Feature: Online Journalism as the New Media

Do blogs and other online news websites be the ultimate replacement for the traditional print media? I say that the print medium is here to stay and will

still be used even as time and technology moves forward. Way back during the transition and introductory stage of the electronic mail, people were made to believe that it was the replacement of the snail mail - but then, it is to stay as bills, pertinent documents, and legal forms are required to use the postal mail even until now.

Online journalism is a process that has been in use for the past years by the newspapers industry, journalist e.t.c.to report facts produced and distributed through the internet. It has been noticed that people no longer buy the printed out newspapers except that they want to keep it for reference purposes but the internet users sees it has a readily available and less costly network.

It serves as a challenge for the traditional media practitioners to keep up with the new trend while maintaining its content based on the news gathered by its news team working on the field and have it printed on the dailies. Newspapers nowadays compliment its printed form on their websites but it has been observed that there is no revenue unless there should be advertisers that are willing to pay for ads via the web.

Social networks are also seen by the people of today as the ultimate news source - but validity of data and the weight on how an issue to qualify for print or broadcast still stand tall. Who will be fit or qualified as members of the media? Who will be able to select the news that will be lined up for publishing?

The internet makes news more interesting because of the interactivity and multimedia like videos, audios e.t.c. that are used. The online news organization is increasingly gloomy about its financial future and online journalists are optimistic, reporting expanding newsroom.

The internet has challenged traditional news industries in several ways to say that there is the fear that it might lose its contents to websites.

Technology poses a challenge for the print media to step up and expand the newsroom from a community perspective into a global one while having to maintain a set of reporters, photojournalists and editors trained for news gathering and ethics. The people will still rely on the validity of the news they read depending on the integrity of their news sources. Thus, we still could not say that online journalism will be the new media but instead, an area where traditional media outfits should also look into in terms of expanding its presence and readability while keeping up with the times. *