Dr.

Aisha Essam

Online Journalism:
The Medium & The Profession
Lecture Overview

Online Journalism: The Medium

 How the internet & SM changed news?
 How the industry adapted?
 Definition & Types
 Characteristics

Online Journalism: The Profession

 Skills, Equipment & Activities
 How to create good ideas?
 Forms & formats
Internet & news

 Many to many communication

 Immediacy:
 Online First
 Social first
 Mobile first
 On the record real-time written responses to
news from anyone on earth
 Multiple perspective challenging that’s of
leaders and journalist
Social Media Harnessed Internet
Capabilities
 ORIGINATE NEWS
 A broad array of people create news
 News is generated thru conversation:
 immediate response to breaking news
generate other news, and so on
 In a process made transparent
 AMPLIFY NEWS
 Make sharing, receiving easy & fun
 Facilitate speed, reach & effects of the story
How was the news industry affected?

- 1982 first trial digital edition, via Intranet to subscribers

- 1989 the www: the visual internet
- 1990s explosion of online news

- 2000s
 Downsize or close of publications
 Journalists losing jobs
 Losing money while needing it to master online existence:
content system, digital production equipment, skillful
journalists
 More Opportunity: powerful tools for good multimedia
reporting
How was the news industry affected?

 2010s Crisis of credibility

 Audience doesn’t passively accept editorial decisions
 They can build their own sources & do their own
research from the largest information archive in
history
 People value more their social networks than elite
media
 Journalists are questioned: What do you know, & how
did you know it

2016 Fake news crisis with Trump election & Brexit

2019 Fake news intensified with Covid-19
How was the news industry affected?
2020s - Current Situation:
 Fierce Competition: Users vote with their fingers to access the news
they want
 Internet platforms became third parties between news
organizations & their audience, taking most of ad revenues
 News industry responding with solutions and innovation to tell
stories, restore trust & generate revenue
 Core of journalism did not change: accurate & timely reporting
 Journalists work becoming more difficult: more skills, more
working hours
Online Journalism

Definition
the production of media content for publication
through the Internet

Major Types
 News sites: of news organizations, less
comment
 Index & category site: Google News
 Sharing & discussion sites: social media
Main Characteristics of Online
Journalism

1. Multimedia/Crossmedia/transmediality
 press, radio & television are adopted, changed &
adapted to online.
 Images, sound, video, animation in the same
package.

2. Multiplatform
 Same content adapted for different online
platforms
 Journalists work online for several platforms
Main Characteristics of Online
Journalism

3. Interactivity:
 Best perceived as continuum
1. Starts with hypertext: users interact with
text on server
2. Users interact with other users &
journalists
3. To Participation: users take role in
production
Online Journalism:
The Profession
Online journalist=Content Producer

 Today’s media professionals are content producers

 Content Production: the use of digital technology to
generate multimedia artefacts
 Three categories of tasks:
 Journalistic such as researching, editing, writing &
publishing, implemented online
 Communication with users, employers, other
journalists, clients
 Editorial & Management
Skills To Produce content..

 Editorial Judgement
 Research
 Verification
 Writing
 Producing multimedia
 knowledge of journalistic forms of presentation
 Knowledge of the particularities of diff. platforms
Minimum Equipment
 Smartphone with a good camera
 Apps to control camera settings
 Apps for mobile processing &
editing
 External Microphone to plug in
 tripod
 Powerbank batteries, chargers;
connecting cables, power cables
 External light
 Mobile Internet access
Journalistic/Content activities

1. Create good ideas

2. Research & record from various sources
3. Verfiy information
4. Conceptualize: write & design.
5. Edit: Editing and cutting content.
6. Present: cross-media & media-specifically
7. Archive and document content (content management).
8. Market Content
9. Engage with users
1. Creating Good Ideas

Good according to??

 Each organization agenda
news is whatever the editor thinks it is
 Each organization audience
 YOUR OWN VALUES
 Expectations from the media
 Newsworthy
 Online-appropriate
Expectations from the media
Gurevitch and Blumler’s (1990: 270)

1. Observation & critical recording of the social &

political context
2. Agenda-setting: identifying the most
important issues for society
3. Watchdog: holding the powerful to account
4. Facilitating Exchange of information &
opinions
5. Empowering Citizens to become directly
involved in their societies
Newsworthy

 What is Newsworthy content?

 a one that includes news values

 How to develop newsworthy ideas?

