The emergence of new technologies and their significance in the globalized world today had affected our daily life immensely. These include the transnational network of political, economic, cultural, and social activity which is interconnected to one another (Reese et al, 2007).

To be specific, we are now in the era of the wired world where nearly everything is connected to the digital core. In this matter, the journalism industry has undergone massive transformation where traditional journalism such as the newspaper is subsequently challenged by the surfacing of web-based online journalism (Allan, 2006).

The public tends to turn their favor by reading news on the Internet rather than flipping through the print newspaper like it used to be. As it is reported in BBC News Online (1998), ‘newspaper circulation has been falling for years…’ The rise of online news brings a new dimension on what the public defines news and how they recognize ‘…who can be a journalist in ways which continue to reverberate today’ (Allan, 2006: p. 10).

The new technologies are basically referring to the electronic devices like computers, laptops, video camcorders, digital cameras, and mobile phones (Herbert, 2000) which can be connected to the Internet and that includes the websites (Deuze, 2001) like Blogs, Youtube, Twitter, BBC iPlayer and other tools as a mean of communications and information systems.

In this essay, I will explore how the new technologies take place in changing the daily basis of journalists’ work. Explicitly, this essay will analyze the effects of new technologies had on news reporting in terms of Internet publishing which covers the area of the modifications in the newsgathering process, the apprehension of news content quality, and the up-to-the-minute presentation of news. Towards the end, I shall examine the new challenges that the Internet has inflicted on journalists in the digital era.

The modifications in the newsgathering process

According to Herbert, (2000) ‘the digital age is changing journalism forever’ (p: 2). Technological advancements have made it easy for journalists to search for facts and more information (Herbert, 2000). The Internet enables journalists to find additional details regarding the issue they are covering.

It is a virtual place where any kind of information can be found without the hustle of going out and take a longer time to gather information. Floridi (1995) proposes the Internet as an ‘international system of digital communication, emerging from the agglomerate of thousands of networks that interact through a number of common protocols all over the world’ (p. 263) hence it can be alternative sources that provide the vast number of information. Nevertheless, Allan (2006) argues that journalists have to distinguish which source could be trusted since anyone is accessible to the Internet and thus it makes it more complicated to establish verification.

Even though it is not deniable that technology capabilities contributed to shaping news-gathering practices, Mitchelstein and Boczkowski, (2009) suggest that journalists however doubt the Internet as a reliable source in doing so. A survey conducted in the United Kingdom in 2000 found that not all journalists (only two-third) have access to the Internet and the idea that journalists spent their time surfing the Internet [looking for story ideas] was laughed at by more than one journalist’ (Nicholas et al, 2004: p. 104, in Mitchelstein and Boczkowski, 2009, p. 568).

It is apparent that journalists are obligated to their news organizations and working under the pressure of deadline would expose them to any kind of misinformation (Mitchelstein and Boczkowski, 2009), and a scholar suggests digital systems perhaps would also bring vicious effects which the news organizations could not afford to face such as libel suit (Klinenberg, 2005 in Mitchelstein and Boczkowski, 2009).

Apart from that, the development of weblogs or blogs, it made possible for the public to participate in providing news as they no longer want to wait for the mainstream media to spoon-feed their hunger for news (Allan, 2006). This phenomenon creates a new platform in journalism which is known as ‘citizen journalism’ (Thurman, 2008) where the public who act upon themselves report breaking news or write stories from a different angle as opposed to the stories that mainstream media provided.

It becomes an open place for the public to speak out their mind by connecting with more people and so they can debate and have a discussion on whatever issues that are matter to them. Dahlgren and Sparks, (1991) would describe it as a public sphere which suggests that ‘it is a concept which in the context of today’s society points to the issue of how and to what extend the mass media, especially in their journalistic role, can help citizens learn about the world, debate their responses to it and reach informed decisions about what courses of action to adopt’ (p. 1).

The public can have their say on issues that the mainstream media dare not to talk about. This can be seen especially in countries where the governments are controlling the media and put restrictions on press freedom. For example, this trend is followed in Asia, Latin America, and the former Soviet Union specifically countries like Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and China as well as the declination of press freedom in a more open press atmosphere like Argentina, Brazil, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand (Karlekar, 2008).

Furthermore, with the concept of citizen journalism many Independent Media Centres (also known as IndyMedia) across the globe apply the ‘so-called participatory or ‘open source’ and open publishing journalism’ in reporting news (Platon and Deuze, 2003: p. 336). Indymedia news is published based on its values recognized as democratic, radical, truthful in telling the truth (Allan, 2006), hectic, decentralized nature, and free from the official control (Platon and Deuze, 2003) for citizens who are committed to making reformation in the social and political issues.

Its aim is to encourage the citizens to write in their own style and without being edited in an editorial manner (Allan, 2006). Besides, OhmyNews has proved itself as the ‘people’s news source’ (Allan, 2006: p. 130) in South Korea when Roh Moo-hyun won the presidential election in 2002. The site provided in-depth details about his campaign events which are not covered by the mainstream media for the reason that Roh is someone that is not known in the political prospect and is viewed by the leading newspaper as the menace leftist (Allan, 2006).

The widespread coverage has benefited Roh the mass support from the citizens. Allan, (2006) suggests that basically OhmyNews’s goal is similar to IndyMedia but at the same time, it tries to create financial profit from its online newspaper where a citizen reporter who manages to present high-quality news item could be paid as much as ￡12 or so ($ 20 US).

Another participatory journalism would also include Wikinews where it is created by a group of volunteers whose ambition is to present reliable, unbiased, and relevant news’ referring to its main page. The neutral standpoint is the essential principle it holds in telling its stories to guarantee balance and unprejudiced reporting. The site claims its mission as to create a diverse environment where citizen journalists can independently report the news on a wide variety of current events’ (Allan, 2006: p. 135).

Although citizen journalism is generally concerning to those who have no professional journalism training, it is also used by the mainstream news media organization as part of their options despite carrying the conventional journalism practices. There are ten mainstream UK news websites such as Guardian.co.uk, DailyMail.co.uk, ThisisLondon.co.uk, TheSun.co.uk, News.bbc.co.uk, Scotsman.com, FT.com, Telegraph.co.uk, Independent.co.uk and TimesOnline.co.uk that adopt the user-generated content initiatives in their news websites (Thurman, 2008).

The reader’s involvement has now played its part as a source in getting the news stories published. It is as Thurman, (2008) claims that ‘users have provided a useful new source of exclusive content’ (p. 149). However, Golding and Elliot (1999, in Thurman, 2008) argue that does it mean the well-known established sources can be challenged by the user contribution in order to gather news sources?

The interaction between journalists and sources also has shown tremendous transformation where the users now have their way to communicate with journalist compared to the previous time where only the ‘powerful or skilled sources know how to make contact with reporters’ (Gans, 1999: p. 244, in Thurman, 2008: p. 143). The majority of news sites in Britain usually will select, cut, and sub the reader’s comments or feedback and insert them into their news sites but it is a different story with BBC News websites have Your Say beta’ where the reader can post their comment directly to the websites.