Talking About the News | Suite101.com

Posted by
Lima Al-Azzeh
Feb 19, 2009

A few weeks back, I received an interesting comment on a blog post I wrote about journalism moving towards a primarily online basis. It hadn’t really occurred to me (as it did to my commenter), that doomsday warnings surrounding the death of print may indeed stir up fears that audiences will no longer be receiving facts, but will be subject to various points of view from untrained citizen journalists and anyone else in possession of a digital camera or cellular phone.

While this fear is certainly valid, I can’t help but think the advent of digital media only suggests that we need to look at how we have been presenting these “facts”. In a tumultuous world, audiences seem less inclined to simply believe what they are told. They’re seeking new ways to communicate about the events that unfold around them.

Nikki Usher follows this lead in her latest post over at the Online Journalism Review stating that although citizen journalism can be threatening for professional journalists, “the reality is that once something is published (usually on Web sites), it belongs to the audience of readers and becomes part of a conversation about the news.”

Indeed it is this “conversation”, as Usher astutely points out, that digital media encourages. Not the death of print, or the eradication of traditional news broadcasting. Digital media see the World Wide Web as just that-- a global web that connects people from all corners of the earth. Using the Web as a means of looking at news, we are able to see not only the facts and the many sides of a single story, but we are able to converse about it in a new way via comments, blogs and social networking.

Abating these fears will undoubtedly take some time and some getting used to. But perhaps we can accept that some changes are good-- especially those that facilitate conversation and interaction between communities. There are many different voices making up the news today. Professional journalists have two choices: sit back and lament the demise of “news as we knew it” or take the lead in this new conversation.

Feb 25, 2009 4:10 AM

Jennifer Wagaman :

I find it amusing that people fear the demise of non-biased news sources with the uprising of "citizen journalists" sharing their various points of view. Indeed, every professional new source has its own bias, and it's own point of view. The recent news surrounding the 2009 election of Obama and how the media treated him and Palin is a great example of how professional news sources shared their point of view with the general public in order to sway opinion, much like citizen journalists attempt to do with their points of view on any other topic.