Future Of News : Few Challenges ahead

Thomas Jefferson, famous US statesman said in the year 1816, ' Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.'  How relevant  it is in the year 2017 also. 

But if you carefully analyse, you will feel that lot of things changed in past few years. The ownership pattern of media has drastically changed . Now the leading business groups own or have major share holding in media and its prime task is to provide marketing platform to the goods and services and to look the citizen as consumer. With the result, most of the issues concern to the survival of society are not discussed and the space is hijacked by not so relevant issues. We shall discuss this in detail little later, in the meantime we would like to peep into the future of news. Noted thinker Henry Jenkin wrote,' More than one half of all teens have created media content, and roughly one third of teens who use the internet have shared content they produced, many cases, these teens are actively in what we are calling participating cultures. A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to the artistic expression and civic engagement.

The new thing has happened in media, the mainstream media specially the TV channels want to be seen as neutral, presenting both or all sides as if they are referring a game in which only the players-the government and opponents-participate. Few news channels especially Arnab's Republic act as judge, without giving any opportunity to give any space to defend, they pronounce judgement also !

It is also true that media has increasingly become common carrier, transmitter of other people's ideas and thoughts, irrespective of import, relevance, and at times, even accuracy.

If Mr. Jefferson would be alive, he would likely to notice that there are at least two important public information models in play, the old press model gradually fading due to collapse of its business model and related to this , because its product is no longer is trusted or relevant to many citizens, take for example the largest circulated newspapers Times of India and Hindustan Times carries news in between the empty space available between the advertisements. The other model involves ever expanding applications of interactive and social technologies that create networked audiences who participate in sharing and often producing content. The second model is  now ruling , it has entered into election campaigns, protest movements, and the viral flow of partisan information across desktops, mobiles and tablets.  

The legacy press and and native digital sites are trying to harness audiences that were much more 'captive' in the mass media. The dilemma is that the native digital sites are freer to use the full capabilities of social and participatory media, while the legacy press imposes conventional limits about how much the audience should participate in creating and driving content. This becomes a source  of friction in a system where much of what we continue to regard as serious news is produced by legacy journalism organizations that remain out of step with the communication logic of the future.

To frame the problem in sharp terms : the logic of legacy journalism  comes into conflict with the logic of the participatory  media culture, raising questions about what the news of the future will look like as this conflict plays out. The current period is one of the creative but chaotic ferment-creative destruction in the parlance of the digital age. As the legacy media die off, or move inside native digital sites, more and more experimental hybrids emerge, Inshort mobile platform is a beautiful example.

Many different business models power such sites, including ad revenues, foundation funding, wealthy donors and small subscription fees or donations from subscribers. As long as legacy journalism is stuck on traditional ideas about reporting, and can not take full advantage of the participatory technologies that power the native digital sites, the likely outcome is chaotic reinvention of journalism in the profusion of new format. 

One scenario for the news of the future is for citizens to become reporters by asking personally relevant questions, finding answers through information and database interfaces, and sharing what they find  across various media platforms.  i saw from last two days, many vigilant Bombay citizens have taken HD video of deluge and posted on YouTube, this way the viewers received on the spot coverage from multiple locations, which no TV channel can afford. I, while sitting in US, could be able to assess ground situation in various parts of Bombay.  So Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are enabling people to share and act on such input, rivaling the scale of old mass media audiences, while coordinating collective action over social media. on the other hand, individuals have the option of consuming just the media realities they prefer, and  thus isolating themselves from the information realities of others in society.

The result may be the fragmentation of public voices into more isolated communities of interest that have trouble being heard.

This is to be seen that how digital native citizens bridge their different information realities and develop intelligent public engagement with issues and ideas.