Mainstream News vs Blogosphere

Journalist vs Creative writer!

Everyone can write! Yes, that is true, but to be a creative writer is not easy. Some might say that ‘it is something to be born with’ and some may think that it needs abundance of practice! However, it is never easy to write and be sexy on your writing skill. Like, here, we are struggling to make our blog attractive enough for you guys to enjoy our topic this week. Please do!! And…. Our goal is to enlighten people about journalist and creative writing! To be a journalist, you first have to be a creative writer, or else, you never able to ‘sell’ your stories. Wait!! What is journalist/journalism? Who are they? How journalist is different from a creative writer? What make a journalist as journalist? These are some possible question that will rise when we talk about writing and journalist.

Diagram 1.0: Journalist plays a huge role in delivering news to the people.

For your information, a journalist is the ‘VIP’ (very important) in our life because they provide us with abundance of current information and new knowledge. A journalist can be defined as someone who collects, write, or distribute news or other current information and their work is called journalism (Online Dictionary, 2015). The rise of journalism in the 18^th and 19^th centuries was a signalled to the rise of democratic social and political in Europe and North America (Siapera, 2012). Historically, journalism was practiced mainly by educated middle and upper-middle class men, who sought to publish their rational-critical reflections with the intention to educate readers. The concept of journalism is still remain the same to date, which it focus on providing continues information for the people. However, the medium to deliver the message has varied. Yesterday, yes, yesterday, is a history, thanks to the advancement of technology, we can now enjoy different types of information, not only from the mainstream sides.

Diagram 2.0 : Yet with the arrival of technology, everyone seems to able to deliver their thoughts in the World
Wide Web.

Thus, anyone who collects, write or distribute news or any current information can now be a JOURNALIST. How? We have been talking before about Chocolate Moist Cake (aka Computer Mediated Communication [CMC]) before! Everything could be reach by the internet. With the improvement of the technology, there is no ‘No’ to any information. For so many years, people will only have the access to read only on the ‘mainstream’ news, now we can get the alternative news from the internet, mainly. We are all aware that mainstream media is the mass media that influences a large number of people and both reflects and shapes prevailing currents of thought (Online Dictionary, 2016). Yes! TV3, RTM, NTV7 are some of the mainstream media that is available in Malaysia. The parameters of freedom and space found in the mainstream media are directly or indirectly prescribed by the government and thus has resulted turnover of Malaysian reader towards alternative  media for new sources of information, news and views (Ali, Faridah, Muhd Yusuf, Normah & Maizatul Haizan, 2011). 

Alternative media are media that differs from established or dominant types of media in term of their content, how they are produced or how they are distributed (Online Dictionary, 2016). The alternative media could be the blogosphere where many people share their ideas about the current issues and their thoughts of some event. The blogosphere is evolving and being transformed in the process where they mainly focused on politics and public affairs which it has changed the way information becomes front page news (Alex Jones in MacKinnon, 2005). The way they present the idea of the similar issues also differs from the mainstream. How? As we mentioned earlier, mainstreams media are dominated by the government agencies, compare to blogsphere, who are generally people that did not tied to government agency and they are relatively free from the “government square”.

Diagram 3.0 : Media Prima's corporate structure.

The arrival of Internet certainly change the way we view the world and even managed to restructure journalism. According to John V, Pavlik in his book “Journalism and New Media”, the contents of journalism started to change and so does the skills that are needed to be one (as we discussed earlier), the structures of news organizations and newsroom and lastly would be the relationship between publics and journalism (Pavlik, 2001). The practice and routine in journalism changes completely, plus with the arrival of new platform such as application Kindle and e-book applications. These platform are not only cheap and are able to reach further than traditional media (newspaper). For instance, newspaper are one sided interaction and once publish there will never be a follow up respond from the writer. Which are rather different in context of new media, there are comment sections provided down below for the further inquiries and suggestions.

Diagram 4.0:  1MDB scandals.

Journalist vs Bloggers: IMDB

The easiest example that we can found in current issues especially in Malaysia is the 1MDB scandal. We won’t be going into pin pointing “who-is-wrong-and-who-is-right” and role of the organisation but rather on how the issue are potray on different light, based on their platform. According to Andy Davidson from ExpatGo, “the 1MDB scandal receives daily coverage in social and mainstream media. Questions and answers fly back and forth, with critics claiming the answers do not adequately address the questions asked, and the government and 1MDB insisting they have adequately responded” (Davidson, 2015). It causes a huge uproar among Malaysians, as it involve a lot of money. It involved big names of the industry including the Prime minister himself, in spending the money. We follow closely 4 blogs that posted an entry related to the scandal which are posted below:

·        http://justread-whatever.blogspot.my/

·        http://malaysiansmustknowthetruth.blogspot.my/

·        https://dinmerican.wordpress.com/category/1mdb-scandal/

·        http://syedsoutsidethebox.blogspot.my/

Therefore by analyzing through these blogs, we have come up with few points that can be used to show the difference and both similarities in reporting news, the goods and bad practices in online news,types of coverage and our recommendation for future purposes. 

Discussion:

1) Difference and Similarities

Based on our observation, it is noted that the difference between both newspaper news and blogs, the most obvious would be the usage of language in both platform. Newspaper stressed on the usage of good language while reporting news, by good language is mainly grammar, sequences and continuation of flow from one sentence to another. It implies works experience or perhaps a language teacher as the message are easily delivered. Whereas, bloggers wrote mainly straight from their heart with no filters involve and sugarcoat, perhaps which explain lack of noun provided and flow. Yet, this does not reflect all blogs in general, it is just the one that we listed above. On the context of ideas, blogs are filled with creativity as as I mentioned above, each blog introduced new conspiracy theory based scandal, which we find it quite entertaining, as most of entry in newspaper are synchronize from one publication to another. Which makes this is something refreshing; to hear new ideas apart from the same boring news. On of the reason of the conformity would be most of the news are based from the same source like press conference. 

2) Good and the Bad in online news.

The lack of resources are surely seems to grab our attentions. Most online news are improved version of the print newspaper. It may due to the fact that blogs are where people pour their heart out and response on certain issue. In our cases would be the people disappointment towards the Prime Minister while explaining their own version of the stories. We were not in position to claim what is good and bad for online news as it is best if we leave it as what it was. There are online news websites that simply a collection of all the print newspaper available and put it under the same roof. Based on our discussion, we would put both coverage in par as they both have the merits and demerits. Newspaper would give up the basic information in certain issues, where blog spots would be the platform for people to discuss and both platform are thereby needed to understand further. We would recommend for people to support both platform. 

Reference

Ali, S., Faridah, I., Muhd Yusuf, A., Normah, M., & Maizatul Haizan, M. (2011). The impact       of New Media ontraditional Mainstream mass media. The Innovation Journal, 16(3), 1-7. Retrieved from http://www.innovation.cc/scholarly-style/ali_samman_new+media_impac116v3i7a.pdf

Davidson, A. (2015, July 28). Current Issues in Malaysia and How it Affects the Economy. Retrieved from ExpatGo: http://www.expatgo.com/my/2015/07/28/current-issues-in-malaysia-and-how-it-affects-the-economy/

Pavlik, J. V. (2001). Journalism and New Media. Columbia: Columbia University Press.