Digital journalism - today and tomorrow

Journalism and mass media in today's world are defined by dichotomies - reality versus post-reality, information versus alternative information, news versus fake news and traditional media versus new media.

Conventional media practitioners may find this evolving environment sometimes really perplexing, but the proliferation of media platforms has, no doubt, increased their presence as well as their potential as agents of perceived social change. In traditional journalism, one decides what the readers want to read but in digital journalism, the readers choose what they want to read.

New media include websites, mobile apps, virtual worlds, multimedia, human-computer interfaces and interactive computer installations. The platforms, if not tools, of new media are often contrasted to 'old media' such as television, radio, and print media. However, scholars in communication and media studies at times criticise the rigid distinctions based on oldness and novelty.

As a byproduct of new media, digital journalism has taken the centre stage in recent years. Digital journalism is also known as online journalism. In this contemporary form of journalism news, features and all editorial contents are distributed via the internet instead of being published via print or broadcast. According to Pew Research Centre, the internet has already overtaken newspapers as news source. A Zogby International report said Americans believe internet news as the most reliable. eMarketer back in 2013 showed that digital was set to surpass TV in total time spent with US media.

Bangladesh is also witnessing a change in media audience taste. A number of news sites and portals are already in place - thereby garnering a good amount of web traffic. Almost all the national-level media outlets have their respective online versions; many more news sites are also in the pipeline.   Most of the traffics on these sites are generated through social media sharing and mobile internet thanks largely to the operators' customised 'internet package' guided verifiably by the regulator the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC).

In neighbouring India, 70 per cent of readers read news stuff using their phone. "Herein lies a big problem. We are already under the avalanche of big news….. An avalanche in online journalism has led the society to take advantage as well as to misuse the freedom of speech," says Nandagopal Rajan, Editor (New Media) at The Indian Express. Hence, verifying and validating information that is spread across different media is something he thinks really important.

Now let's have a look at what's happening in other parts of the world. The Financial Times' sister paper in Germany (FT Deutschland) was closed in December 2012 after incurring losses for more than 12 years, amounting to more than €250 million. The Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper filed for bankruptcy only a month earlier in November citing massive losses and falling circulation while Germany's second biggest news agency DAPD filed for insolvency protection and announced plans to cut 100 jobs in October the same year. Meanwhile, Daily Variety, the paper that used to publish and provide news relating to Hollywood's inside track on the entertainment business, abandoned print edition from March 20, 2013 after 80 years and opted instead to live on through 'a beefed-up website' that's free to access alongside its revamped weekly magazine.

In April 2014, Thunderdome, a news project meant to support American local papers, was shut down by owning conglomerate Digital First Media. It relocated its 75 local newspapers and related media properties from New York to Manhattan. Chief Executive John Paton said in a statement, "Media changes very fast these days and nothing changes faster than digital." In November 2015, Russia's only independent English-language newspaper, The Moscow Times, stopped publishing daily issues in favour of a new weekly format.

In March 2016, prestigious British publications The Independent and Independent on Sunday closed their print versions and switched to digital publications. Owner Evgeny Lebedev described the closure of the 30-year-old Independent as a bold transition to a digital-only future: "The newspaper industry is changing, and that change is being driven by readers…..They're showing us that the future is digital. This decision preserves the Independent brand and allows us to continue to invest in the high quality editorial content that is attracting more and more readers to our online platforms." He added, "The Independent has always been a pioneering newspaper with a track record of innovation….It has a proud heritage as Britain's first truly independent national quality title." The publisher said that newspaper's website, which has 58 million monthly readers, is already profitable.

Australian teen magazine Dolly has axed its print edition in November last year as it is "no longer feasible", its publishers announced. The title, published by Bauer Media, was launched in 1970 and has been a fixture for generations of Australian teenagers. In a statement, Bauer said the magazine is "responding to the changing demands of how readers engage with the brand by switching it to an exclusively digital model".

In August this year, The Buenos Aires Herald, a storied English-language daily newspaper in Latin America highly appreciated for its coverage on Argentina's 1976-1983 military dictatorship, announced closure after more than 140 years of publication and less than a year after switching from daily to weekly print edition.

In September, an American multi-platform media company Nylon decided to shutter its downtown fashion magazine's print edition and become digital-only.

In October, the Baltimore-based City Paper decided to stop publishing print version after a four-decade run.

In November, the South Africa-based Tiso Blackstar Group which owns The Times daily newspaper, confirmed that it's considering closing the newspaper's unprofitable print edition to replace it with a digital-only daily product, 'which draws on successful models that have been implemented internationally.'

While the recent trend toward online is clear, not that everyone is embracing it. A large number of people, both in the developed and developing countries, still opt for and in some cases religiously follow the traditional media.

But as we see in recent times, social media enable dialogues to emerge, seemingly from nowhere, and create impact almost everywhere, through the ongoing evolution of the 'public sphere'. These trends are noticeable almost across the globe, and hence deserve recognition and review.

Emergence of social media, proliferation of new media platforms and growing popularity of digital journalism indicate the decline of traditional media at least to some extent in terms of both circulation and revenue. Besides, iPads and Kindles also force newspapers further away from getting printed while the hyper-local media, thanks to community journalism, have seized the opportunity to step up as newspaper industry continues to decline. Even in Bangladesh, we noticed that vernacular Bangla-language daily newspaper Shokaler Khobor stopped printing from September this year and opted to continue only with their online version for the time being. Another English-language daily is said to be contemplating an idea to go digital-only.

In fact, digital journalism has come a long way evolving successfully from textuality to hypertextuality and then to multimediality and is now inching towards an unshaped, citizen-led, networked, social media and mobile phase. The fast-changing media landscape, powered by fast-paced market dynamics, increasingly and unavoidably call for integration of the readers' taste and time, adoption of technology and tactics and combination of dynamic leadership and strategic vision.

The writer is Online In-Charge, The Financial Express. He can be reached at [email protected]