How the news media has changed

I’VE been watching the changes that have been taking place in the news media industry since 2000 when I left traditional media to venture into new media.

To say that the industry has been through an upheaval would not be an exaggeration.

A lot has happened between then and now. It’s definitely better for the consumer. Whether it’s better for the industry is harder to say, but it’s definitely a challenge for the industry.

New sources of competition

The obvious source of new competition would be the online-only news sites. But an unexpected source of competition comes from the audience. Yes, I’m talking about the bloggers.

The socio-political bloggers have made a serious impact, regularly providing a different perspective, sometimes providing some really interesting insight and occasionally even breaking news.

Some traditional media companies have tried to incorporate blogging into their offerings by getting external bloggers to blog for them, but that hasn’t worked out so well. Independent bloggers do best when they blog for themselves.

Perhaps a better approach is to get their reporters and editors to blog instead.

Multimedia

From a purely technical standpoint, blogging has always been an easy thing.

All you do is type and press “publish” and voila, you’ve got a blog! No wonder blogs have mushroomed in recent years, so much so that it’s unusual these days to find a young person who doesn’t have a blog.

Audio podcasting and videocasting are less common because recording, editing and hosting such content are much more difficult to do. But even that is changing.

These days, you can even make audio and video recordings on your mobile phone.

Editing can be done on free, open-source software, and sites like Odeo and YouTube offer free hosting for audio and video, respectively.

Local media companies have some multimedia offerings but a lot more could be done to integrate multimedia into their news offerings.

Some of the material can be generated by in-house staff but contributions should also be solicited from readers. Anyone with a smart-phone could very well become a contributor.

User-generated content

Time was when user-generated content meant letters to the editor. What Web 2.0 has brought about is the concept of the audience becoming part of the content creation process.

I gave a good example of the above in an earlier article on how news organisations can harness the collective multimedia skills of its readers by inviting (and possibly rewarding) them to contribute news-related multimedia content for editing and publishing.

Another, perhaps, more radical, approach would be to encourage a discussion among readers about the content found in the news organisation’s website as well as those of other news sites and blogs. In other words, provide a platform for discussion of hot topics of the day.

New distribution methods

Traditional print media is distributed physically. New media is distributed online but the old way was to passively wait for readers to come to the site and click on content that catch their eye.

Social media like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr are not just a place where many young people network and share content. They are also a distribution opportunity and a great way to reach target audiences.

Another useful tool is RSS, which is vastly underestimated as a distribution channel.

It facilitates very specific consumption of news, as readers would be able to subscribe to just one section of a news site or even to a specific columnist – very handy in the age of information overload.

More accountability

Since bloggers like to comment on news items they find on news websites it’s not surprising that they also act like self-appointed watchdogs.

At the most fundamental level they can highlight factual mistakes. On another level, they can point out cases of plagiarism (which does occasionally happen).

And of course, bloggers are more than happy to point out bias (although bloggers themselves have their own bias, newspapers are not supposed to, at least not for news reports).

Self-appointed watchdogs may be an irritant but viewed positively, they keep journalists and editors on their toes.

More importantly, they keep us in the news industry more accountable, and that can’t be a bad thing.

The outlook

No doubt, traditional news media companies are being challenged all around. And they are regularly criticised – I’ve done my fair share of criticising old media, of which I was a part of for a long time and will soon be rejoining – but there is still something to be said for good old fashioned journalism.

Just as MAS and Telekom provide services to unprofitable parts of the country, newspapers invest in original, in-depth reporting that are timely and costly to do and may not necessarily be appealing to advertisers.

This is much harder for purely online outfits (which usually have fewer resources) or individual bloggers to do, which is why the online players tend to focus on providing instant news and views.

For the news industry professional, finding a good blend between the immediacy and interactivity that online readers crave and the long-form and in-depth journalism that old media has to offer – and making it all commercially viable – is a challenge and an opportunity.

This is something too good to miss and in the new year, I will be taking up a new job that allows me to tackle this.

Sadly, it also means the end of this column, which began shortly after the historic March 8 election – an election that made everyone realise the power of new media.

Every news organisation has woken up to the importance of new media and all are still scrambling to find the right formula. Competition will be fierce, no question about that. And the readers, they will all be better off for it. No doubt about that.

Oon Yeoh is going back to journalism full time. Wish him good luck at www.oonyeoh.com.