Today newspapers pursue contacts and clicks at the expense of quality and content. The remuneration is tied to the quantity the number of visitors, the time spent on a site and not the quality. Starting with the title, on which eighty percent of the visits are played. The title, must be “stupid”, otherwise Google does not understand it! Here then is that, sometimes, we prefer to focus on sensationalist information to return a greater number of contacts. But a great deal of contacts does not automatically mean a loyal audience. On the contrary, quality content is often read by a smaller but more attentive audience. In the General news this is a very important matter.
What are the most novel elements in online information?
We must enter into the perspective that modern editing is widespread, free from a physical place and it is necessary to have in mind the mechanisms to keep it alive and the dangers that can be incurred, including fragmentation. However, the most substantial change is the fact that social networks cannot be ignored . Before the advent of social networks, there were no major differences between the online newspaper and the paper version. On the web there was a focus on current events, but the same news was found in depth the next day on printed paper. With the eruption of social media – first Facebook in 2004, then Youtube in 2005, followed by Twitter, people on the spot become involuntary correspondents, giving life to that form of journalism known as citizen journalism. The active participation of the readers, thanks to the interactivity of the new media, suggests the illusion of an alleged democratic horizontality and a greater exchange. In reality it has resulted in a degeneration of information”.
Has the timing of information changed too?
The newspapers are obliged to consume the news very quickly: the product is packaged and sold. Over the last decade, the web has eliminated production and distribution costs and increased the dissemination of information.
- The point is, how to make journalism on the web profitable? Well, no way to make the news profitable yet.
- As the subtitle of his book suggests, an important chance could be the so-called crossmediality.
When we talk about the vanguard of online journalism, many people cite “Snow Fall”, published in the New York Times by John Branch. With this report, which told of an avalanche in Tunnel Creek that swept away some well-known skiers, Branch won the Pulitzer Prize in 2013.
Snow Fall is much more and much more than an article
It combines text fragments of documentaries, 3D animations, photo galleries. It is a cross-media story, a digital storytelling product transversal to different media, an experiment of long form journalism. It is a collective work that involved eleven graphic artists and designers, a photographer, three video makers and a researcher.