Journalism In Rapidly changing-world

By Moses Gbande

The word Journalism is originally applied to the reportage of current events in printed form, specifically newspapers and magazines. Alternatively, Journalism, is the collection, preparation, and distribution of news and related commentary and feature materials through print and electronic media such as newspapers, magazines and books.
It’s broad scope is to inform, educate, entertain and above all to inspire the society towards attaining certain goals.

Apparently,
Journalism has continued to witness new innovations in the Changing World of Media and Communication, compared to what was obtainable in the the 20th century where the industry was marked by a growing sense of professionalism.
What entails today, in Nigeria and global society is that Journalism has been distorted with new media such a blogs, webcasts, podcasts, social networking and social media sites, therby poising a threat to the main stream media.
There are four important factors by this trend: (1) the increasing organization of working journalists, (2) specialized education for journalism, (3) a growing literature dealing with the history.

Now, for whom and for what should we mobilize communication and media to address the complexity of current global conditions? Because communication has an ambiguous potential, the assumption that it always does good deeds to be problematized. On the one hand, if and when understood and framed as a social right and a dialogic practice, communication can facilitate the recognition of others to enable meaningful social attachments and afford what Paulo Freire once called ”the practice of freedom”.
On the other hand, in line with media’s role as central component of the deployment of neoliberal capitalism, communication can break people apart, ignite conflict and promote increasingly individualized and consumerist forms of existence. What is the implication, if everything ‘important’ is discussed in the media? How do communities change if we are connected via the social web? And what is the impact of all these media taken together? Questions like these are reflected when discussing the mediatization of our present life worlds. The core argument is that we have to grasp our present ‘worlds’ as being ‘mediatized’. The increasing ‘mediation of everything’ impacts the way we articulate cultures and societies on various levels: our everyday living and community building, the way we entertain ourselves, how we live religion, the forms of our political participation as well as our constructions of ethnicity. Such a mediatization of life worlds has to be understood as something transmedial: It is not solely related to ‘mass communication’, but includes at the same time various other forms of media communication; for example, communication via the Internet, mobile phones and newer forms of ‘intelligent’ communication systems. This means we have to develop an integrative approach which considers the different forms of media communication in their relevance for articulating present cultures and societies. Conceptualising ‘mediatization’ in the frame of ‘mediatized worlds’ means that present cultures and societies are mediatized in the sense that media are constitutive for them and that their reality construction is highly ‘moulded’ by various media.
This also entails that media are articulated as a ‘cultural centrality’: what counts as important within these cultures are the things which are communicated by the media – not only as celebrities, but also in everyday life.

Newspapers in the past gained tremendious foothold as the main and primary source of disseminating the news. It was accompanied, centuries later by the advent of broadcast journalism or the non-print media ~ telegraph, radio and eventually
Television which altered tremendously the dynamics of news gathering and reporting. The latter two in particular accelerated the reporting process, making it timely and pertinent.

The 21st century birthed the internet and with it new media which in many ways has revolutionized the industry. It has literally held journalism by the hand and space virtually shedding the newspapers that come with the print medium. Now, people can access the news at their fingertips, anywhere and anytime. There’s inevitable decline in newspaper production and distribution resulted in a more than corresponding increase in its online version over the last decade. Print media organizations have been forced to either go with the times or go home.

Smart phones and social media have formed a formidable partnership to build convergence on a large scale. People now have real time information on the go. It has its cons though — the proliferation of ‘fake news’ and its attendant consequences. Professionalism in the industry now entails being able to filter the evidence based facts from disinformation.

Talking about journalists, they too have been forced to acclimatize or go redundant. In response to the times, modern day journalists now have to upskill themselves, especially with imagery and video skills to remain relevant. Nowadays, a reporter can capture and edit an event using mobile phone and produce a story in record time. In other words, technology has armed journalists to do more with less. From writing on slabs to being referred to as the fourth estate of the realm piercingly depicts remarkable evolution journalism has gone through – and it is still evolving. Its influence was seen again, in the recent elections where it called the winner before ballots were conclusively counted. Despite being susceptible to varying problems, pressure and partisanship, it is crucial that the main tenets of democracy remain steadfast especially in a world where agendas and narratives are constantly being spun.

The dynamisms in the Journalism bringing on board the the online and the acceptance of Social media has greatly distorted the Journalism professionalism, most online publications in attempts to break the news end up distorting the facts and misinforming the public. And except the relevant authorities like the NUJ, Federal Ministry of information and the government in general put in place Necessary guiding rules on the operation of these onlines and Social media, the earliest trust placed on the Journalists and the profession will die naturally, and Journalism will eventually lost it’s pride among the society.

Journalism In Rapidly changing-world

Published by Nasarawa Reporters

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