news. This category is mainly a younger generation like college graduates and who able to access the internet access easily whether it be a lap top, Blackberry or iPhone. This is where the future of readers and newspapers are headed.[8]
Bloggers write on web logs or blogs. Traditional journalists often do not consider bloggers to automatically be journalists. This has more to do with standards and professional practices than the medium. But, as of 2005[update], blogging has generally gained at least more attention and has led to some effects on mainstream journalism, such as exposing problems related to a television piece about President George W. Bush's National Guard Service.
Other significant tools of on-line journalism are Internet forums, discussion boards and chats, especially those representing the Internet version of official media. The widespread use of the Internet all over the world created a unique opportunity to create a meeting place for both sides in many conflicts, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Russian-Chechen War. Often this gives a unique chance to find new, alternative solutions to the conflict, but often the Internet is turned into the battlefield by contradicting parties creating endless "online battles."
The claim that on-line sources are less biased and more informative than the official media is often backed[weasel words] with the belief that on-line journalists are merely volunteers and freelancers who are not paid for their activity, and therefore are free from corporate ethics. But recently many Internet forums began to moderate their boards because of threat of vandalism.
Some online journalists have an ambition to replace the mainstream media in the long run. Some independent forums and discussion boards have already achieved a level of popularity comparable to mainstream news agencies such as television stations and newspapers.[citation needed]
Internet radio and Podcasts are other growing independent media based on the Internet. 2 Legal issues
o 2.1 extra-jurisdictional enforcement of plaintiff-friendly laws
o 2.2 Right to reply or refactor, net-wide approaches to defamation
o 2.3 Oppressive regimes
One emerging problem with online journalism in the United States is that, in many states, individuals who publish only on the Web do not enjoy the same First Amendment rights as reporters who work for traditional print or broadcast media. As a result, unlike a newspaper, they are much more liable for such things as libel. In California, however, protection of anonymous sources was ruled to be the same for both kinds of journalism.
o 2.1 extra-jurisdictional enforcement of plaintiff-friendly laws
In Canada there are more ambiguities, as Canadian libel law permits suits to succeed even if no false statements of fact are involved, and even if matters of public controversy are being discussed. In British Columbia, as part of "a spate of lawsuits" against online news sites, according to legal columnist Michael Geist, several cases have put key issues in online journalism up for rulings. Geist mentioned that Green Party of Canada financier Wayne Crookes filed a suit in which he alleged damages for an online news service that republished resignation letters from that party and let users summarize claims they contained. He had demanded access to all the anonymous sources confirming the insider information, which Geist believed would be extremely prejudicial to online journalism. The lawsuit, "Crookes versus openpolitics", attracted attention from the BBC and major newspapers, perhaps because of its humorous name. Crookes had also objected to satire published on the site, including use of the name gang of Crookes for his allies. Subsequently, Crookes sued Geist, expanding the circle of liability. Crookes also sued Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo, PBwiki, domain registrars and Green bloggers who he felt were associated with his political opponents. Crookes' attempt to enforce BC's plaintiff-friendly libel laws on California, Ontario and other jurisdictions led to an immediate backlash in bad publicity but the legal issues remain somewhat unresolved as of November 2009. Crookes lost four times on the grounds that he had not shown anyone in BC had actually read the materials on the minor websites, but this left the major question unresolved: How to deal with commentary deemed fair in one jurisdiction but actionable in another, and how to ensure that universal rights to free speech and reputation are balanced in a way that does not lead to radically different outcomes for two people who might for instance participate in a conversation on the Internet.
o 2.2 Right to reply or refactor, net-wide approaches to defamation
Some experts including Kumud Ranjan believe that libel law is wholly incompatible with online journalism and that right of reply will eventually have to replace it. Otherwise commentary on events in places that give libel plaintiffs too many rights or powers will move to other jurisdictions and most of the comment will be made anonymous. Everyone would then lose rights and remedies, due to a few wealthy people with resources to launch libel suits on weak grounds. Jennifer Jannuska and other legal commentators have, while agreeing with strong protections for publishers who only host journalists, sometimes emphasize that the use of anonymizer technology makes even criminal abuses, not just libel, possible, and so should be avoided even if other rights are lost. They favor an approach in which defamed persons receive direct assistance to respond via the Internet rather than being faced with the onerous burdens of the court system. [9]. For example, rights to reply or refactor pages might be offered in mediation as an alternative to litigation. An advantage of this approach is that it would work anywhere in any jurisdiction.
