Internet and Journalism

Journalism is the profession of reporting, photographing or editing news stories for the media. Due to the rise of the internet, journalists have been losing their monopoly on news, either locally or internationally. With social networking sites like Twitter, Youtube and Facebook, news can now be reported by mere citizens such as you and I, as long as they own any sort of internet access. This phenomenon is known as citizen journalism, which is getting increasingly prevalent in this time and age.

Why has citizen journalism become so popular?

Firstly, news from citizen journalism are often objective without much bias. As most citizens are not working for any organisation, or receiving any pay for their work, their news are more believable than news from mainstream media, which sometimes have to practice self-censorship in order to be able to make a profit, or to conform to certain rules imposed by the government. Especially in war-torn countries, citizen journalists could report on the real carnage caused by war.

Secondly, news from citizen journalism are posted quickly and almost instantaneously; one often do not need to wait for up to a day for an article to be released by a citizen journalist. The spread of such news are further aided by websites such as Twitter.

Due to such circumstances, it is inevitable that many journalists have lost their jobs. However, is citizen journalism to be feared by mainstream news? In order to cope with such a development, many news site has created a place just for citizens to post their articles. For example, in Singapore, the Straits Times has created a website called "STOMP", where people can sign in and upload photos and write articles about what they have seen happen around the country.

Instead of overthrowing mainstream media, citizen journalism will complement mainstream news, and even aid them by being reliable sources of information. Just like how the internet has not taken over more traditional media such as newspapers and magazines, mainstream news will be here to stay, and might even publish more accurate and ethical journalism as a result.