Chapter 1: The Nature of News Convergence In Journalism Convergenceterm that describes efforts to use the different strengths of different

media to reach broader audiences and tell the worlds stories in new ways 2. The technological revolution has exploded the tradition definitions of just who is a journalist from innovations such as blogs 3. It does not matter what medium is used to deliver the news, the skills of news-gathering and storytelling are essential to good journalism 2. What News Is 1. The criteria that professional reporters and editors use to decide what news is can be summarized in three words: 1. Relevance 2. Usefulness 3. Interest 2. These criteria apply generally, but each journalist and each news organization uses them in a specific context that gives them particular meaning. That context is supplied by the audience. 3. Reporting on television versus on print is very differentfor example, statistics and websites can be easily inserted into print, but just reading that information on television does not get the information across and make it memorable, so instead pictures and video can be used to report news 4. Specific elements to look for in a potential story: 1. ImpactHow many people are affected by an event or idea? How serious does it affect them? The wider and heavier the impact, the better the story. 2. ConflictConflict is such a basic element of life that journalist must resist the temptation to overdramatize or oversimplify it 3. Noveltypeople or events may be newsworthy just because they are unusual or bizarre 4. ProminenceNames make news. The bigger the name, the bigger the news. 5. Proximitypeople are generally interested and more concerned about news that is close to home 6. TimelinessNews is supposed to be new. Timely reporting gives people a chance to be participants in public affairs rather than mere spectators. 5. This list suggest two important things about news: (1) not all news is serious, life-or-death stuff and (2) news is more than collections of facts 6. To tell stories in a manner that makes facts understandable for readers/viewers, journalists often use the techniques of other storytellers such as novelists and screenwriters 7. Differences among the news media give different weights to those criteria and require different approaches to telling stories 8. Online journalist brings together the immediacy of television and the comprehensive authority of print, with endless opportunities to pursue your interests through the Web 9. Citizen journalismnews coverage, usually online, by people who dont work for commercial companies 10. Few of these citizen journalism outlets are profitable, and many are deliberately nonprofit. 11. Their goal, whether local or international, is to cover communities and issues that even local newspaper and broadcast stations dont reach. 3. The Role Of Journalism And The Challenges It Faces 5 freedoms that the nations founders put into the First Amendment: the freedom of speech, religion, the press, petition, and assembly Looking at freedom and how it affects safetyi.e. 9/11 Debate on whether journalism is too sensational and/or an invasion of privacy Citizens feel like journalists work is important but they are not doing it well enough. The past decade has seen the emergence of several major efforts to improve the performance of American journalism. 1. One of those efforts has been driven by an informal association called the Committee of Concerned Journalists and the related Project for Excellence in Journalism. 5. The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel proposes the following nine principles to achieve the principle that the purpose of journalism is to provide people with the information they need to be free and self-governing: 1. Journalisms first obligation is to the truth 2. Its first loyalty is to citizens 3. Its essence is a discipline of verification 4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover 5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power 6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise 7. It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant 8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional 9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience 6. These efforts to reform, or restore, journalism recognizes these vital functions of journalists in a free society: 1. Journalists report the newsmost obvious and the foundation of the rest of the following functions. It takes many forms like T.V., online bulletins, nextday newspaper analyses, and long-form magazine narratives. 2. Journalist monitor powerMonitoring is required even if power is used legitimately. The next function comes into play if power is used immorally or illegally. 3. Journalists uncover injusticeJournalists can bring to light dangerous or illegal abuses that might otherwise go unchecked 4. Journalists tell compelling stories that delight us and some that dismay us 5. Journalists sustain communitiescan come in the form of small towns, cities or even virtual communities of people connected only by the Internet. By their reporting, monitoring, revealing, and storytelling, journalists serve as the nervous system for these communities 7. Another function identified by scholars is agenda-setting and is the placing of issues on the public agenda for discussion and decision 8. Gatekeepinganother function that is a process by which some events and ideas become news and others do not 4. Accuracy, Fairness, & The Problem of Objectivity 1. Certain issues, such as abortion restrict reporters to finding and writing about the facts because expressing opinion on such issues can cause chaos 2. However, sometimes its hard to get the facts. 3. It can also be hared to tell what the facts mean. 4. It is also even hard to tell what a fact is at times 5. Daily journalism is very complicated because reporters have a few hours or sometimes a few days to try and learn as many facts as possible 6. Using this overload of information, reporters much condense into a small story 7. When you take into account all these realities and limitations, you can see that reaching the best obtainable version of the truth is challenge enough for any journalist 1. 2. 3. 4. 1. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 2. 1. 2. 3. 1. 1.

Accuracy and Fairness

Accuracy is the most important characteristic of any story, great or small, long or short and essential in every detail The same statement may have widely different meanings depending on the circumstances in which it was uttered and the tone in which it was spoken With news there are different viewpoint form which every event or issue can be observed and each of these viewpoints may yield a different interpretation of what is occurring and of what it means Fairness requires that you as a reporter try to find every viewpoint on a story Very rarely will their ever be one viewpoint; it is common to have more than two Fairness requires, above all, that you make every effort to avoid following your own biases in reporting and your writing

Bias
More than 8 out of 10 in a national survey said they see bias at least sometimes Of those, about twice as many say that the bias seemed to be liberal as thought it conservative American journalism has many biases built into it

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Journalists best describe themselves as the outside agitator, the afflicter of the comfortable and the comforter of the afflicter They see their job as being the watchdog of the powerful, the voice of the voiceless, the surrogate for the ordinary citizen, the protector of the abused and downtrodden Although American journalism may seem superficially liberal, it is in profoundly Conservativelook at the following for an example: American life is based on the foundation stones of capitalism, the-two party system, the myths of the ethnic melting pot and of social mobility

Objectivity
The ideal way of reporting in mainstream journalism that tries to come to the best possible version of the truth Applying methods of science to journalism by emphasizing reliance on observable facts Those methods emphasize reliance on pursuing truth and verifying facts Journalistic objectivity employs both neutrality and balance, sometimes instead of the kind of openness that is essential in science One-sided reports appeal to audiences that share the reporters bias, but they repel those who dont, making fairness and accuracy causalities