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/>