Characteristics of Online Journalism

There are three characteristics of journalism that most teaching in the field upholds. First, journalism is committed to reporting the truth about what occurs in the world. Journalists go out into society, make observations about what is done and what is said, and report them as accurately as they can. They have to provide evidence to verify and corroborate their claims and they have to attribute their sources. Journalism, in other words, upholds a realist view of the world and an empirical methodology. Second, the principal ethical obligations of journalists are to their readers, their listeners and their viewers.

Journalists report not to please their employers or advertisers, nor to serve the state or support some other cause, but in order to inform their audiences. The measure of journalists' success is their relationship with their audience. Third, journalists should be committed to good writing. This means their meaning should be clear and their grammar precise. In our society it is journalists and sub-editors who are the front line standard bearers for good English expression. In practice, these three characteristics are usually taken so much for granted that they form an implicit background rather than the overtly stated principles of journalism education."

Due to the rapid change of technology this generation, we can easily say that behind the shift of traditional journalism towards online journalism really affect everyone. The technological change of news transmissions is advance these days and we can still see the adjustments that everyone is doing.

Through these advancements, traditional and online journalism still have common features. The events happened today are published in newspapers and even posted in the website as the same. The enjoyment that the readers are feeling when they are reading through print or online media is still the same. Both give the readers an information on what happened, even if the news is lengthy or not. Aside from that, the environmental impact to everyone is still the same. The use of online media still pollutes the environment due to the use of energy and also the same in print media due to the use of papers in order to published it.

A lot has change in this world and even the news transmissions are now upgrading. In these upgrades, the distinguishing characteristics of online journalism is too obvious not to be observed. One of these characteristics is the used of the multimedia platform. It is a content where you can combine different features or forms like audio, text, graphics, video, interactive content and even animation. Another one is the time shifting that typically happens on radio shows or television programming. It is where you record the content and then later you let the people view or hear it locally or internationally. In addition, real – time processing/reporting is also one of the distinguishing characteristics of online journalism. Real – time allows the people to monitor and know activities or events as it publish or happens. It is reporting something that is happening now or something that is being broadcast over a minutes or seconds an event is taking.

It also happens when journalists show a live reporting to people. It is very important for a journalist to build their credibility as a reporter when they are presenting their news stories to everyone. Having audiences or readers is a sign that journalists or reporters have a good relationship between them because they are trusting the information that the journalists is telling them. They usually stay away to the information that could not be verified at all and get information to the public as fast as they could and report it to their audiences to provide enjoyment, entertainment or relaxation. As this continues, journalists are now slowly influencing their audiences. The data that they are giving to their audiences gives or offer social influences.

I'll conclude by the fact that online journalists can let their audiences have their own decision making especially on problems on ethics. They can easily react to such factors like the content of the news base on their analysis. In comparison to mass media journalist, it is hard for some audiences to react to such ethical problems. Some of the mass media journalists are in different way of presenting their stories especially on their structure, that’s why each carrying different side or view of the issue or story they are presenting.

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