The Future of Journalism: The Cafe Model Is Back

The News of the World, the biggest Sunday-selling newspaper in the UK, has been shut down for 168 years because of the hacking scandal, prompting people to ask, what happened to the traditional media?

The pressure and challenges brought to the mass media by new communication methods such as the Internet and social networks are becoming increasingly prominent through these appearances. What will the news industry look like in the future? Interestingly, industrialization and new technology have made the mass media more powerful. From newspapers to radio to television, mass media has been playing an increasingly important role in people's lives since the 19th century. However, water can also overturn a boat, and it is likely to turn around in a circle in the future. new technology may put an end to the era of one-way communication in mass media, and the media industry will return to the era of two-way communication in cafes in the 19th century.

Return to the coffee shop model

Three hundred years ago, the way of spreading news was not as developed as it is now, and people mainly relied on word-of-mouth to get information. You can see all kinds of pamphlets, news letters and posters in hotels and cafes. "because of the large and spacious number of people, cafes are especially suitable for the free exchange of information, and it is also easier to see all kinds of printed materials." One observer said. However, with the birth of the New York Sun, the first mass communication newspaper in 1833, this traditional way of information dissemination declined. The New York Sun uses the strategy of advertising to support distribution, so that the spread of news becomes wider, and advertisers can face more target customers. At that time, the best-selling newspaper in the continental United States had a circulation of only 4500 copies a day, but the New York Sun soon surpassed that size and reached 15,000 copies a day. Later, radio and television further changed the news from the traditional "two-way communication" mode to the one-sided "one-way communication" mode. This has also led to the centralization of the news industry, with several companies controlling the entire space for media dissemination.

Now, to some extent, the news industry is beginning to return to the traditional cafe model. Internet technology makes news more diverse, interactive and social. The discussion type of news communication before the emergence of the mass media is beginning to revive. This change will have a great impact on the social ecology.

In many countries, the mass media is still thriving. Between 2005 and 2009, global newspaper circulation rose by 6 per cent. The main growth has come from emerging markets such as India, where about 110 million newspapers are sold out every day. In developed countries, however, the situation is just the opposite. Readers' dependence on newspapers is declining rapidly, and newspaper circulation is declining year after year.

In the past ten years in western society, people are gradually abandoning newspapers and TV news and turning to other new ways of obtaining news. The most striking thing is that ordinary people are becoming more and more involved in the production, sharing, filtering, discussion and dissemination of news. T w itter allows people to broadcast what they see anytime, anywhere. Confidential documents have been made public by thousands of online users. International news, which can be broadcast live on mobile phones, has been broadcast simultaneously on social networks and television media. An amateur photographer took a picture of the Japanese earthquake, which was clicked and played 15 million times on Y ouT ube. These "popular sources" projects allow readers and journalists to uncover the truth of the incident. Social networks help people find, discuss and share what they know with friends.

It is not just readers who are changing the media. Internet information companies such as G oogle, Facebook and Tw itter are becoming important sources of news. World celebrities and dignitaries of various countries, including US President Barack Obama, have directly used social networking sites to update information; many countries are currently releasing some original statistics to the public through government programs. The Internet also allows people to see newspapers and television channels around the world: the Guardian, for example, used to be a British newspaper, but now wherever it is in the world, people can easily see what it reports at home through the Internet. The Internet has also provided new sources of news, from some personal blogs to professional news website H uffingtonPost, which have developed rapidly in a very short time. The Internet also provides a new perspective for news reporting, as WikiLeaks has tried, allowing anonymous sources to publish completely confidential archives on it. The news agenda is no longer entirely controlled by a small number of news tycoons or state institutions such as BBC.

New concerns and solutions

In principle, people should applaud this. A more participatory and social news environment, coupled with more diverse sources, is a good thing, but it also brings some concerns.

The first worry is that news is becoming increasingly unsupervised. The decline in print media revenue is leading to a decline in the number and quality of in-depth news surveys. In fact, the News of the World was revealed to have hacked into users' mobile phones, which is only a very traditional scandal. Fortunately, the Internet is giving birth to a new type of accountability. More and more non-profit organizations, such as P roP ublica,SunlightFoundation and WikiLeaks, are beginning to fill the gap left by the decline in regulatory media. This kind of news supervision is not yet mature, but its activity and existing experience have made people more optimistic.

The second concern is news bias. In the era of mass media, local news tycoons usually have to maintain relative objectivity in order to attract more readers and advertising. But in a more competitive world, prejudice seems to attract more attention, so Fox News, the conservative US cable news channel, earns more than the less sharp-minded CN N and M SN BC combined. As a result, the news is becoming more and more interesting: some conservative Americans insist that Obama was born outside the United States, while others refuse to accept tax increases.

What are we going to do? The transformation of journalism is already the trend of the times, and the actions to prevent it are doomed to failure. But individuals can take steps to allay these concerns. As producers of new news, they can abide by the facts and maintain the transparency of their sources of information. As a consumer, you can be more extensive in terms of taste, but do not lower your own standards. This change has indeed caused concern, but the noisy, diverse, noisy, controversial and sharp news environment of the Internet era has much to celebrate. The cafe is back. Cheers.

Copy right Southern Metropolis Daily

China Coffee Trading Network: www.gafei.com