I just stumbled across this site, www.breakingnews.ie , thought it was brilliant! It covers absolutely every news angle no matter how minute and it updates by the very minute. If this is what online journalism can offer us, then long may it reign!! Check it out!
YouTube is a fine example of a website where interactivity plays a key role. Video’s regarding, well everything our posted! Anyone is then able to log on and view these video and decide whether they would like to respond to it by posting their own video or by simply posting a comment.
Saw this the other night on telly, mightn’t be entirely relevant to the whole online journalism theme, but entertaining none the less, im sure you’ll agree!!
Upon my arrival at college this morning, I refrained from buying the Irish Independent as is tradition, instead deciding to get my daily news dose from unison.ie, the Independents online site.
The site’s layout was basically the exact same as to what you would find within the paper itself. All the main sections were lined up for you, National News, World News, Business and Sport. I was suprised by the ease with which I was able to navigate through the site to the various stories I wanted to read. For example I was able to go straight to the articles regarding Bertie’s secretary and Eddie O’ Sulivan’s resignation, the stories which interested me most, without having to chuck Business and Property sections all over the place.
This level of of online journalism is every ounce as informative and reliable as it’s print counterpart. Indeed it is better given the fact that you don’t need to wade through the needless dribble which has no interest to you in an attempt to find the stories you want. However, the Indo is after all, a professional outlet. It simply publishes the same news as the paper would whilst having the added benefit of being able to update itself as fresh news breaks (hmm – 13:14 Beckham in England squad for France friendly). Accountability is not a problem here. Bias or inaccuracies will simply not be tolerated, it will be interesting to discover if the same can be said for what the dreaded ”bloggers” have to say!
In my attempts to compare and contrast online journalism with print, I viewed an edition of the Irish Times and then checked to see what it’s website had to offer. I was quite suprised to discover exactly how thorough their website was in relation to the Newspaper. It covered all the main stories which the paper used and had a timeline of breaking news stories as they happened. For example at 14:27 today, President McAleese met Queen Elizabeth in Belfast whilst at 15:39 Barack Obama launched a fresh attack on Hillary Clinton over her support of the war in Iraq. It is this continuous update of “new news” that print journalism simply can’t compete with.
