By Kabs Kanu, Publisher, COCORIOKO Newsmagazine
Since the advent of the internet in the mid-90s and the intrusion of social media in the early 2000s, journalism has undergone dramatic changes that have impacted the inky trade so profoundly that old ways of writing, out of necessity, need to go, if newspapers want to survive the raging maelstrom of competition from bloggers and citizen journalists in the social media.
Because on-the – spot bloggers and eyewitness journalists deliver instant news today with backup photos , audios and videos , traditional and even digital newspapers need to change how they deliver their stories or they will not only find themselves left behind but abandoned like a piece of rag by their once teeming readers.
Go beyond the bare facts
Before newspapers go to the press, the news has already been unveiled by bloggers and citizen journalists . All the photos and videos of events have already been plastered on social media , so the publisher of today needs to use more innovative ways to report the same events by first of all going beyond the bare facts. Whereas bloggers and citizen journalists have the instant technogy and capacity to deliver instant news, one ability most of them lack is providing meaning and perspective to the stories. If the traditional publisher is a trained journalist, this is where his abilities will come in to give the news perspective or do what is known as INTERPRETATIVE JOURNALISM.
Interpretive journalism goes beyond simply reporting the who, what, when, where, and why of an event. It seeks to explain the “how” and “why” behind the facts, offering context, analysis, and insights into the significance and implications of events. And this is where you can excel over the bloggers and citizen journalists and make your paper more readable , more absorbing and more interesting.
The well – trained journalist knows that the rise of digital news consumption, breaking news saturation, and the increasing complexity of events have fueled the need for more in-depth and contextualized reporting.
During the old era , journalists were steered away from Interpretative journalism because it was regarded as “editorializing the news “ . Traditionalists taught that journalists should report the dry facts of the news in one column and then provide context and perspective in other columns through op/ed articles, commentaries and editorials. The danger is that in the glut of social media web surfing today readers do not have time on their hands anymore for indepth reading of newspapers because of the superfluous quantity of materials screaming all over the place for attention. Readers are looking for the quickest ways to read and put away one outlet to hasten to multitudinous others. So, the quicker and faster the journalist tells his story, the better.
Journalists today are hardpressed to provide understanding of events of a complex world in the quickest and more creative ways. With a constant influx of information, interpretive journalists must help audiences make sense of complex issues and understand the underlying factors and potential consequences expeditiously before somebody else does it for them in the cut-throat world of today’s journalism rivalry. They have to keep doing so because it is the way to keep readers interested in the paper and make them keep coming back.
Given the abundant volume of news , information and attractions provided by the multitudes of social media platforms , journalists who use their expertise and knowledge to provide explanations, evaluations, commentaries and a deeper understanding of national and internations events to readers are always in demand. Bloggers and citizen journalists will never blank them out. Readers will always return to their news outlets when they want to understand things in their true perspectives.
STILL BEING WRITTEN
