24. Digital Journalism: The Shape of Things

Digital journalism has changed journalism not just in form, but also in content to the extent that some researchers say, forced media to ‘publish information incompatible with the public interest’. The affordances of digital journalism—instantaneity, audience participation, user empowerment, user-generated content, richness and depth of content—have all contributed to this change and have resulted in digital journalism becoming a double-edged sword. Digital journalism has also emerged in a variety of forms. Legacy media has gone online (both on websites and social media); digital only websites (NewsMinute, Quint, Newslaundry and so on) have emerged; opinion spaces that could be from journalists and non-journalists (blogs) have proliferated, aggregators and syndicators for news, and for long form (InShorts, DailyHunt and Medium and Substack, respectively) have become the flavor of the day. There is the business model to contend with, too. Journalism has ranged from mostly free to completely behind the paywall, with various levels in between (say, Indian Express, The Ken and the Times of India). There is also the dilemma of user-generated content and the battle with the prosumer (everyone is a journalist/producer while at the same time being a consumer) on social media. At the same time, there is the wonderful possibility of the long form—the length that might lead to depth which would include other mediums like video, audio, photos, infographics and maps.