Old but surviving

(Source: www.fpettit.com/)

How did you hear about Michael Jackson's death? My guess is you heard it through Twitter or Facebook. Niles (2009) pointed out that AOL's celebrity gossip site TMZ was the first to report on the King of Pop's death. Nonetheless, Twitter users were on fire, retweeting TMZ's report, sharing rumours, confirming and mourning Jackson's death (Niles 2009).

But, what were established news corporations doing at this time? They were, appropriately, waiting for confirmation from authorities before reporting on the news (Niles 2009). I think this 'restrain' from simply jumping into conclusions is a great advantage of established newsrooms and perhaps a reason why the old media will not die out.

Furthermore, the traditional media are never anonymous in their reporting, unlike some new media (Sennitt 2007). They have researchers and resources that are qualified to provide news to their audience (Sennitt 2007). This credibility helps make news more convincing.

But looking at the more physical side of things, traditional media conveys messages in printed hard-copy. Let's generalise and say there are two groups of people in this world: those who love to read on screen, and those who love to read on paper. I generalise with the support that the United Kingdom's KPMG's first Media and Entertainment Barometer (2009) found that 43% of the audience prefer consuming the media offline while only 24% preferred online media. Additionally, a survey conducted by Lynn, Turner and Cooper (2008) found that 86% of the respondents still use traditional media for local news and information.

Penman (1998, p. 10) said that it is a general principle that documents should be designed to accommodate to the different habits of readers. Therefore, the traditional media and the new media has merged to come up with something better. Notice how most news corporations use Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other alternative media in their publications? For instance, the Star newspaper has an online version that offers the same news as in the print version. They also have blogs where people can voice out their opinions. These are especially targeted to the users who prefer reading online than on print.

Thus, the traditional media will not possibly die out because they are still used by many and they have cleverly merged with the alternative media to be bigger and better.

Hmm... just an afterthought, traditional=old=wise. No wonder they are surviving still today.



References:

KPMG UK 2009, 'Media: Consumers still favour traditional media - but for how long?' 12 October 2009, viewed 16 November 2009, <http://rd.kpmg.co.uk/mediareleases/17183.htm>.

Lynn, A, Turner, SD & Cooper, M 2008, 'Traditional content is still king as the source of local news and information' in Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association, 21 May, viewed 16 November 2009, <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p233147_index.html>.

Niles, R 2009, 'Michael Jackson's death and its lessons for online journalists covering breaking news', OJR: The Online Journalism Review, 25 June, viewed 16 November 2009, <http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/robert/200906/1755/>.

Penman, R 1998, 'Document structures and readers' habits', Communication News, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 1, 10-11.

Sennitt, A 2007, 'Traditional media "still has advantages", Media Network, 31 May, viewed 16 November 2009, <http://blogs.rnw.nl/medianetwork/traditional-media-still-have-advantages>.