The survival of investigative journalism.

Journalismfund.eu (2013) define investigative journalism as a ‘critical and thorough journalism’. Investigative journalist often adding new values to a news which already exist by creating new facts or through re-interpretation or correlation of facts. Investigative journalism often need to deal with various difficulties and face lots of challenges. According to Harcup (2015), journalist need to spend much time running in-depth investigation in order to obtain latest information and it maybe risky as many investigative journalist has ruined their life for their career.

Russel (2008) theorized that every country are actually against investigative journalism as it often lead to the revelation of private and confidential secret that may destroy a country where involve some of the territory, politic or governance issues.  The survival of investigative journalism become harder nowadays as the protection of data and information is more secure now. The Guardian (2013) theorized that time spent and limited budget are another common problems that every investigative journalist would probably has to overcome. Investigation need to be carry out at least few months to get some achievement and expenses are quite high sometime where most of the news agencies unable to afford the price.

The video ‘The Impact of Investigative Journaism‘ which produced by Global Investigative Journalism Network showcases the impact of investigative journalism around the world. It focuses on the critical contribution made by in-depth, systematic reporting to fighting corruption, promoting accountability, and fostering transparency. Despite its dramatic results, the field receives relatively little support and is routinely under attack.

References

Harcup, T 2015, Journalism: Principles and Practice, Sage Publication, New York, viewed 31 October 2015, <https://books.google.com.my/books?id=191tBgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover>

Journalismfund.eu.com, Journalismfund Europe, Belgium, viewed 31 October 2015,<http://www.journalismfund.eu/what-investigative-journalism>

Russel, C 2008, ‘The Survival of Investigative Journalism’, Columbia Journalism Review, March 24, viewed 31 October 2015, <http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/the_survival_of_investigative.php>

The Guardian 2013, ‘Can investigative journalism survive? – the London Press Club debate’, 27 September, viewed 31 October 2015, <http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/sep/27/investigative-journalism-alanrusbridger>

Issues in reporting for a global audience

The invention of Internet not only enable people around worldwide connect to each other meanwhile it also changed the way the traditional newsroom work. According to Heinrich (2008), Internet has affect the way journalists receive, gather and distribute news. Journalist can reach a wider audience and news can now be broadcast to everywhere. In 21st century, journalist no longer write and report news which happened within their own country while they also need to broadcast news all around the world.

Herbert (2013) theorized that journalist need to be aware of certain issues when they are writing for global audience. The most important things is the presentation of the news. Cottle (2009) suggested that journalist need to use simple language when writing news in order to let every audience who speak different language to understand. Besides, it is necessary for journalist to avoid using jargon, slang and ambiguous word so that the audience would not feel any trouble when reading news.

Furthermore, journalist need to ensure the story is interesting and valuable enough to attract the global audience as different people have different news sense. BBC is doing a great job when handling their global audience. For example, BBC has send a group of journalist to different country to search for interesting story ideas. The journalist will gather news from the local communities and relocated to a new country every other month. This will definitely grab some attention from the audience as people always curios about what is happening around the world.

References

BBC News 2015, BBC News UK, Darlington, United Kingdom, viewed 15 October 2015, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/corporate2/insidethebbc/whoweare/publicpurposes/world.html>

Cottle, S 2009, ‘Journalism and globalization’, in K Wahl-Jorgensen & T Hanitzsch (eds), The Handbook of Journalism Studies, Routledge, Abingdon Oxford, United Kingdom, pp.341-356, viewed 14 October 2015, <http://rasaneh.farhang.gov.ir/ershad_content/Media/image/2011/12/175360_orig.pdf#page=362>

Herbert, J 2013, ‘Practising global journalism: exploring reporting issues worldwide,’ Taylor & Francis, New York, United States, viewed 14 October 2015, <https://books.google.com.my/books?id=2fFsAAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false>

Heinrich, A 2008, Network journalism: Moving towards a global journalism culture, speech, RIPE Conference, Mainz, Germany, viewed 14 October 2015, <http://ripeat.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Heinrich.pdf>

News, BBC 2015, BBC Pop Up is back and going global , online video viewed 14 October 2015, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9ZoFQOX_TE>

Making stories relevant to an online audience

According to The American Press Institute (2015), people often care most about the things that might affect them. Relevance can consider as an important element when reporting a new story as it ensure the readers have the interest on reading it. The implementation of internet allow the users to have more choices when selecting news stories. Research conducted by The American Press Institute (2015) shows that online user often choose to read the news stories based on their personal preferences. In order to attract the online user, journalist need to make the story relevance to an online audiences.

