THE TIPPING POINTS:
what it means to us today
Journalism as a profession has come a long way. When society
was still very traditional or rather showing no signs of being mechanized,
journalism and the journalist were there. In ancient Egypt for instance, the
stone tablets were used to pass on information. The papyrus rolls were being
used as papers which some inscriptions were made on it. Later on even before
the invention of the telegraph by Alexander Morse in 1837, rulers realized the
need to communicate the information from the center to the periphery and they
resorted to using smoke and drums. Others even went out of their way and
positioned men at strategic points who could shout. All these instances demonstrate
that journalism as a practice as evolved from the use of traditional media to
the wide range of technological tools that we have today.
The instances above are not tipping points as such. Tipping
point refers to that critical point, it is a moment of the critical mass, the threshold,
the boiling point. It represents the transition from one level to the next.
Such points can be traced to a speech delivered on 13 April 2005 by media Mogul
Rupert Murdoch to American Society of Newspaper Editors(ASNE) in Washington DC
and another one is captured as the Citizen journalism; an analysis of the way
Tsunami which occurred on 26 December 2004 was covered by the media.
Rupert Murdoch is a renowned media personality not because
he writes for the newspapers or because he is a newscater, but he is well known
for his entrepreneurial skills which have seen him invest in many continents.
He is an Australian by Birth and he owns a chain of media outlets there. In USA
where this speech was delivered, he also owns the Fox news television channel
among other outlets.
In his speech, he was foreseeing a situation where the new
technology was evolving at a very fast pace and this was something which could
not be overlooked. ‘Scarcely a day goes by without some claim that new
technologies are fast writing newsprint’s obituary’, he began. ‘yet, as an industry,
many of us have been remarkably, unaccountably complacent’. H e went on to
admit before the editors that he was considering himself a ‘digital immigrant’,
someone still ‘searching for answers to an emerging medium that is not my
native language’.
Murdoch might have been sent by the devil to play the devil
advocates role in this annual meeting. As a media owner he was aware that
change was like rest and that change was eminent. There was need for not only
the media owners to embrace the new technology, but also for the editors to refresh
their skills on the new media which was going to be part and parcel of their
daily activities.
The change brought about by the new technology was trickling
down to the audience and in fact the audiences were the greatest beneficiaries
of the new technology. Murdoch admits that his two daughters were ‘digital natives’,
according to him ‘they can never know the world without ubiquitous broadband
internet access’; he underscored the fact that change was around the corner.
Whereas the traditional media was somehow a one-way media, the new technology
was turning tables upside down. It brought changes in terms of information
access dissemination and digestion ‘when and how they will get it, where they
will get it from and who they will get it from’. Murdoch was seeing the
opportunities amidst the threats. Opportunities ‘to improve our journalism and
expand our reach’.
Technology-savvy young people according to him were likely
to turn to the web as their news medium of choice. The tech-savvy youths don’t
want to reply on god-like figure from above to tell them; in essence the idea
of gate keeping was slowly losing meaning. The journalist should avoid the cliché’
do I have the news to who really wants the news.
The second tipping point came about at the wake a
catastrophic Tsunami. This occurred in Indonesia shortly after Christmas in the
year 2004. The tipping point here was the facts that not even the world best
known News Corporation and Television channels were on site to capture the
events as they happened. This raised a lot of questions concerning the idea of ‘outside
in reporting’ whereby the media are lagging behind in such situations and that
they just send reporters to the scene after the catastrophy.
During this catastrophy, a new vocabulary was born in
journalism-the citizen journalism. Amateurs who had phones and cameras were in
a position to capture every detail as the waves swept people and their properties.
The citizens who were around the scene were in a position to embrace technology
by creating blog-spots. This Blog-spots were used to update and even link
relatives and friends who were affected by the catastrophy.
The world best media houses were caught pants down and what
they could do best was to practice ‘helicopter Journalism’. Helicopter
journalism mainly is where the journalist use the helicopters which were distributing
food, clothing and other basic needs to the victims to areas which were
inaccessible. The media was therefore reactive and not proactive, and therefore
citizens took charge of the situation.
As a country, all these wonderful events mean a lot to our
local media. We are in a time where media owners need to chat the way forward
on how challenges brought about by technology can be creatively absorbed for competitive
advantage. Are our editors and journalist acquainted with the new skills as
demanded by the internet? Are our audiences aware of citizen journalism and the
role they can play? These are questions which are brought about by the tipping
points.
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