Effects On Internet On News Media Professionalism, Mindset And Buzzword

Summary, Conclusion and Recommendation

5.1 Discussion

Can one talk of a distinctive mindset of online journalists in Nigeria based on the survey findings? Yes. The technical attributes of online journalists are perceived as essential for the occupation. In terms of its organization online journalism in Nigeria is increasingly professionalized and structured separately from its parent medium – if any. The logic behind the kind of journalism as it is practiced online is clearly focused on an interactive relationship with a (widest possible) audience, with less importance attributed to traditional media functions like agenda-setting or advocacy journalism.

The process within which online content – be it original or shovel ware is produced can be considered a separate and even almost completely autonomous one, with little or no exchange and collaboration between the online editors and other sectors of the media. Online journalists are surfing the Net, (re-) writing their stories and handling their email correspondence almost exclusively, which makes their daily work largely ‘medium-driven’ so to speak.

5.2 Conclusion

In Conclusion, the mindset of online journalists, their increasingly wired working environment and the further convergence of media modalities and publishing paradigms may lead to a kind of ejournalism which is not confined to the limitations of the Internet. Indeed it can be argued that the lessons learned on the Web can help us to formulate new definitions of what journalism is or should be and how it may look like. Computer-Assisted Reporting and online journalism are the two most ‘visible’ offshoots of these developments, which disciplines are equally valid across the media spectrum in informing us about the impact of new media technologies on the profession of journalism. It does not only impacts upon the way reporters work, but also the way they think, their professional norms and their presuppositions about notions of format, form, audience and news values. A next step to integrate these first-hand experiences into journalism in general may well be to explore new paradigms in journalism: annotative reporting, open-source journalism and hyperadaptive news.

Further research should look into these possibilities, exploring and formulating new divergent theoretical frameworks within which scholars can address changes and challenges ahead instead of trying to capture ejournalim in the restrictive categories of the past (Dahlgren, 1992; Singer, 1998).

5.3 Recommendation

A final note has to be made regarding the lay-out of newssites, in other words: the graphic context within which the content is embedded. Just as one has can see the different Web publishing paradigms and media modality (print, radio, television) paradigms converging, one should note the convergence of design and content. Examining today’s newssites of established ‘traditional’ media in particular, it is striking to see that most newssites look fairly similar (roughly: logo top-middle, menu-bar left, scrollable newsbriefs middle, banners and so on page-right) and [2] they look not very different from the front pages of print newspapers. A Web designer colleague mentioned recently that to her opinion online newssites are all desperately trying to look ‘serious’, indeed seeming to assume that surfers generally do not trust or ‘read’ news online. Our findings do suggest that journalists working for these Websites have different ideas about their audiences and their role and added value in society.

Other studies suggest people do not seem to have any credibility problems with online news, nor do they mind to read (sometimes); its just that they read and ‘believe’ differently. Starting point for considering any ‘new’ ejournalism should therefore be its challenge to our core assumptions about the mass media, society and its journalisms.