The changing face of print and online news
In February it was announced that the UK’s Independent newspaper will cease publication and move online late this month, a symptom of the ongoing decline in print news readership.
It is unclear if this shift will be successful, given the Pew Research Center Fact Sheet finding that “Despite widespread talk of a shift to digital, most newspaper readership continues to be in print.”
But just because traditional newspapers haven’t yet made a splash online doesn’t mean that people aren’t increasingly accessing their news through the internet. Pew Research Centre finds that a growing number of adults get their news from social media, with Facebook being the dominant site.
Significantly, we are also witnessing the rise of new approaches to online news.
An article in Nieman Lab, an initiative of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, discusses the rise of The Conversation. Providing evidence-based news commentary and analysis, The Conversation is described by founder Andrew Jaspan “as an antidote to shrinking newsrooms churning out bite-sized takes on news.” Here at RealKM Magazine we are taking a similar approach to that of The Conversation, with RealKM focusing on knowledge management and related fields.
Self-publishing platforms such as Medium and LinkedIn Pulse are also providing people with the opportunity to step out from the limitations of social media. Stories on social media must typically also be bite-sized takes, whereas self-publishing platforms allow people to write in-depth commentary and analysis.
Also published on Medium.
