Journalism on the Internet Essay The common forms of media in today’s world each have both advantages anddisadvantages. The Internet has been around for an almost equal amount of timeas most of them, but only recently has it become a popular way of retrievinginformation. The Internet takes the best of all other medium and combines theminto a very unique form. The Internet is the best way to retrieve information.
This combination of paper publishing, TV, radio, telephones, and mail is thefuture of communications. The internet has several types of journalism which canbe defined into three sections. One section is online magazines, onlinebroadcasting, and other online services. The next group is resource files andweb pages. The third is discussion groups/forums and e-mail.
I will investigatethese areas of the net, showing the advantages and disadvantages of each incomparison to the conventional forms. In order to understand what all these topics are you must first understandwhat the internet is. The simple answer is that it is computers all over theglobe connected together by telephone wires. It was first made by the military,”No one owns the Internet”, to have a network with no centre. That way it couldnever be destroyed by nuclear war. Since then, universities have used it and ithas evolved into what it is today.
It is a library that contains mail, stories,news advertising, and just about everything else. “In a sense, freenets are aliteracy movement for computer mediated communication today, as public librarieswere to reading for an earlier generation. ” Now that the term “the net” isunderstood lets look at some sections of the net. An online magazine is a computer that lets users access it through the net.
This computer stores one or more magazines which users can read. “PC magazineand other magazines are available on the Web” “Maclean’s Magazine and CanadianBusiness online; and Reuters’ Canadian Newsclips. ” This form is much better thatconventional publishing, “we are using the online service to enhance the printmagazine”, for several reasons. It is environmentally safe, “Publish withoutPaper”, most are free, “$50 a month on CompuServe”, you can get any article fromany year at the touch of a button, and you can search for key words. “Searchengines make it easy pinpointing just the information you need”. The articlesdon’t have space limits so you will get a specially edited full story version(depending on the reporter) and other articles that didn’t make the print.
It iseasy to compare the story with another journalists view, or get the story from ajournalist from another country. This way, the reader can make informeddecisions on anything, without bias. A few people complain that there is toomuch information to receive, “mass jumble”, but there are filter programs thatwill cut the information to any set amount. CNN online is a broadcast web page(another computer). CNN not only has the articles to read but video, and soundclips too. Anyone can get up to the minute news, and reports.
“We will send areporter to the game, who will interview people like the coach and uplink thestory while the game is being played. ” This is an excellent addition to TV. Itis a mix of TV and publishing. TV has a schedule to keep and might cut out partssimply for time but there is no time limit online. Also, because it isinteractive, users will remember the information longer than if they watched TV. An online service is a web page that sells something.
It is easy to orderanything, from flowers to even airline tickets. “. . . opportunity to buy ticketsthrough TicketMaster.
” But even this has problems, “the Internet is new and manypossible types of fraud must be dealt with,” but the solution is software,”Secure Courier. . . a secure means of transferring financial transactions”. Thisservice is the home shopping, catalogue, and printed flier replacement.
Theiradvantage is that you can buy directly, or skip them if you wish, unlike TV. Web pages on the internet are computers that are dedicated to lettingpeople access them. Many companies have a web page that offers help to customers,news, services, product updates, advice from experts, even “information onelections, government programs, and so forth.” “These new, online servicesinclude daily industry news, classified, a directory of suppliers, aninteractive forum, and tons of reference material, including governmentdocuments, surveys, speeches, papers, and statistics.” Even .
