Wednesday 23 January 2008

A new breed of audience needs a new breed of journalist

Professional journalism is needed just as much, if not more than ever before now we face a new audience - an online one.

Digital development director for ICP Media, Kim Hollamby brought a refreshing and reassuring view into our lecture hall today. He claimed print is not dying, it comes second place to online journalism.

Kim showed us Google's top ten searches on Hitwise, a service which monitors internet traffic. The results included websites we already know the address for, such as Argos and Facebook. This shows how task-driven our new audience is. Many can’t even be bothered to type a web address into a bar!

So with digital media here to stay and with a new type of audience to face, Kim warned us, “success today does not mean success tomorrow.” Look at all these social networking websites, for every Facebook, Myspace and Bebo, there are a thousand other websites trying to achieve the same success.

But are they really such a success? Hitwise shows a decrease in the number of hits Myspace has seen. So who knows the future of such sites? And what does this say about our new audience? They get bored easily.

We must do all we can to provide for our lazy, or should I say task-driven audiences. We need to make journalism short, tight and as entertaining as possible.

Remember user generated content has a low perceived value - our role as professional journalists is still very much in need. We should follow Kim’s reassuring words: “if you want to play this market properly you have to invest in it.”

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