Much has been written about how websites are increasingly threatening newspaper readerships. Much has been written about the supposed antagonistic relationship between the two mediums, stereotyped as the fast, loose and reckless propeller heads versus the staid, conservative, old newspaper hacks.
Well, it’s not like that. Although I was just a sparkle in my father’s eye during the early years of Marconi’s wireless, I have often been told that back then people spoke of the “death of radio” with the looming arrival of moving picture television.
But today radio is alive and well, co-existing with TV – both mediums filling their own, important niches. So isn’t it a little premature to talk about the death of print with the arrival of the online medium? It wasn’t so long ago that certain pundits were frothing forth that “print would be dead in ten years time”.
Those ten years have passed. So like TV and radio, won’t online and print media continue to exist into the future side-by-side, each filling their own niches? My guess is that newspapers and magazines will gradually change and adapt to reflect new technological advances. We may start reading them on pliable “electronic boards” or a form of interactive “digital paper”.
Perhaps websites and newspapers will converge and eventually become the same thing. Perhaps online publishers may increasingly find that the main thrust of their business shifts to their audience accessing their websites on mobile and handheld devices, rather than PCs. Who knows?
But that’s far into the future. Now, as the online and print medium continue to exist side-by-side, in a state of relative competition, how can the two mediums work together to complement each other and produce stronger journalism?
Each medium has its own requisite strengths and weaknesses. A key way in which websites and newspapers can work together is by publishing online the original, raw supporting documents surrounding a particular paper’s article. This could be full statements by interviewees, or legal documents and letters that support the story.
It may be a trend we’ll see more of. By publishing a more in-depth story, which includes the supporting documents, the end result is better journalism.
It’s a new kind of “transparent journalism” that serves to build more credibility and trust with readers. A reader will place more faith in a story if it is obvious how a journalist arrived at it. And by publishing the full documents and interviewee replies with the story a publication would, most of the time, find itself on firmer legal ground.
This is something that a space-limited print publication would have difficulty doing with any regularity. Space is in ample supply for an online publication and it comes at a fraction of the price of print.
It also makes perfect sense for journalists to publish online the full, raw audio of the interviews they recorded for an article. These days it’s easier than ever before. Assuming you don’t edit the audio and present it as merely the “raw audio interview”, the recording can be done digitally and then simply compressed as an mp3.
Not only does the user get the choice of listening to the full, unedited interview, but they also get a sample of what the interviewee sounds like. Audio files are a reasonable download for the reader and there is real value there. In the newspaper, the reader is then told at the end of the article that should they want to get more, they can get all the supporting documents online.
The days of newspapers on pliable electronic boards is still some way off, so for the moment—websites should be effectively harnessed together with their print media cousins to make stronger, more transparent journalism.
Matthew Buckland is publisher of the Mail & Guardian Online @ www.mg.co.za