Mark Glaser views the future local newsroom with one overriding goal, to “serve the public by collaborating with them and delivering the news they want on the platform of their choice.”

The beginning stages of this concept are already appearing in newsrooms in the US and UK. The Sydney Morning Herald is also adapting its newsroom to deliver news in a variety of forms to suit audience needs.

Some consumers may want news on their mobile phone, others like to print it out and read. Generation Y likes to receive their news via video and podcasts. And there is an increasing amount of audience generated content.

The future newsroom will incorporate each of these forms of delivering news. It is also more than likely that even more forms of news delivery will be created as technology continues to develop.

My main concern for the future newsroom is the redundancy of the trained journalist. Journalists will become a less required species as web developers and search engine experts are required to manage the various online formats of news.

Where will this leave a trained journalist? It is great for a journalist to become a multimedia journalist, but it seems inevitable that user-generated content and technology will supersede journalists.

Related links: 

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/07/open_source_reportinghow_would.html 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n88upMU4Hc

Soundslides would become more common place in the newsromm of the future: http://blogs.roanoke.com/vtshooting/soundslides/soundslide1/gallery.html

A guide for journalists to survive and thrive: http://www.kcnn.org/resources/journalism_20/

David Dunkley Gyimah’s viewmagazine.tv site is an informing site for journalists and students wanting to learn more about the developments of video journalism.

As soon as the webpage loads there is video footage of Dunkley Gyimah in a dusty lane in a third world country explaining how he is going to set up his video camera to get footage for a story.

You can’t click on one headline without it linking to a video content attachment to the article. The article is a summary of the video footage. The only disadvantage is the loading time of video content. I have a broadband Internet connection and it took two or three minutes to load some large video content.

The fantastic thing about this site is that more and more people are wanting to be involved so there is never a shortage of high profile people to interview in order to place new content on the site. Dunkley Gyimah is also involved in training other UK networks in using video content on their websites.

Throughout the site the video footage of interviews and conferences that Dunkley Gyimah has conducted provides an enthusiasm for video journalism that is contagious. As a journalism student the content and his enthusiasm is inspiring.

Related links:

http://www.viewmagazine.tv.

Stomp (Straits Times online mobile and print) was launched by Singapore Press Holdings in June 2006. Within six months it was attracting 300, 000 visitors which is remarkable considering that Singapore has a population of about 4.4 million.

Stomp is a unique site where the features of user-generated content, citizen journalism, blogging and myspace are rolled into one to connect people in an online community. Its success and popularity can probably be attributed to the fact that young users can do all of the above on the one site.

By November 2006 Stomp was receiving 100 photographs a day from users. Almost all of these are published online, and the better ones are also used in Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) newspapers. Citizens contribute 80 to 85 percent of Stomp’s content.

Three or four newsworthy photographs are received each day. The photographs and emails are allowing SPH to publish stories that otherwise wouldn’t be heard about. This is having a huge impact on the gatekeepers of the community who are being forced to take action on issues that are brought into the public sphere by user-generated content published by SPH.

Related links:

www.stomp.com.sg

www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/08/digging_deeperyour_guide_to_so_1.html

Online journalism has developed dramatically over the past ten years. It is now possible for audiences to generate news via blogs, wikis, podcasts and video logs. Not to mention contributing to newspaper content by sending in photos and recounts of events that the mainstream media is yet to cover.

Blogging and audience generated content was first seen in 1995 when Craig Newmark created Craigslist, a community advertising and forum site. Since then there has been the introduction of blogging, the launch of OhmyNews in South Korea in 2000 and Wikipedia in January 2001.

All these forms of generating news have introduced the notion of audience-generated content taking hold of the mainstream media. In a world where technology is constantly improving it is important for newspapers and broadcast news services to keep up with the change in coverage trends.

Journalism is going through arguably its biggest changes since the emergence of broadcast journalism as the dominant media. The emergence of online journalism as the dominant form of journalism is casting aspersions as to where the future of journalism is headed. With our future audiences being of generation Y news companies need to stay in tune with the increased need for online journalism.

Related links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjSNXFRiegg

Blogs take many forms including personal diaries, debating areas and educational, like this one. Currently an estimated 27 million blogs exist around the world.

Citizens continue to create blogs and contribute to newspapers in order to compare their opinions on news with readers rather than solely relying on journalists’ views.

