Sunday, March 30, 2008 . 9:08 AM

How does Internet shape the future of Journalism?

Journalism is something close to my heart as I have been an on-and-off student journalist since 2001.

So before I state anything else, I'd like to offer my personal opinion: GOOD journalism is never about the technology. Good journalism is about a search for the truth or an insight that is stunning, even if it means relying on traditional tools of journalism. It is a clarification of what really happened at an event. It offers a perspective which is valid and credible.

For example, Manfred Rist, a journalist who is also a lectuer at uniSIM, went on a trip to Burma during the recent Saffron Revolution (when there were riots and rebellion) as an "undercover" journalist. A simple pen, paper, and camera was all he chose to equip himself with - no posting articles on the Internet while he was there, no blogging, nothing. He also referred to the local newspaper, The New Light of Myanmmar, for news. Other journalists who did rely mostly on the Internet were sorely disappointed because the Burmese government shut down Internet services and these journalists were handicapped without their tools. Many of their articles that were supposed to be posted online were lost too.

That, in my opinion, is the true essence of journalism.

But I may be wrong. An analysis of journalism requires an analysis of the audience it is reaching. And the nature of the audience in the case of online is totally different from that offline.

Citizen journalism is a facet of "participatory culture" on the web.

Participatory culture is a new culture emerging due to new technologies allowing ordinary people to “participate” in mainstream media content. Henry Jenkins, Director of Comparative Media Studies at MIT, describes this cultural shift:

“The term, participatory culture, contrasts with older notions of passive media spectatorship. Rather than talk about media producers and consumers as occupying separate roles, we might now see them as participants who interact with each other according to a new set of rules that none of us fully understands.”

Author Russel highlights that there is a “changing relationship between cultural production and consumption.” In participatory culture, consumers turn producers and vice versa, giving rise to the word “prosumer” to describe the participants in such a culture. Ordinary people create cultural content and upload this onto the Web, and others in turn view and react to this content.

The Decline of Quality of Journalism?

~"Bottom-up journalism"~

Of course the fact that ordinary citizens act as journalists is scary to many people, especially intellectuals and the elite who believe that only professionals are able to report credibly. "Free content, and especially citizen-based journalism and peer-production, is a huge threat to the media industry — not just on an economic level, but on a social one," says Kenneth Neil Cukier, technology correspondent for The Economist in London.

However, as journalist Steven Levy points out, much of these concerns seem to blame the Internet for giving people “the freedom to flourish”. He concedes that while journalists and professionals in the media scene are imperative, participatory culture will not wipe them out.

My opinion

I think the Internet has the potential to groom journalists out of all of us in the future. For those reading news, citizen journalism can help us learn to apply critical thinking in reading news on the Web. For those contributing news, It will hopefully be an opportunity to groom us into responsible citizens who are aware of the issues around them and can report them with accountability. That would really be a true journalist.