Journalists in the Digital Media Age
Not long ago, newspapers served as the dominant mass medium for disseminating news. From the print media, together with the telegraph and the radio, the digital media was only in the sidelines. But those working in the industry already noticed it’s potential to become something more tectonic so they decided to take a shot on the vast unknown of the digital media.
Thus, news websites were established, one of which was news.abs-cbn.com (former ABS-CBN.com). These website’s primary purpose was to compliment newspapers and television news but they turned out to be the most adequate and flexible medium for circulating news 24/7.
Karen Puno-Igaya, head of Digital News Media at ABS-CBN, explained that their website serves more than 200 articles a day. Unlike the newspaper which produces around 150 articles within a day, that usually contained news from the day after the release. News websites are able to give the public more information without fretting for the limits of the paper because it is boundless and there is no need to save space. The digital media is aimed at maximizing the features of their websites by providing news elements (i.e. pictures, videos, and statistics).
News websites paved way to abolish the old one-sided interaction between the publishers and the audiences. This gave the audiences opportunity to voice out their critiques and appraisals towards published articles. These remarks help those working in the digital media industry to produce more relevant topics that would best suit their audience’s preference. Karen explains that, “the way to stay relevant in media is [to] put the needs of the audiences first.”
She shared that audiences often show their concern through social media for reports by sending messages or leaving comments via Facebook. She considers this as an exchange for just simply doing her job by providing the audiences what they want. This pushes the people in the industry to improve their services with each passing days.
She spoke in front of the University of Santo Tomas students last September 20 at the Paredes Grand Ballroom and gave a lecture on “Media Leadership in the Digital Era and Documentaries”.
The event happened in line with the promotion of the ABS-CBN Documentary Caravan and the Class Project Intercollegiate Documentary Competition as projects of ABS-CBN, the Knowledge Channel, and the Philippine Association of Communication Educators Foundation, Inc. (PACE) for next year’s Pinoy Media Congress.
