Small media, new voices
Small media, new voices
For centuries journalism has, when performing at its best, been the craft through which skilled writer-reporters working for organizations financially powerful enough to afford expensive print, recording and broadcasting infrastructures have tapped into authoritative, trusted sources and followed events closely in order to provide information to the public. But now the rules of the game are changing.
Today, via the Internet, where users as well as creators of web sites can contribute news, members of the public are often performing the jobs traditionally reserved for the media. This is but the latest breakthrough in technology which has helped pluralize control of the media.
As technology improves, it generally gets easier to learn how to wield the tools of the trade. At the same time, costs of setting up a news service have overall dropped. Small TV, radio, print and online news outlets have proliferated (pp. 20-1). More points of view are being aired than ever before.
In this Focus section, we discuss a few examples of the media’s new voices: Israel’s neighbourhood-run community TV stations; Romania’s newspaper deluge; a youth-run radio station that exerts political pressure on behalf of people living in a sprawling, poor suburban area of Senegal; a broadcast service that connects the Sri Lankan diaspora; an offshore Algerian news service that could probably have been conceived in no medium other than the Internet.
We also reflect on the deeper social impact of the media explosion. John Pavlik, head of Columbia University’s New Media Center, explains how the Internet is redefining the role of journalists and empowering the public. But Aidan White, General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, wonders whether the headswirling quantity of news and information may be at the sacrifice of quality.