Jodie’s blog

Image taken from moblogs.com.au

Haven’t we come a long way since the days of notebooks and pens to tell stories?

Today stories can be told across a range of different mediums: print, radio, tv, moblogs, podcasts, vlogs and blogs.

Anyone can report on a story as it happens and all you need is your mobile phone.

Phones today take amazing quality photos as well as being able to record video. This video can be of very high standard ready to be released to the public.

By loading this multi-media message from your phone to a website, you are creating a moblog (mobile blog).

You can update a blog even when you are on the go and not sitting at a computer.

Websites such as Youtube and Moblogs.com.au have become popular with the need for people to upload their video stories for the world to see.

Some of these stories are quite interesting and beneficial.

Podcasting is a brilliant idea. A podcast is a verbal blog.

You can set your computer to automatically download new podcasts as they are uploaded to certain websites.

You can then listen to the new podcasts in your own time, instead of tuning in at times set by the medium.

Another new form of reporting is the vlog or video blog.

All you need is a digital video camera or mobile phone.

Then point and shoot your story. Common video-editing software is used to pull the story together and then it is ready to be viewed.

It’s amazing how far we have travelled along the technology highway.

As technology keeps on evolving, so will the ways which journalists will be able to communicate with the world.

I look forward to seeing what the future brings us and what that will allow us to bring to the world.

Image of Oh Yeon-oh, founder of Ohmynews.com. (Image taken from ohmynews ‘About us’ http://english.ohmynews.com/english/eng_section.asp?article_class=8)

When the media is government controlled and you cannot get the real news out or even read about it, what do you do?

According to Oh Yeon-oh, from ohmynews.com, give the people the means to create and read about the news that is happening.

The need was there for independent and reliable news in Korea, so Oh Yeon-oh founded ohmynews.com in February 2002.

Today it even has an international link http://english.ohmynews.com/

Since the launch of the site, its daily visits attract more than 700,000 hits.

At some stages, this has reached 20 million visits in one day, depending on the stories being covered.

Ohmynews encourages the use of citizen journalism and was one of the first websites to promote it.

Citizen journalism is an added benefit for the webpage, readers and writers alike.

The webpage gets access to a variety of stories and reviews to use on the webpage.

The readers get to read about stories that may have been censored by other media formats.

Writers get the exposure that they normally would not if they were simply blogging their stories on a webpage.

They also have the opportunity to be paid for their stories by the webpage and from reader’s tips.

It’s a win-win situation. Citizen journalism works and is here to stay.

Are the best things in life free? Can you really get something for nothing these days?

Or as Mark Knopfler told us we can get our money for nothing and chicks for free?

I do not know about chicks, but I like the concept of accessing free information on the internet.

Should we be able to jump on the internet at any time and keep with the breaking news without paying a cent?

Today we take this for granted. Why pay when you can access news sites like news.com.au or the ABC news page.

We take it as a basic human right to be able to keep with what is happening locally and around the world.

TV news has set program times, whereas the internet is 24 hours a day access.

With this expectance of free access, how is it possible to pay for these stories and keep the website going?

Of course, there can be advertising on these pages.

It can be in the form of ads on your webpage to create revenue.

On the other side of the coin, you can even pay Google to advertise your web address on other webpages using Adwords, to drive traffic to your page. Adwords can even push you higher up the search engine results.

More traffic to your website makes it a more appealing choice to advertise on.

But where does this money come from to pay for products like Adwords?

Should subscriptions to websites be instigated? Would this discriminate against people who could not afford to pay but want the information?

We watch free to air television and listen to the radio without paying, so why should we have to pay to view the stories on the internet? Even though we pay to read newspapers?

Websites such as Facebook offer free access to their webpage. Once you sign up and start using the website you are targeted by advertisements.

How else would this webpage make any money and keep on running?

Image taken from Facebook, from my homepage. Image shows advertising on this page.

It is a juggling act. How much do we sell to cover costs? How much do we spend to create the revenue to cover the costs?

Webpages such as paidContent (sic) claim that we heading towards a digital only media future.

They have designed business models to help us survive and thrive.

As technology changes, I hope that journalism can survive and thrive as a free medium that everyone can access.

The amount of information that we can access on any one subject is endless on the internet.

You can Google any subject, read blogs, listen to Podcasts and watch vlogs of the latest news without turning on a radio, TV or picking up a paper.

Media has evolved so much since the 1920s when newspapers were king.

Media has boomed with the changing technology.

Anyone can report and photograph news worthy situations.

It is a case of being in the right place at the right time with the right equipment. Simply point your mobile phone and click record.

It makes perfect sense. Every day people are the ones caught up in these situations.

They are the survivors who are caught in the perfect position to report on the story.

They are simply making the best of a sometimes very bad situation.

We all want the most up to date information when a major story breaks.

TV crews and journalists can take some reaching these areas and can only report from the outside.

Media organisations are creating divisions called ‘user generated content desks’ to monitor and filter the over whelming supply of information that people email, or text in.

This development depicts what is happening worldwide. We are all reporters. Technology is taking us in this direction.

This video looks at Citizen Journalism. (Video taken from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU5LonkXbCE)

As technology continually changes, it updates the ways we perform tasks every day.

Convergence journalism is a result of the technological changes in the way we access the media.

It makes sense to move towards convergence in the newsroom. Not only does it save on resources, it allows the reporter to learn new skills.

It allows the reader the convenience of accessing what they want when they want.

It allows the audience to receive information in a variety of forms and they get to choose how to access it.

Convergence journalism is simply moving with and trying to keep up the times .

It also allows the reporter to gather a variety of mediums on their story, gaining a better insight into the story and allowing them the opportunity to view it from different angles.

Today you do not even need to be sitting at home or a computer to access the latest news.

You can view with internet access on your mobile phone and even have the latest stories sent to you via a text message.

It all boils down to convenience. We all seem so busy these days.

Who has the time to sit down and actually read a paper from cover to cover? Newspapers, more than ever, are considered yesterday’s news.

Newspapers will always have a place, but the internet allows you to access information as it happens. It is up to date and available 24 hours a day. I love it.

TV news stories can only show so much on each story on their bulletins.  

I often jump onto Yahoo7, news.com.au and ninemsn to read more in depth versions of the story. At the same video and photos are often available to help paint the picture as well.

Links are often set up to allow you to read on and learn more about the subject.

Convergence is the future of Journalism. It will be benefiting to the reader, who will drive this transformation.

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