The End of Fortress

Journalism

Prepared by:Md. Mahbubul Haque OsmaniLecturer, MSJ, ULAB

What is Fortresses Journalism?

Lived and worked in proud institutions with thick walls

Powerful, long established institutions provided the perfect base for strong journalism

Providing- legacy costs of buildings, printing presses, studios and all the other structural supports of the fortress

Fortress world the consumption of journalism was through clearly defined products and platforms – a TV or radio program, a magazine or a newspaper.

Why fortress journalism collapsed?

Internet-based journalism is the most significant contributor to this business collapse.

Blended world of internet journalism all products are available within a single platform and mental space.

User can now click and flit between each set of news.

Or they can use an aggregator to pull together all the information they require.

The reader may never be aware from which fortress (or brand) the information has come.

Most of the major news organizations had the assumption.

Their news product provided the complete set of news requirements for their users.

But in an internet world, users see the total information set available on the web as their 'news universe'.

The ability of audiences to pull together their preferred news is bringing the walls of the fortresses tumbling down.

In effect, the users see a single unified news universe and use technology (e.g. Google) to get that content to come together.

What is Networked Journalism?

Jeff Jarvis, Professor of Interactive Journalism at the City University of New York, has coined the neatest way of describing this: “Cover what you do best. Link to the rest.”

If the BBC is best in news video and the Telegraph best in text sports reports, why shouldn’t they syndicate that content to each other and save effort?

linked approach requires a new kind of journalism, the opposite of fortress journalism.

It is well described as “networked journalism”.

Its coinage popularized by Charlie Beckett at the LSE/Polis.

If you are a subject-based journalist, remember that the reader is likely to be consuming your journalism within a much wider frame of reference.

You’ll need to link with specialists in other fields.

As a technology journalist, you might get more coming to your story via a link from the entertainment or consumer section than those choosing to read about technology.

News organizations can assist their teams by providing much richer data about how audiences are consuming.

And we are helped in this by technological changes.

On-demand journalism automatically generates much more specific data about audience usage of stories and story types.

Thank You