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Monday 30 March 2015

The News Industry in Crises



The News Industry in Crises


Modern Technology will be putting more and more Journalists out of a Job

Stes de Necker


Worldwide, journalism seems to be facing an ever increasing problem ... the inevitable consequence of technology and social media.

Major institutions like The New York Times, The Sun in England and Bild in Germany, are experiencing financial difficulties, while many others newspapers worldwide, are forced to cut their budgets to the bare minimum.

Currently there are an estimated 3 billion people around the world using iPhones or smart phones and as technology just keeps getting faster, better and cheaper, news gets reported by billions of these technology users to everywhere in world freely and in seconds!

For decades newspapers were our only source of information and we all became accustomed to the routine of buying our favorite newspaper every day.

However, with the advent of modern communication systems and comms. networks, we can now receive the news on some or other ‘online’ device twenty hours a day for free. It’s no wonder the news industry are in dire straits.

An even more pervasive problem is that publishers themselves seem to have lost their way. In many cases journalists have become more interested in pleasing their employers and colleagues, rather than their readers.

Good news is no longer news and the more controversial the news, the better.

The product became the end user.

Today there is no restriction to being a ‘reporter’. Anyone can do it and everyone is doing it.

This is the content that fills the social media like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and many others.   All supplied by millions of people around the world, reporting for free all the time. 
 
Since the beginning of the previous century, technology replaced factory workers with robots. Bank tellers were replaced by ATM machines. IPod’s, YouTube and a host of other facilities are fast replacing video stores and music shops. The list just goes on and on.

So where does this leave the professional journalist and the news media?

By feeding live video through modern day advanced communication networks to anyone online, these new applications may, in the not so distant future, eliminate the need to tune in to television broadcasters for the latest news, but to receive it 24/7 on a simple hand held device.


While the social media has empowered much ‘citizen journalism’ for years, the use of live video reporting could become a powerful tool for reporters and change the way the news media will operate in future.  

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