What is the present status of online journalism in India?

Digital journalism is different from traditional journalism. It is recognized to as being a form of journalism content being posted on the internet. It is in text, audio, video, it does not have any print attribute. It is undeniably much faster than traditional journalism which happens to be the most important reason for its rapid growth presently.

A cup of tea in the morning with the newspaper is the conventional to start mornings in India. But, since the past few years the romance of newspaper may soon be a nostalgic memory. The rapid growth of in mobile internet has coincided with the growth of online journalism as well. Today, there are nearly 500 Million users of the internet. With low-cost devices and better 3G/4G network being offered to the citizens the traditional journalism is slowly giving way to digital journalism.

Mobile applications like Inshorts, TOI (the times of India) mobile app, Quint, Jio News are producing internet content at a very fast pace. They give real time news in no time, which contributes in setting it apart from traditional journalism. Considering that we all have a busy life and don’t necessarily have the time to read a newspaper on a daily basis brevity plays a vital role in our lives today. A print journalist produces an in-depth article, whereas the news content is consumed on a five-inch mobile screen now a days. It is an interactive medium where the reaction and the response of the audience is also quick. Digital journalism is more of analysis than reporting.

There are many loopholes that comes with this as well, often online journalists are in a hurry to publish the news which sometimes overtakes the need to get it right. Anyone can change anything on an online media platform, which leads to less accountability. While the newspapers have the that luxury of time to verify before putting it out.

At the end, though it has a number of loopholes it continues to create an innovation in journalism and also is trying to overtake the position of traditional media. While a striking a balance between transparency, privacy, brevity, accountability, using the technology and data, is what will set apart a news organisation in the new age.