Survival of media platforms for journalism

This article by ABC Radio National discusses the likelihood of survival of modern day journalism as it slowly sees its traditional platform of newspaper publishing being eroded by newer platforms such as the internet. This was not the case some 15 years ago as newspapers were the dominant platform for journalism. Newspapers then had absolute control of the content from what to say to how to say it to the audience. With the emergence of new media platforms, the role of newspapers and the audience have taken a 180 degree turn. The shift from old to new media seems inevitable because it is very much defined by the modern, fast-paced and digitally-oriented contextual lifestyle the audiences lead today (Lessig 2004).

The main contributing factor is the variety in media platforms and content has made the audience much more fragmented than it initially was. This meant that a larger number of audiences have begun to consume more and more types of different media and content but at the same time amount to smaller numbers in each segment. This has made the cost of producing quality content very high. This especially applies to newspapers as newspapers generally have a type of theme in their daily production. Take The Edge Malaysia which is a financial newspaper in Malaysia. Its content covers the goings on in the world of finance and economics even though it is sparsely related to politics as well. This severely limits the type of audience it can potentially cater to.

In spite of this, journalism still thrives on the new media platform called the internet. One of the reasons for this is because the internet could be accessed from any electronic device that could connect to the internet. These range from laptops, personal computers, PDAs, mobile phones and other handheld devices. This has heralded the success of some online news portals that do not have printed editions such as Malaysiakini which has been lauded for its quality news reporting. This shows that journalism could potentially survive on newer media platforms other that the traditional newspaper so long as they fulfil the requirement to be able to continuously manoeuvre communication strategies based on the factors of audience, context and purpose (Bhuiyan 2006). Newspaper companies have to realize that failure to capitalize on these new media platforms could result in a relatively low reach-rate and inefficiency (Livingstone 2004).

Reference List

ABC Radio National. (2009). Survival of media platforms for journalism. Available: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2009/2436717.htm. Last accessed 10 June 2010.

Bhuiyan, S. I. 2006, “Impact of new media technology on society”, The Daily Star, September 5 2006, viewed June 10 2010,

http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=52164

Lessig, L. 2004, Free culture: How big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity, Penguin Press, New York.

Livingstone, S. 2004, “Media literacy and the challenge of new information and communication technologies”, Communication review, Vol. 1, Iss. 7, pp. 3-14.