Interactive story telling can be a good way to make the story relevance to an online audience. According to Paylik (2001), interactive story telling allow the users to interact with the journalist who presented a particular news story. Interaction among the online users and the journalist including provide a platform for the user to give feedback and communicate with the journalist. Paylik (2001) obtained results which every website nowadays tend to emphasize on the interaction between the journalist and their readers. As what Paylik (2001) said, ‘good stories don’t just assume the relevancy, they prove it.’

The journalist should keep in mind that why a news story is interesting to an audience and it should always convince them to take the time to read about it probably because it is potentially important to the person personally or to his or her community.

References

Pavlik, JV 2001, Journalism and new media, Columbia University Press, New York, viewed 2 September 2015, <https://books.google.com.my/books?id=_qtm6EWRZO0C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false>

The American Press Institute 2015, The American Press Institute, New York, United States, viewed 2 September 2015, <http://www.americanpressinstitute.org/journalism-essentials/makes-good-story/good-stories-prove-relevance-audience/>

What constitutes credible source?

Golan (2010) theorized that evaluating the credibility and reliability of a source is the most important things where every journalist should do in order to produce a good news story and to ensure the quality and newsworthiness of certain story. To check the credibility and reliability of a source, a journalist need to make sure a source who being interviewed is not hiding any agenda, be bending the truth and most importantly, the source should not be biased in anyway when he or she try to provide information regarding to a particular issues.

Most of the people depends on social media to get the latest news nowadays. However, according to Abdulla, Garrison, Salwen, Driscoll and Casey (2005), there are researches showed that the reliability and credibility of social media is hard to identify sometimes especially when everyone can become a citizen journalist today. People can simply capture a photo or video and post it on their social media like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram to share the news with their friends or general public.

The video clip produced by the Lip News shows the hosts Lisette Padilla and the co-hosts Gabriel Mizrahi discuss over the problems of people tend to getting news from their friends instead of accredited new source. In conclusion, journalist need to verify the sources and make sure they are accountable and independence. Credible sources usually have first-hand knowledge, uses verified languages, willing to be named, and they are qualified or have a background to what they are discussing.

References:

Abdulla, RA, Garrison, B, Salwen, M, Driscoll, P & Casey, D 2002, ‘The credibility of newspapers, television news, and online news’, paper to be presented at Mass Communication Society Division, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, annual convention, Miami Beach, 9 August, viewed 9 September 2015,<http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bruce_Garrison/publication/237343900_THE_CREDIBILITY_OF_NEWSPAPERS_TELEVISION_NEWS_AND_ONLINE_NEWS/links/0046353c3ca10efe56000000.pdf>

Abdulla, RA, Garrison, B, Salwen, M, Driscoll, P & Casey, D (eds) 2005, ‘Online news and the public’, Routledge, London, pp.148-163, viewed 9 September 2015,<https://books.google.com.my/books?id=XnORAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false>

Golan, GJ 2010, ‘New perspectives on media credibility research’, American behavioral scientist, vol.54, no.1, pp.3-7, viewed 9 September 2015,<http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Guy_Golan/publication/254074306_New_Perspectives_on_Media_Credibility_Research/links/5449bb890cf2ea654134183b.pdf>

TheLipTv 2014, ‘Social Media and News: Is it reliable?’ online video, viewed 9 September 2015, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmxrRcClq7E&gt;

Key factors affecting the preparation and delivery of online news.

Online journalism is taking over the news industry ever since the Internet has been invented. Though online journalism is replacing the traditional media nowadays but there are still some factors affecting the preparation and the delivery of online news. According to Allan (2006), time could be an important key factor affecting the preparation and delivery of online news.