The increasing amount of content contributed to newspapers by citizens has raised the issue of whether the content is journalism. The National Union of Journalists has been criticized for labeling citizen journalists as “witness contributors” whose content cannot be classed as journalism.

But what is the difference between user-generated content and citizen journalism? Since the influx of user-generated content from the London bombings the BBC has introduced the User Generated Content (UGC) hub, which sifts through the large amount of content that the BBC’s global audience contributes. The most important step is verifying the authenticity and legality of the content before publishing.

Citizen journalism has introduced a new phenomenon where the public is breaking news stories to the press, rather than the press breaking the news to the public. This will increase as technology makes the world smaller. It imposes great threat to the livelihood of journalism if journalists don’t become innovative in their use of user-generated content.

Related links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58iZpMRclwI

http://publishing2.com/2007/05/22/every-newspaper-journalist-should-start-a-blog/

Citizen journalism in the US: http://www.kcnn.org/research/hartsville_today/

Why journalists should blog: http://www.buzzmachine.com/2006/06/03/blog-or-perish/

OhmyNews is the first citizen journalism site to make a significant dent in the Korean mainstream media’s ability to set the national agenda. Since 2003 it has been ranked as high as sixth most influential media agency. This is a significant feat as it is competing with 240 daily newspapers and television channels in Korea.

In 2006 Korea had 33.9 million Internet users in a population of 50.6 million, with 95 per cent of users aged 6 to 29, closely followed by users in their thirties.

Eighty-five per cent of households in South Korea had broadband Internet, meaning the country had the highest number of connections per capita in the world at June 2007.

In a country that has such a large portion of their population connected to broadband Internet it is no surprise that OhmyNews has become so successful. A phenomenon like this would not occur in Australia our population consists of many low and middle-income earners who can’t afford subscription to broadband Internet.

OhmyNews currently has 60, 000 citizen journalists, a large increase from 727 when Oh Yeon-ho started the site in 2002. This number will continue to grow as more people become aware of the site and its capacity to involve citizen journalists from around the world.

Related links:

Take a tour of the OhmyNews offices: http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_code=426624&no=375760&rel_no=1

http://corp.helium.com/marketpublisher/freelance

Citizen journalism online, also known as netizen journalism, is becoming increasingly popular. Ohmynews was introduced by Oh Yeon-ho in February 2000 “to encourage ‘every citizen to be a reporter’ and to make available in Korea a spectrum of news and views not contained in the conservative mainstream media” (The Amateur Computerist).

In the space of two years the number of registered citizen reporters for Ohmynews has increased from representing 50 to 91 countries, which shows just how quickly citizen journalism is taking off globally.

In South Korea citizen journalists were able to counter the dominance of the conservative press in the country, and assisted in electing an unknown politician to presidency. It is hard to imagine this type of thing happening in countries such as the United States and Australia that have very strict laws on journalism.

Samuel Freedman (New York Times columnist) has fears for the journalism profession, as he believes citizen journalism is “part of a larger attempt to degrade, even to disenfranchise journalism as practiced by trained professionals” (The Amateur Computerist). But in fact, many journalism students are acting as citizen journalists and gaining valuable experience.

Citizen journalism will continue to be the voice of the outspoken and provide the stories that go unprinted in newspapers of countries where government owns the media and influences what the media reports.

Related links: 

www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/09/digging_deepercan_citizen_jour.html

The world saw the first user-generated content in December 2005 in the wake of the tsunami in Asia. The BBC’s online arm, News Interactive received 25 000 emails in the first week after the disaster.

Since then we have also viewed user-generated content from the London bombings and the mass shooting at Virginia Technical College. Citizens rather than journalists produced much of the July 7 London bombings pictures and footage used by major London newspapers.

This is becoming more common with the constant evolution of technology and the accessibility of broadband Internet. Thirty percent of households in Australia subscribe to broadband Internet.

Australians are working longer hours and as a result have less time to sit and read a newspaper or watch a television news bulletin. More audiences are relying on short grabs of information provided by the Internet through newspaper websites, blogs, wikis and podcasts.

User-generated content is a threat to journalists. Audiences rather than journalists are contributing to major stories. If this trend continues the journalism profession will be in jeopardy as news organisations will not be willing to employ staff if they can rely on users to submit content for free.

Related links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcAwrLw92rw

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/6742087.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/6908187.stm

Each week for the next ten weeks you’ll be able to read about how journalism is becoming more multimedia, as well as any insight that I give on the topics.

Enjoy, and feel free to leave comments.
Jacquie