Influences of the Growth of Technology and New Media on Journalism

Reading Reflection
The studying content focuses on Journalism studies. I read two articles: “Labour, new media and the institutional restructuring of journalism” by James R. Compton and Paul Benedetti, and “The Future of journalism – Developments and debates” by Bob Franklin. These both showed us the influences of the growth of technology and new media on journalism.
Article “Labour, new media and the institutional restructuring of journalism” by James R. Compton and Paul Benedetti aims at clarifying what is a decidedly disorderly moment in journalism when new media developed. The article focuses on the labour of reporting-the routine work of gathering information and packing it into a story. Through this analysis, we can see that the growth of new media such as bloggers and citizen journalists has flourished the information and opinions accessible for citizens. The decline of the traditional news media has made a turning point with the presence of new media, the concurrent evolution of web-based bloggers and citizen journalism sites, and the explosion of social media tools, which is an inevitable issue. The new technologies have made contributions to a seminal transformation in people’s power in taking part in collective discourse. The new media has undermined long-standing organizations such as newspapers and news broadcasters. The publishing monopoly of news media is abolished; untrained and amateur providers of information can create their own content and post their blogs without editing or verification of traditional news media. Therefore, we can see that, the development of new media have positive impacts such as abolishing the monopoly of media and enhancing people’s participation into collective discussion, but at the same time it may lead to radical changes in journalism, specially the employment and labor in the industry.
Being alike the article “Labour, new media and the institutional restructuring of journalism” by James R. Compton and Paul Benedetti, article “The Future of journalism – Developments and Debates” by Bob Franklin continues to talk about the basic changes in journalism mainly caused by the development of technology. The article stated that the factors leading to this reforming of journalism were as follows: the proceeding development of communication technologies; the severely competitive and fragmenting markets for audiences and advertising incomes; remarkable reductions in the entry costs of several online news agencies; the decline of the traditional business model to resource journalism; a grand role of social media in providing sources of news; dynamic shifts in media policy of government; and the new requirement for news and information. Each of these developments continues to have significant effects on jounalists’ jobs, their workplaces, product and perceptions of their professional roles, ethical judgements and daily practice. In addition, they have considerable challenges in the future funding of a sustainable, critical and high quality democratic journalism. Basic changes in journalism are also having impacts on most aspects of the gathering and reception of news. We can see here, the development of new media led by the growth of technology has posed new requirements for journalism.
However, when discussing the future of journalism, the article said that fears about the future of journalism might have been exaggerated. Newspapers could do better by offering a more contextualised picture of their troubles. “Less over-reaction and emotional imagery of death, coupled with a great reliance on media economics data, might lead not only to greater public faith in newspapers as an industry but also increased confidence in the ability of the press to present events with accuracy and sobriety” (Chyi et al., 2012) (cited by Bob Franklin). Additionally, the “crisis in journalism” frame should admit the significant changes in the newspaper industry over the past time. Newspapers have been changed editorially and financially to suit developments of media technologies and meet market requirements. For my point of view, I agreed that if doing like the above-mentioned things, journalism can separate itself from gossip sheets and the future of journalism is bright if it is active and flexible in changing properly to meet new necessary requirements of the technological era and market.
In conclusion, the two articles really make practical sense in the current period of time when technologies have rapidly grown. They are similar to reminders for the industry of journalism that it has many challeges and difficulties ahead. It is difficult to resolve problems but it is not impossible for a dynamic journalism.