 News peg
 News hook
 Story Angel
News Values

1. Timeliness: just happened Or something new about an old story

2. Impact
 How many people are affected? How serious are the effects?
 Does it affect our audience specifically?
3. Proximity
 Geographical, emotional, occupational, economic, political,
industrial,
 Emphasized thru local angels
4. Prominence (Elite)
 names make news.
5. Conflict: Bad news
6. Novelty: unexpected outcome, unusual, dramatic, of human
interest
Criticism of News Values

 neglect important issues not dramatic enough

 reinforce the status quo
 emphasize the perspective of the powerful elite
(differs according to topic)
 Reproduce stereotypes
 oversimplify
Leads to MISPRESENTATION OF REALITY

How can we overcome this?

 Peace/alternative/constructive journalism
Alternative News Values

Be EMPATHETIC
 Be Open to your biases and highlight it

Focus on CONTEXT
 when selecting & presenting news
 report background, complex, & longer-term developments
 Uncover the “structural problems” within society

Reporting from below or THE BOTTOM UP

 foregrounding the experiences of those at the bottom of the
pile or on the “target end” of decisions taken by the powerful
 Focus on how useful the information is likely to be for
citizens
Alternative News Values

Provide MULTIPERSPECTIVAL news:

 seeking to report a RANGE of voices (not 2 sided)
 Always seek counterarguments
 give more coverage to non-elite people & nations
 emphasise what does not fit into stereotypes

Report more POSITIVE

 privilege news stories based on the arguments and actions of
those citizens actively trying to change things for the better
Remain CRITICAL
 Challenge dominant discourse/news frame by starting from
the standpoint of the dominated or the marginalised (the
absent voice?)
Newsworthy: How to?
Newsworthy: How to?

 Find a news peg to get approval: link it with

another news story
 A news hook To attract attention: the most
critical part of newsworthy information that
will capture the attention of news media &
audience
 How: thru examining the 5Ws & H
 good hooks include change
Newsworthy: How to?

Story Angel
 provides the perspective
 simplifies the writing job
 determines which details are most relevant
 a good angel always include an element of
surprise
 freelancers should develop different angles
for different publications
Workshop

 a news drug for Covid-19,

 Find three different angles
 Highlight which facts would be relative to
each
 
 Opinions about effectiveness
 Commercial interests
 Similar discoveries
Creating Good Ideas:
Online Appropriate

Multi-media
Multi-Platform
Interactive
1. Hypertext
2. Participation
Ideas lend themselves to certain forms

What are the available forms?

1. Multimedia formats
2. Presentation forms
3. Participation forms

 A way of categorizing
 Not mutually exclusive
 Are gathered in packages/collective forms
Multi-media Formats

1. Text
2. Audio
3. Video Social Videos
4. Images single, slideshow, flipbook
5. Animation: comics, caricature
6. Data visuals: like Infographics
7. Virtual Reality & augmented reality
Presentation Forms

1. Informative: news stories or reports

 up-to date online with the shortest possible time delay
 inverted pyramid
 Ex: breaking news
2. Narrative:
 Long-form stories
 beginning, middle, end
3. Commentary (Opinion): editorials & Op-eds, columns,
reviews, caricature
4. Advisory/service Formats:
 advice texts
 surveys, quizzes, self-tests
Participation forms
the graduated integration of user activities
1. Data interactives: engages users to mine data & generate and visualize
new connections from it.
2. Blogs: online diaries of journalists, guests including users.
3. Direct & instant messages, chats, email
4. Photo, podcast & video sharing platforms
 combine the distribution of individually generated content (text, image,
audio, video) with subscription, feedback (commentary)
5. Social media platforms
6. Collaborative writing
 wikis (example: Wikipedia)
 indexing (folksonomy like hashtags on social media. A folksonomy is a
user generated way of organizing content.
 geotagging
Collective Forms

Scrollytelling
 online long form stories
 characterised by audio, video & animation
triggered by simply scrolling the page
 a departure from
 basic stories containing little multimedia
 interactive stories that were complex to
navigate
 Example: Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel
Creek by The New York Times
Collective Forms

Web Documentaries
 Interactive documentaries
 Where users decide the path/sequence
 Example: Pirate Fishing
 gamified interactive doc
 users take the role of an investigative reporter and
explore the multimillion-dollar illegal fishing trade in
Sierra Leone.
 A story that involves evidence-collection, fact
checking and note taking 
 immersive experience