There isn’t any question that social media have changed journalism for good, across the world and in Jamaica. The questions now, perhaps, are how extensive that change has been, and what the media landscape will look like in the future.
The creation of the Internet, the democratization of access to publication, the instant access it created for thousands of citizen journalists to reach an international audience, all laid the groundwork for permanent change.
Think of Jamaica just twenty years ago. In the days before the Internet, and in a restricted media landscape, newsrooms could take their time getting news to the public. Events that took place in the evening probably wouldn’t make it into print until two days later. After all, if it wasn’t in the Gleaner, or on JBC and RJR, there was no other way for the public to get their news. Those with access to shortwave radio could hear international news, but local news dissemination was dependent on the local media giants.
How times have changed! With scores of ordinary people likely to be live-tweeting from anywhere and everywhere, traditional media houses have to be racing to keep up.
Consider this statement by New York Times columnist Thomas L. Freidman:
“I covered the Republican convention, and I was impressed in watching my Times colleagues at how much their jobs have changed. Here’s what a reporter does in a typical day: report, file for the Web edition, file for The International Herald Tribune, tweet, update for the Web edition, report more, track other people’s tweets, do a Web-video spot and then write the story for the print paper. You want to be a Times reporter today? That’s your day. You have to work harder and smarter and develop new skills faster.”
Barbara Blake Hannah said on my Facebook page that:
“The day of traditional media is over, just like writing with pen and paper. Look at how the report of Alpanso Cunningham’s gold medal reached FB at least a day before newspapers and TV carried the story. The power wielded by the traditional media has now passed democratically into the hands of ‘the people.’
Before we rush to sound the death knell for traditional media, however, consider that firstly, much of the news coming from the Paralympics and the blow-by-blow descriptions of Buju Banton’s trial was reported by journalists
working for traditional media houses using social media to get the news first to their online products, before sending it on to their print or broadcast editions.
In addition, many people do still recognize that traditional media regard themselves as having a responsibility to fact check stories, something often not done by tweeters and posters, so even people who get news from social media (and who doesn’t nowadays?) often still look to traditional media houses for verification.
The two most infamous examples of false reports which spread rapidly thanks (?) to social media were the repeated claims that Buju Banton had been freed, and that Kartel had escaped.
Allan Rickards expressed the desire for verification in his FB post when he said that:
“It is not news for me until it is confirmed in the traditional media…far too often the so-called social media is a hotbed of rumour/propaganda.”
I suggest that what we are seeing is a convergence of the old and the new. Will newsprint and the traditional radio and TV newscasts become obsolete with the increasing production of news-on-demand? We may be heading there, but I don’t think it’s something we should dread. New technologies have always transformed the means of communication. From papyrus and the slate to the keyboard, from the fountain pen to the stylus, technological developments have improved the ability to communicate with the public.
Mark you, I am sure there were naysayers who hated the idea of printing presses which would produce thousands of books that anyone could read.
“What about the job security of the men who write the books by hand?” I can hear them asking. “This is going to lead to mass unemployment!”
Or when paper was developed, there was probably someone getting up in meetings and objecting on the basis that the rivers would become overrun with weeds if they weren’t being harvested to make papyrus.
This article in the Economist, looks at the evolution of the relationship between social and traditional media, from the days when a senor news executive felt able to make the derisive comment that a blogger was just someone “in his living room in his pyjamas writing what he thinks” to the present day when social media are seen as “a valuable adjunct to traditional media.”
The writer chronicles how the story about the death of Osama Bin Laden developed on Twitter for example, and how social media helped spread the massive story of the Arab spring.
“Thanks to the rise of social media, news is no longer gathered exclusively by reporters and turned into a story but emerges from an ecosystem in which journalists, sources, readers and viewers exchange information,” said the Economist.
Jamaican media houses have recognized the importance of not being left behind. The Press Association of Jamaica now has an award for on-line journalism, and newsrooms are trying to ensure that they break stories on social media, instead of playing catch-up to on-line-only outlets.
