Loss of identity in journalism is a common thing in our new digital era. As digital environments are in constant expansion, we as readers have changed the way we read. Journalists must do it if they want to adapt. Mauricio Cabrera explained it for FOPEA (Argentinian Journalism Forum): «It’s really difficult for our audiences to understand why the media is there, and for us is truly difficult to know why they are here«. Journalism practices have lost the notion of their role in the new era, and so, they have lost every sense of representativity. This article was originally written in Spanish. Read it from here.
As the internet is our revolution, editorial lines have been restructured. Inside search engines, news has become more relevant. Without it there are no views and without views there is no audience. Everything is engaged. As so, to get to know your audience and represent them, we must be inside the news. Topics show themselves an aggregated value for the audience as they look at what to read and how to do it. «Everybody wants news they can trust, but no one is sure what “trust” means.«
Credibility is the key
Content creators have been massified too much. It is unnecessary to represent the term, as it is obvious in our modern days. It’s just not new. We are all content creators, and recreators too. As digital media is moving forward and information is only one click ahead, we can send and resend stories every time and every way we want them. Journalists are mediators between this and the news. Content creators of a reality that is already there.
«If we keep this way, media will become expendable even in topics that are journalist type. If your media has no individual research and differentiated information, what is left it’s just a columnist work«. Mauricio Cabrera resumes it in a clear way.
Fake news are now so common that credibility in media has been dragged within time and lectures. Is nowadays more common to find one in social media, but traditional media cannot gain their space back. Credibility has been abashed as users have changed their manners to get informed. So media needs to readapt to the new ecosystem of information to set position and at the same time, make a difference. Users are now less believers. «Transparency should constitute some sort of explanation to the consumer about the decision-making involved in the story.«
We can’t deny it, users have lost trust in mass media to get informed. Readapt and finding a new way to get to them is a central objective in our modern communication. Many readers have migrated to other platforms. If we understand how to reconfigure this ecosystem to get the attention.