Week #10

It’s the Audience, Stupid!

What is the new approach to storytelling and how is it being used to broaden audiences?

Visual and personal storytelling are becoming more popular in the media. It broadens audiences because a larger audience and more people can understand and relate to news.

How is digital media being used to engage audiences?

Digital media offers a good platform to engage the audience. Users are encouraged to contribute their thoughts through email, posts, subscribing, and following them. Their reactions fuel the stories that news sites report on.

Give three specific examples of how you can incorporate storytelling into an article you write? 

• You can put your personality in an article.
• Put things in sequential order; tell a story as it’s happening.
• Give the audience a better insight into what is being reported.

All the Aggregation That’s Fit to Aggregate

What does aggregation mean?

Pull everything together, archive it and present it, similar to media convergence.

Why does the author describe Arianna Huffington as “the queen of aggregation?”  Go to the Huffington Post and provide an example.

Arianna Huffington compiles information and content about a topic and uses it to report on her own site.

Is aggregation a threat to professional journalism – why or why not?

Yes. Reporters are not creating original content. Journalism is about creating original content and getting news out to the public in your own words, but this can’t be done through aggregation.

Photojournalism in the Age of New Media

A professional journalist receives a photo captured by a citizen journalist….

• What are the positives? Through social media, news is available to the public as it unfolds. This allows news organizations to find important stories using tools beyond what they possess.

• Why does the professional journalist need to be careful? Verification is often a problem. Proper attribution can be lost between retweets and shares on Facebook. With all this, journalists may not be 100% sure that they are dealing with the original content's owner.

• Why might the content of the photo be called into question? If the source of a photo cannot be verified, it may not be valuable. Copyright issues may deem a photograph useless.

• How does citizen photojournalist impact the job of the professional photojournalist? News agencies may be satisfied with citizens' photographs, they will no longer need professional photojournalists. That may eventually drive them out of business.