3.1 Inform me! news media.

The current news media is going through a major fundamental change in how it controls and presents news stories to us. Television and print media is owned by a small but powerful group of corporations who up until recently set the agenda for what we consumed. With the shift to more diversified online news services we no longer have a particular brand of news pushed to us, whereas in the past it was the major networks who selected and edited what subjects and what slant the news would take and what we would see on our screens and in our newspapers on a daily basis. Now we don’t have to wait for pre-set times for our news to be delivered, we switch on our smartphones, our tablets and web browsers to view a near instant stream of current news and reports from every inch of the planet.

Because of time or space constraints it wasn’t possible to cover every news story that was breaking and we relied on trusting news producers and newspaper editors to refine down the stories available to us. With the growth of the internet, space is no longer an issue and as well as the mainstream print and television news services moving into an online form there is now a more diverse range of news sources available to anyone with an internet connection. The issue now is not one of what some third party thinks is relevant for us to view but one of filtering the enormous amounts of information available and vetting it as accurate, reliable, timely and news worthy. As Christopher Harper wrote in Democracy and new media [33] we relied on the gatekeepers as to what is news and to its credibility.

Harper also noted that all traditional media had a defining moment which defined them as a brand, for print journalism it was the Vietnam War, for Radio it was the Hindenburg crash and for television it may have been the Kennedy assassination. The internet, though having many standout moments may still not have found its one true defining moment yet.

So while the old empire is facing growing pressure from an infant but powerful new competitor in the internet, it is also adapting and using this new medium to its advantage by setting up parallel media outlets to promote and compete with its traditional bricks and mortar establishments. Having the existing media players reshaping and putting their own businesses online may lend credibility to online news production while the new kids become entrenched and build their own trusted brands.