Other commentators have suggested that online defamation can only be dealt with by the imposition of a uniform regime similar to the UDRP process supervised by WIPO that subordinated the complex contradictory interactions of various trademark laws with domain names. A similar agency or process would be empowered to intervene perhaps to force a moderation process on those comments which could not be shown to be opinion or based in fact, causing them to be removed or marked as suspicious - similar to the semantic tags applied in large public wikis to indicate when a page needs additional work, verification or seems biased.
o 2.3 Oppressive regimes
Oppressive regimes that do not respect international human rights law present special challenges for online journalism:
* Persons reporting from those regimes or with relatives under those regimes may be intimidated, harassed, tortured or killed and the risk of their exposure generally rises if they become involved in a private dispute and are subjected to civil discovery, or if a plaintiff or police officer or government official pressures an international service provider to disclose their identity. * If print and broadcast journalists are excluded, unverifiable reports from persons on the spot (as during the Iran election crisis of 2009) may be the only way to relay news at all - each individual incident may be unverifiable though statistically a much more representative sample of events might be gathered this way if enough citizens are participating in gathering the news. * Court processes that do not explicitly respect the rights of fair comment on public issues, political expression in general, religious freedoms, the right to dissent government decisions or oppose power figures, could be imposed on persons who merely comment on a blog or wiki. If judgments can be enforced at a distance, this may require expensive legal responses or chill on comment while cases move through a remote court, with the proceedings possibly even being heard in a foreign language under rules the commentator never heard of before. If people from relatively free countries engage in conversations with those from oppressive countries, for instance on homosexuality, they may actually contribute to exposing and loss of human rights by their correspondents.
3 News collections
The Internet also offers options such as personalized news feeds and aggregators, which compile news from different websites into one site. One of the most popular news aggregators is Google News. Others include Topix.net, and TheFreeLibrary.com.
But, some people see too much personalization as detrimental. For example, some fear that people will have narrower exposure to news, seeking out only those commentators who already agree with them.
As of March 2005, Wikinews rewrites articles from other news organizations. Original reporting remains a challenge on the Internet as the burdens of verification and legal risks (especially from plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions like BC) remain high in the absence of any net-wide approach to defamation. 4 See also
* Nando
* ConsumerSearch
* ScribbleSheet
* Online Producer (Online Content Producer, Content Editor)
* Online newspaper
* NewsNow 5 References
1. ^ "Tossed By A Gale" The Economist. May 14 2009 http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13642689
2. ^ "The State of the Online News Media” Pew Project For Excellence in Journalism. http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2009/narrative_online_intro.php?media=5
3. ^ "Newspapers And Thinking the Unthinkable” Clay Shirky. March 13, 2009. http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/
4. ^ "The State of the Online News Media 2009” Pew Project For Excellence in Journalism. http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2009/narrative_online_intro.php?media=5
5. ^ "The State of the News Media” Pew Project For Excellence in Journalism. http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2009/narrative_overview_intro.php?media=1
6. ^ "Online Journalists Optimistic About Revenue and Technology, Concerned About Changing Values” Pew Project For Excellence in Journalism. http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2009/narrative_survey_intro.php?media=3
7. ^ Online News Association website <http://journalists.org/?page=onamission
8. ^ Gordon, Rich. "Get Smart About Your Readers." Readership Institute. 16 Sept. 2008. 06 Apr. 2009 <http://www.readership.org/blog2/2008/09/how-traditional-and-online-news.html
9. ^ Jannuska, Jennifer, "To Shoot the Messenger? A Canadian Approach to Libel and the On-Line Service Provider", July 1997 http://www.catalaw.com/logic/docs/jj-libel.html 6. External links
* Overview of Internet Reporting and Multimedia Storytelling from News, PPT File, Geek.com
* Online News Association
* Online Journalism Review
* Teaching Online Journalism
* Wikinews
Source/Author: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., Wikipedia, “Online Journalism,” (accessed January 24, 2010). Minor edits by Eric Gondwe.
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