In this article, the author strives to discuss and to give food for thought on the recent changes of the journalistic standard and format.
Key words: journalism, transformation, change, information.
Journalism is a social construct developed through centuries of activity committed to the spread of information and knowledge. It is quite logical and obvious that the most important aspect of journalism would be the fact that what journalism informs about should be the definite truth. However, with the rise of misinformation and with political discourse being so prevalent in our life, sometimes it is quite hard to disparage the truth from a piece of propaganda or some other empty piece of journalism that lacks that key factual information that a truthful journalism article should have. This precedent in the field of journalism is discussed and argued about by quite a plethora of researchers including Natalia Fedotova whose text on factual journalism served as an inspiration for this paper.
When talking about journalism as a whole it is important to remember what that actually is. According to the Britannica encyclopedia, “journalism is the collection, preparation, and distribution of news and related commentary and feature materials through such print and electronic media as newspapers, magazines, books, blogs, webcasts, podcasts, social networking and social media sites, and e-mail as well as through radio, motion pictures, and television. The word journalism was originally applied to the reportage of current events in printed form, specifically newspapers, but with the advent of radio, television, and the Internet in the 20th century the use of the term broadened to include all printed and electronic communication dealing with current affairs [1].”
With how journalism is portrayed here it is easy to understand why it is considered to be the source of truthful and factual news and happenings in one’s local area. But progress touches every human creation and concept and Journalistic activity was no exception. With the evolution of speech, language and human life in general came another understanding of journalism, that which throw quite a big shade on what it used to be. College Dekho, a quite popular student recruiter in India has neatly listed a portion of types of journalism as follows [2]:
– Investigative journalism — it is a type of journalism that characterizes a systematic and, as a rule, long-term study of the subject of a publication, usually devoted to crimes, political scandals, the activities of certain organizations and individuals, and the like. The work of a journalist in this genre is similar to the work of a private detective, as it is based on the search for a set of facts that interested persons and/or organizations hide from society;
– Political journalism — a branch that focuses on political activity, highlighting the main events and focusing on the political events and recent, and with today’s cancel culture running rampant, not so recent activity of various political figures and actors;
– Crime journalism — while it may be misinterpreted as being the same as investigative journalism, the “crime” variant focuses on the already concluded events, with journalists writing about crimes, murders and other misbehaving actions that are deemed worthy to be called a crime;
– Business journalism — a professional genre, in which the journalists who are immediately engaged in this field, find, collect, record and write down and finally analyze information that has any connection or anything to do with business. Such type of journalism helps governmental and other types of representatives to stay on top of things and discuss the newly arrived news;
– Art journalism — meanwhile this type of journalistic activity shows off the newest and brightest events and people of the artistic field. Any news piece one may have read on cinema, art, literature, music, theatre or even architecture belongs to the art branch of journalism;
– Celebrity journalism — although quite similar to art journalism, this one hones in on the players of the artistic field. Actors, producers, painters, dancers and others who are part of the elite celebrity circle would certainly be shown at least once, however it is never known whether the informative piece would be flattering or insulting, respectable or demeaning or positive or negative in context;
– Sports journalism — the genre that mainly highlights sports and sports activists, events and most prominent players and competitions.
– Lifestyle journalism — the branch that focuses primarily on the entertainment segment of journalism. It encompasses such fields as travelling, fashion, fitness, recreation activities, food and similarly to art journalism it discusses art among other things.
Now it should come as no surprise that most of these channels of information have factual information at their core, however it still does not help with the fact that the main trends of journalism development still heavily affect what it does and represents. In her article Fedotova describes the steady shift from factual information to the more emotive, entertainment focused news pieces [3].
Unlike many others her reasoning for stating that this is the actual state of journalism is based on the way information for the news pieces is collected and written. She claims that the key reason for this is connected to the recent trends in information consumption. Since journalism leans on communication through the language significantly it is quite obvious to see that every influence that transforms language and communication as a whole will also bring changes to journalism. With the recent rends in communications being revolved around there being less text but more information supported by infographics and\or other types of visual aids it is quite noticeable how the media has shifted its format to supplement the need for new forms of communication and information distribution.
Newer, contemporary style of text depicts the key information with media and nice bright mindboggling visuals that are also quite relevant to the second point Fedotova makes her article which is that attractiveness is now much more important to a journalist than the information they provide with their news piece. This is easily exploited with the introduction of multimedia journalism since it is much easier to present attractive media focused material on online platforms compared to what one can do with the paper counterpart: clickbait titles, emotive texts, introduction of personal opinion and especially author’s bias — all this can be considered calling cards for this new type of journalism, that not only changes how we perceive informational channels but also breaks many tenets of traditional journalism with the refusal to stay neutral in the provided news pieces.
Natalia additionally states that such transformations signal the creation of a new style of journalism that she calls — «Журналистика эмоций» (emotive journalism), which could be roughly described in English as a branch of journalism that focuses on the emotional response of the readers to the texts provided to them.
After analyzing the given data, it is quite apparent that our world once again stands at the precipice of a new era of journalism. From paper carriers to television and now Internet and its many various platforms, the changes are quite apparent but nonetheless expansive and shattering. With the coming of “emotive journalism” this field of communication accepts and embraces its new form and thrives in it surprisingly well. With the new world developments in education, politics, communication and life standards people’s attention span has decreased due to the oversaturation with communication channels. It is quite evident from the modern social media platforms and their content creators battle for our views and attention by combining several layers of visual and audio stimulation in order to have potential viewers stay on their platform just a while longer, consuming their content. In such a savage competition journalism also takes its new form meanwhile still using its position as a media giant to distribute its content on a larger scale.
References:
- Term «Journalism», https://www.britannica.com/topic/journalism
- College Dekho’s list of journalism types, https://www.collegedekho.com/articles/types-of-journalism/
- Наталья Федотова, От журналистики факта к журналистике эмоций, БГУ; https://elib.bsu.by/bitstream/123456789/17628/1/Fedotova_Ot %20zhurnalistiki %20fakta_Journ_bsu_2011.pdf
