Reflective Analysis

Reflective Analysis

 

By Ashley Toner

(www.ashleytoner.wordpress.com)

 

Less than five years ago Huang (2004) defined ‘converged journalism’ for a case study he was conducting in the states. Although converged journalism has progressed dramatically since then with the development of blogging facilities, video-streaming sites, recording technologies etc. his definition remains accurate:

 

Converged journalism refers to the practice of reporting news for multiple media platforms such as television, newspaper, the Internet and radio. A reporter could practice converged journalism either voluntarily or as encouraged or required by his or her company that either owns multiple media platforms or cooperates with a company that owns another media platform.

 

(Huang 2004)

 

The past three years of my university education have presented me with many opportunities to engage with the converging media environment. My first real industry experience came when I was studying abroad at the University of Missouri-Columbia in 06/07 – I walked into the newsroom on the first day, was handed a camera and told to be back in an hour with a decent story. This was the first time I had ever worked as a TV journalist – I quickly adapted to the practice of producing accompanying text and audio for my packages and never looked back.

 

I was able to apply what I had learned in Missouri back home at Napier during our ‘live rolling news days’ for the fourth year Multimedia Newsroom module. At first the module drew striking similarities to a previous Online Journalism module I had taken the semester before, in which students were taught how to build an online weblog of their stories. At the time, this was very interesting for me as up until that point I had only ever produced text geared towards a print publication at Napier. As Thurman and Lupton (2008) write, “in a period of declining newspaper readership and TV news viewing, editors are keen to embrace new technologies, which are seen as being part of the future of news.” Creating my own blog was an exciting exercise which allowed me to feel part of the evolving practice of journalism and allowed me to realise my passion for other mediums. Multimedia Newsroom provided further ways for me to embrace the new opportunities convergence journalism was offering. As Thurman and Lupton (2008) write, news organisations are now focusing on multi-medium online content, and Rachel Dungar’s class at Napier was no different.

 

Across the developed world, news companies are transforming their online operations, with text and still images increasingly augmented by a more kinetic mix of media. Video, interactive graphics and audio are supplementing the more traditional outputs, generated by journalists who are being encouraged to work in new ways for publications chasing audiences choosing to spend more time online, in increasingly multimedia environments.

 

(Thurman and Lupton 2008 p.440)

 

However, all the new content I was producing for my own blog (www.ashleytoner.wordpress.com) caused me to question the quality of journalism which was available on the net now that citizen journalism had completely taken off. Huang (2004) expresses the opinion of many media professionals that traditional journalism is suffering at the hands of untrained ‘citizens’.

 

Over the last decade or so, the burgeoning practices of converged journalism have caused heated debate among media owners, news professionals and scholars on the impact of converged journalism on the quality of news reporting… Opponents of converged journalism worry that, with less profound professional knowledge in a non-primary platform and with limited time for filing a story for multiple media platforms, a reporter might not be able to produce quality journalism.

(Huang 2004)

 

On the other hand, Hermida and Thurman (2008) assert that the involvement of ordinary citizens in the news gathering and disseminating process is beneficial to society.  

 

Our findings show that news organisations are facilitating user participation, by filtering and aggregating UGC in ways they believe to be useful and valuable to their audience.

(Hermida and Thurman 2008 p. 354)

 

In considering both sides of the argument, I feel compelled to agree with O’Sullivan and Heinonen (2008) in their conclusion that journalists do not feel threatened by the internet or the content generated for it and feel grateful for the audiences and possibilities in provides (O’Sullivan and Heinonen 2008 p. 367). My study of radio this semester has helped me to find that audio broadcast over the internet allows me to engage with audiences in ways no other medium offers. Using the internet has allowed me to be creative with my voice (Mills 2004 p. 257), and has also enabled me to create attractive news pages with accompanying text and sometimes video. The internet has definitely been my most useful journalistic tool in my career thus far.

 

Journalism has – potentially at least – a great advantage over many other humanities and social science subjects in that it can provide unrivalled opportunities for the learning of skills with an immediate close relationship to the theory. It is the very combination of the reflexive practical and the applied theoretical which makes journalism such a terrific subject – and an academic discipline with great potential.

(Burgh 2003 p. 105)

 

I feel fortunate to be studying journalism at this defining time in its history. The classes, work placements and life experiences I have accumulated throughout my time as a student makes me feel confident in my ability to put them all to good use in future employment. I feel extremely passionate about the work I have produced so far – much of which I deliberately researched to raise awareness of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues in the community. As Barnhurst wrote in 2003, increased coverage for the LGBT community is a “mixed blessing” – sometime creating “polarized journalism” but most of the time creating positive journalism (Barnhurst 2003 p. 5). I am confident I can continue to make a difference in society through the stories I chose to cover, and believe I have the potential to enhance any news organisation that chooses to hire me.

 

(ends)

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