Before and After the Internet: What has Changed for Media Industry?

By Rachel Sauer

Because the change happened in incremental steps, almost without our noticing, it’s seemingly impossible to pinpoint exactly when life morphed into B.I and A.I.: Before Internet and After Internet.

Before Internet is a technological relic, a time of rotary phones and horse-drawn carriages and cave paintings. It exists to be scrutinized through the prism of history and marveled over with a wondering, “How did we ever get things done back then?” That is because After Internet – barely more than two decades – has so thoroughly transformed and redefined every facet of life for the majority of Earth’s 7 billion people.

Those in the journalism industry have especially felt the pangs of this monumental shift. Readers, back when they were called “readers” and not “news consumers,” generally had to wait for the following morning’s edition to learn what was going on in the world. Television sped the process along, but still there was the element of patience, of waiting for trained journalists to deliver all the news that was fit to print or broadcast.

Now, however, with smartphones firmly in hand, news consumers have grown to expect all the news in the known universe, and within nanoseconds of its occurring. Emerging markets like India are the driving force behind smartphone sales that in 2014 topped 1.2 billion worldwide, according to Gartner, Inc. data, growing the number of consumers who want their news fast and now.

And even in India, a market where legacy media such as print newspapers and local broadcast television maintain a strong foothold in the market, journalists are scrambling to compete in a redefined field that now includes “citizen journalists” with camera phones and Twitter accounts, as well as a proliferation of online publications, blogs and other non-traditional means of news delivery.

However, amid all the worldwide journalistic hand-wringing over how to spread the news in 140 characters, how to get and keep people’s attention amidst a cacophony of options, how to combat decreasing attention spans, how to present quality work that will end up being viewed in pixels on a tiny digital screen, this truth remains: The fundamentals of journalism have not changed.

A 2014 Poynter Institute poll of multimedia journalists and educators found that the traits required of a good digital journalist are the traits that have always been necessary for every journalist working in any medium: Curiosity. Accuracy. Good news judgment. Knowledge of government. Mastery of interview techniques. The ability to analyse and synthesise data.

This is why the curricula at some colleges like the Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media, Bangalore is at once fluid and responsive to changes in the marketplace while maintaining a firm foundation in the fundamentals of journalism. Students learn to use new and emerging media and to be innovative in delivering the news to changing audiences while learning that the actual process of gathering and delivering the news is based on fairness, objectivity and critical thinking. They’re taught to rapidly respond to the news and deliver it to their audience via the most effective medium for the story, but never at the expense of verifying the facts and getting them right.

The world may have changed into a Before Internet and After Internet place, but ultimately, the news is the news. How it’s delivered may have changed, but the need for it has not.

About the Author:

Rachel Sauer has been a journalist for almost two decades, reporting stories as varied as the devastation Hurricane Katrina wrought on America's Gulf Coast to a quiet, slice-of-life narrative about an old man walking his old dog.

Her career has taken her to newspapers and wire services in Utah, Colorado, Washington D.C. and Florida. She also taught English for two years at a public elementary school in northwest China. As media industries have evolved, Sauer has developed a passion for multimedia storytelling, letting the story dictate the most effective medium for telling it.

Read more: The Future of Journalism in India