At this stage I have no idea what the future will look like. After all, I’m now in love with an E-reader which I never thought possible! See my post on my new-found love for E-readers here.
The Huffington Post has proven that online media products can be successful. The old models are doubtless being transformed as we speak, but I hardly think there will be an end to journalism or jobs for journalists. What those jobs look like has already changed significantly, and is likely to change still further. But then, as the New York Times’ Friedman says, “Any form of standing still is deadly.”
The Jamaica Broilers Fair Play Awards is being held Tuesday, September 11 and will highlight the importance of social media. Perhaps the featured speaker Saadiq Rodgers-King , a successful social media entrepreneur, will have some ideas about what the future will look like. If he does, I’ll be sure to let you know.
Disclosure – I’ll be participating in the function.
News and Views by Dionne Jackson Miller 
September 9, 2012 at 10:13 pm
I’ve stopped submitted letters to the Gleaner, I no longer feel I need that outlet. If one other reads what I write I’m good. Twitter told me that Whitney Houston & John Glen died; that Neda was dead in Tehran; that Bin Laden was killed…
September 9, 2012 at 10:29 pm
One thing you left out. Social media has amplified the voice of the ordinary man. You can ask anyone a question or to clarify a statement you heard them make via traditional media and they respond. A mere 10 years ago this was not as easy.
September 10, 2012 at 8:31 am
Thanks – the access of the listening and viewing public has certainly been magnified in this way _ I can testify to that!
September 10, 2012 at 7:35 am
While I am of the view that social media are playing an increasing role in disseminating information, traditional media remain the standard bearers in communication of news. Judging from the daily calls to the newsroom, people are still relying on tradional media to confirm any information they may have seen or heard elsewhere. For them it’s not credible information until it has been confirmed. I agree however that the future of the newsroom lies in the utilisation and incorporation of social media in a significant way.
September 10, 2012 at 8:40 am
As someome who was a print journalist in the 90s to a blogger and social media entrepreneur i would never sound the death knell on traditonal journalist. I do expect media house brands to close if they fail to evolve and distinguish themselves with their content and online community of readers, viewers, listeners.
September 10, 2012 at 8:58 am
I agree Ingrid – adaptability is key!
September 10, 2012 at 6:38 pm
Traditional media have always adapted to and adopted new platforms to stay relevant. As someone who has done research in social and digital media, I have come to realize that whenever that is done, it is the smaller players in the market who suffer in that they are either gobbled up by the big companies or struggle to stay afloat. Social media are testing traditional media, but rest assured we should not be too quick, as you rightly say, to write them off yet. They will find away to triumph and remain relevant dominant make no mistake about that.
September 12, 2012 at 1:07 pm
That would actually be Socrates, in Plato’s Phaedrus.
But as for your topic, social media is a useless distraction, and ‘Social Media Journalism’ is an oxymoron. I suppose the only way that we would compare to 150 character inanities with actual literature is because journalism has gotten so bad, especially in Jamaica.
Comparisons of the childish scribblings of Facebook and Twitter users to the work of a professional with 4 to 5 years of tertiary education and a portfolio usually ignore the fact that the journalists usually does a few things that the ‘tweeters’ don’t. The journalist usually cultivates anonymous sources that may be deep within government agencies, is skilled in asking questions and monitoring body language, has access to databases (LexisNexis and JSTOR, for example) that are not publicly available, and has the advantages of a face to face relationship with their sources and their bosses.
Without those assets and skills, I doubt that the blogger/tweeter would have been able to uncover the Green Bay Massacre (long shadows in the picture was discovered by journalist, blowing the JDFs story), the Gulf of Tonkin incident (I. F. Stone) or any of the various human interest stories that reporters write regularly.
If there is a ppose for social media in socuety , it is to send messages. But a message is not knowledge, and certainly is not an idea. Because of that alone, it will never be able to match, much less usurp, the Fourth Estate.