Media need to adapt to change

The rise of digital journalism among today’s generation has posed the biggest challenge among the members of the traditional media industry.

In a forum held at the University of Southern Philippines Foundation as part of the weeklong Cebu Press Freedom celebration, Cebu Daily News Publisher and Inquirer.net Head Abelardo Ulanday said the mainstream media need to also shift to online journalism to continue to exist.

“This is a challenging time for the print (industry). They are now facing the problem of how to attract new readers, while trying to hold on to their existing and usually aging audiences,” he said.

He added that traditional journalism has no choice but to adapt to these changes and go online as people, especially the youth, has turned to the internet, which impacted the finances of the local newspapers and broadcast media outfits.

“Many newspapers now have started to realize the importance of the internet. So, instead of only writing for the print that will only come out tomorrow, they have decided to go to the web and break news in the internet world through their websites or use social media such us Twitter and Facebook. And, that is a major shift,” he said.

He added that the main focus of the media currently is to break the news online with developing and follow-up stories provided later in time.

Ulanday believed that this has been one of the most significant result or development of the internet and web that greatly affect the media world both in a negative and positive way.

Digital journalism, also known as online journalism, is a form of journalism wherein editorial content is posted through the internet as opposed to publishing, print or broadcast and can be produced through text, audio or video form.

“It is no longer something that you read or accessed or being sent out or fed by writers or bloggers or by columnist whatsoever or whoever because you yourself can now actually use the tools and the skills that you have to become yourself, the digital journalism yourself,” Ulanday said.

He even presented the positive factors brought by this technology saying that online journalism is way faster, more convenient, accessible with non-stop and often has real-time stories.

“It is faster because all you have to do is just have the internet accessed and then you can post or file stories by seconds and it works 24/7 because it is nonstop. You can also follow or monitor developing news and track down the reach of the stories,” he explained.

As early as the 1990s, people already saw the rise of digital media and currently it continuously grow and develop with new innovation.

Ulanday disclosed that worldwide, Asia has the largest internet users in the world with about 49 percent in the whole pie.

Ulanday said that, nowadays, majority of the people get their news both on national and international, online.

He even said that the online media has also been a platform not only in giving out information to be available to a wide audience but is also used by businessmen for their business venture.

“A lot of people uses internet to make business. You can see companies being set up online or wanting to partner with local sites or media companies because they want to explore the opportunity,” he said.

Mobile phones are the widely used gadget by virtual world users because it is handy, portable and is very accessible.

The forum was attended by media practitioners and students coming from different universities in Cebu.