Immediacy has become the main reason for online news adoption. People want to get updated very quickly of what is happening around the world. In order to do so, online news websites provide minute to minute coverage when there is a breaking news. Besides, Craig (2010) stated pressure and competition among different online news website can be another key factors. Online news website need to compete with each other by producing the faster, updatable news story to their audiences.

CNN ensure their audiences keep updated of the latest event.

Readers are able to know the latest news through BBC website.

BBC which often provide latest information and has wider audiences allow them to beat other competitors. BBC is able to follow the time frame and the news is often accurate.  For example, BBC did a good job in covering and reporting the latest incident which was happened in China yesterday. BBC was able to send their crew to the scene and record a footage after the explosion. Journalist has interviewed the victims of the China explosion immediately after the incident was happened. With those footage, audiences are able to know more details about the incident and have a brief idea of what is actually happening in there through the video.

References

Allan, S 2006, Online News: Journalism and the Internet, McGraw-Hill Education, New York, viewed 13 August 2015, https://books.google.com.my/books?id=sC6xoPqrrlwC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Craig, DA 2010, Excellence in online journalism: Exploring current practices in an evolving environment, Sage Publications Inc, California, viewed 13 August 2015,
https://books.google.com.my/books?id=BwOZ_xfmQtUC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

News, BBC 2015, China explosion ‘blew me away’, online video, viewed 13 August 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oewF4Q3xu9M

News, BBC 2015, China explosion: Drone footage shows Tianjin blast site, online video, viewed 13 August 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTRqVtXFuqQ

What defines news in the online environment?

You may not have noticed, but online news has become the first option among most of the readers nowadays. Printed media which also consider as traditional media no longer fulfill the demands of the readers as they usually need to wait longer time to get the latest update of a breaking news (Boczkowski & Mitchelstein, 2012). In order to solve this problem, newspaper have their own online edition now to keep the readers engaged.

Malaysiakini is one of the leading online newspaper in Malaysia. According to the monthly rankings of web activity published by The Malaysian Digital Association (MDA) in January 2015, Malaysiakini is the most visited news website among other similar websites.

Readers are able to get the live update for the trending news from Malaysiakini.

Readers preferred Malaysiakini as it update news in a fastest way. It uses multiple multimedia tools like video to present the news story. It also provides a platform like columns and letters which allow the readers to comment or publish their opinion towards certain news story.

KiniNews: ‘Patriot’ NGO challenges critics to live debate

Last but not the least, it is undeniable that the invention of the internet has plays a big role in changing media industry nowadays. News report has become more attractive and interesting as the journalist is able to present the story and convey the message to the public in a totally different way with the help of various kind of multimedia tools when traditional media has too many restriction on this (Chan & Leung, 2005).

References:

Boczkowski, PJ & Mitchelstein, E 2012, ‘How users take advantage of different forms of interactivity on online news sites: Clicking, E‐Mailing, and commenting’, Human Communication Research, vol.38, no.1, pp.1-22, viewed 30 July 2015, http://mysite.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty/marianog/publish/boczkowski.pdf

Chan, JKC & Leung, L 2005, ‘Lifestyles, reliance on traditional news media and online news adoption’, New Media & Society, vol.7, no.3, pp.357-382, viewed 30 July 2015, http://pg.com.cuhk.edu.hk/pgp_nm/projects/Academic%20Research%202003%20Louis%20-%20Chan%20Joey.pdf

comScore, Inc, 2015, MDA and comScore Release Rankings of Top Web Entities in Malaysia for January 2015, digital image, comScore, Inc, viewed 30 July 2015, http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Market-Rankings/MDA-and-comScore-Release-Rankings-of-Top-Web-Entities-in-Malaysia-for-January-2015

Kininews: ‘Patriot’ NGO challenges critics to live debate 2015, online video, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, viewed 30 July 2015, http://www.kinitv.com/video/21274O8?utm_source=mkini&utm_medium=widget&utm_campaign=ms

Thiel, S 1998, ‘The Online Newspaper: A Postmodern Medium. Journal of Electronic Publishing’, vol.4, no.1, viewed 30 July 2015, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/idx/j/jep/3336451.0004.110/–online-newspaper-a-postmodern-medium?rgn=main;view=fulltext>