It’s the Audience, Stupid!

What is the new approach to storytelling and how is it being used to broaden audiences?

In the article, the ‘Euronews’ station was falling far behind in ratings and was losing a lot of audience members quickly. To improve ratings, they had to come up with a new approach. So, after going out and asking audience members what they’d like to hear about instead, the station decided that they had a few things to change. Instead of just focusing on news in New Zealand, they’d compare the news in New Zealand to other countries in Europe. This brought back a their original audience, yet broaden their horizons to other countries as well.

How is digital media being used to engage audiences?

­Digital media is being used to connect countries and audiences that normally wouldn’t collide like they do on ‘Euronews.’ People can call in on the news and communicate with others from different countries through the power of media.  

Give three specific examples of how you can incorporate storytelling into an article you write?

By connecting different audiences through storytelling, you can then create one big audience, with different connections formed around the world. Keeping to simple things like one idea per sentence or not writing a sentence without having any fact behind it.

All the Aggregation That’s Fit to Aggregate

What does aggregation mean?

An aggregation is a collection, or the gathering of things together. 

Why does the author describe Arianna Huffington as “the queen of aggregation?”  Go to the Huffington Post and provide an example.

The author describes Arianna Huffington as the ‘queen of aggregation’ because the Huffington Post is a combination of every category you could possibly imagine all crammed into one newspaper/website. From celebrities and horoscopes, to politics and healthy living, the Huffington Post has anything topic you could want to read all in one place.

Is aggregation a threat to professional journalism – why or why not?

I don’t believe so; if anything aggregation can help professional journalism grow in its different topics. However, I could see why it would be a concern. Professional journalism focuses on the more business and exact way of storytelling. If there’s a website (like Huffington Post), in which all topics are combined, the professionalism of the journalism could be questionable depending on the site.

Photojournalism in the Age of New Media

A professional journalist receives a photo captured by a citizen journalist….

·      What are the positives?

You get a personal, up close view of a situation through the eyes of a citizen who might’ve been there at the time of whatever incident just occurred. Whoever gets to those kinds of photos first, has an upper hand in releasing pictures never before seen by the public – more people will tune into something with new information on a topic, than staying on other sites with the same information that keeps being released.

·      Why does the professional journalist need to be careful?

A professional journalist needs to be careful because if they aren’t sure if it is not an original photo taken by a random citizen, then they could be stealing someone else’s photo.

·      Why might the content of the photo be called into question?

If the original source of the photo is unsure, the value of the content is called into question. Determining the original owner of a photo can be problematic which is why companies have to be careful with which information they choose to use.

·      How does citizen photojournalist impact the job of the professional photojournalist?

A citizen photojournalist, if honest about their information, can be very helpful to a professional photojournalist – making their lives a lot easier. However, they can also have a negative impact in this way. The professional photojournalist always has to double check their sources and make sure they get photos from the right source. If they aren’t getting the correct information from the citizen photojournalist, they risk their jobs in making the company look unprofessional with inaccurate information.