The definition of news is the same. News is still based on impact, conflict, currency -- all the things we learned in j-school. What is changing is the way the audience gets the news.
According to the Annual Report on American Journalism on the Journalism.org website, from 1999 to 2003, there was a steady increase in reliance on the web for national and international news.
The report also shows that television is still the number one way Americans get their news, but TV audiences have declined along with those for newspapers, radio and magazines.
The point is there are many choices for news consumers. They can listen to NPR and the BBC on the radio. Cable and satellite offer a plethora of ethnic channels with news specialized for Arabic, Hispanic, or African American. News magazines are targeting audiences with specialized topics; The Economist, BusinessWeek and Globalist are just a few examples.
The key word is specialized. Audiences want specialized news or news they are interested in. The Internet caters to this idea of news. On the Internet people can choose to subscribe or log on to websites that offer the content they want.
The problem is there are too many choices. The more news outlets, the smaller the audience, the fewer advertising dollars, the lower the profit margin.
So editors and publishers attempt to gain a mass audience by offering entertainment as news. For example, CNN reports about the lives of celebrities. This isn't news and it does not capture more audience because it turns the core audience off.
News is still news, it is just becoming more specialized.Click here to read more about the state of the news media at journalism.org. (http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org)
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