Journalism has evolved over centuries from handwritten bulletins in ancient Rome to the modern practices of verifying and reporting news. The development of printing, railroads, and technologies like computers have enabled the spread of information. While most online communication is not journalism, journalism provides a valuable service by verifying facts and providing context through disciplined reporting. The elements of journalism include pursuing truth, prioritizing citizens, verifying information, maintaining independence, serving as a watchdog, and allowing debate. New technologies have increased the speed of reporting while also lowering barriers to publishing and giving more voices a platform.

1. Journalism

2.  Journalism as a craft, a profession and even as a trade or business, is
over two centuries old.
 It was made possible by the coming together of a number of technologies
as well as several social, political, and economic developments.
 Technology: printing press and the railways

3.  As a craft: Journalism involves specialization in one area (editorial, design,
printing)
 Reporters and the subeditors entails writing to a deadline
 Earlier times: Knowledge of typewriting and shorthand
 Present: Computing and DTP skills

4.  As a profession: No bar to anyone entering the profession.
 Journalism still remains an ‘open’ profession
 Advertising, public relation, Film, theatre, television
 Journalism is a way of knowing different from that produced in social
science or that it has its own specific approach to reality.

5.  As a business and trade, journalism involves publishing on a regular basis
for profit, with news considered as the primary product.
 Hence the need to attract advertisers and readers, through marketing
strategies which focus on circulation and readership.
 Who then is a journalist? What is journalism?

6.  The word journalist, journalism are derived from the French ‘Journal’, which in
its turn comes from the Latin term ‘diurnalis’ or ‘daily’
 The Acta Diurna, a handwritten bulletin put up daily in the Forum, the main
public square in ancient Rome, was perhaps the world’s first newspaper.
 In later periods of history, pamphlets, tracts, reviews, periodicals, gazettes,
news books, news sheets, letters came to termed as newspapers.
 Those who wrote for them were first called ‘news writers’ or ‘essayists’ and
later journalist

7.  The Mughal rulers in India employed ‘vaquia-navis’ and ‘confianavis’ as
public and secret news writers to record once a week in a ‘vaquia’ (a sort of
gazette or mercury) the events of importance in the empire.
 Journalism is the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting
news and information. It is also the product of these activities.
 Editors, correspondents, assistant editors, reporters, proof readers,
cartoonists, photographers, camera crew, audio-video editors, news
readers, producers, directors to stringers, free lance journalist etc.

8.  The world, and especially the online world, is awash in communication.
 The vast majority of this communication, however, is not news and
especially not journalism.
 Almost 70 percent of email traffic is spam, according to web security
company Symantec.
 In 2012, there were an average of 175 million tweets each day. But almost
all – 99% — consisted of “pointless babble,” according to researchers at
Carnegie Mellon University.

9.  While journalism occupies a much smaller space than the talk,
entertainment, opinion, assertion, advertising and propaganda that
dominate the media universe, it is nevertheless perceived as being more
valuable than most of the “stuff out there.”
 That value flows from its purpose, to provide people with verified
information they can use to make better decisions, and its practices, the
most important of which is a systematic process – a discipline of
verification – that journalists use to find not just the facts, but also the
“truth about the facts.”

10.  Journalism can be distinguished from other activities and products by
certain identifiable characteristics and practices.
 These elements not only separate journalism from other forms of
communication, they are what make it indispensable to democratic
societies.
 History reveals that the more democratic a society, the more news and
information it tends to have.

11. Here are 10 elements common to
good journalism
 1. Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth
 Good decision-making depends on people having reliable, accurate facts
put in a meaningful context. Journalism does not pursue truth in an
absolute or philosophical sense, but in a capacity that is more down to
earth.
 This “journalistic truth” is a process that begins with the professional
discipline of assembling and verifying facts. Then journalists try to convey a
fair and reliable account of their meaning, subject to further investigation.

13.  2. Its first loyalty is to citizens
 The publisher of journalism – whether a
media corporation answering to
advertisers and shareholders or a
with his own personal beliefs and
priorities — must show an ultimate
allegiance to citizens. They must strive to
put the public interest – and the truth –
above their own self-interest or
assumptions.

14.  3. Its essence is a discipline of verification
 Journalists rely on a professional discipline for
verifying information.
 While there is no standardized code as such,
journalist uses certain methods to assess and test
information to “get it right.”
 Being impartial or neutral is not a core principal of
journalism. Because the journalist must make
decisions, he or she is not and cannot be
But journalistic methods are objective.

15.  4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from
those they cover
 Independence is a cornerstone of reliability.
 On one level, it means not becoming seduced by
intimidated by power, or compromised by self-interest.
On a deeper level it speaks to an independence of spirit
and an open-mindedness and intellectual curiosity that
helps the journalist see beyond his or her own class or
economic status, race, ethnicity, religion, gender or ego.

16.  5. It must serve as an independent monitor of
power
 Journalism has an unusual capacity to serve
watchdog over those whose power and
position most affect citizens. It may also offer
voice to the voiceless. Being an independent
monitor of power means “watching over the
powerful few in society on behalf of the many
to guard against tyranny,” Kovach and
Rosenstiel write.

17.  6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise
 The news media are common carriers of public discussion, and
this responsibility forms a basis for special privileges that news
and information providers receive from democratic societies.
 Journalism should also attempt to fairly represent varied
viewpoints and interests in society and to place them in context
rather than highlight only the conflicting fringes of debate.
Accuracy and truthfulness also require that the public discussion
not neglect points of common ground or instances where
problems are not just identified but also solved.

18.  7. It must strive to keep the significant interesting and relevant
 Journalism is storytelling with a purpose. It should do more than gather
audience or catalogue the important. It must balance what readers know
they want with what they cannot anticipate but need. In other words, part
of the journalist’s responsibility is providing information in such a way
people will be inclined to listen. Quality is measured both by how much a
work engages its audience and enlightens it

19.  8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional
 Journalism is our modern cartography. It creates a map for citizens to
navigate society. As with any map, its value depends on a completeness
and proportionality in which the significant is given greater visibility than
the trivial.
 Keeping news in proportion is a cornerstone of truthfulness. Inflating
events for sensation, neglecting others, stereotyping, or being
disproportionately negative all make a less reliable map. The most
comprehensive maps include all affected communities, not just those with
attractive demographics. The most complete stories take into account
diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

20.  9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal
conscience
 Doing journalism, whether as a professional writing for a news
organization or as an online contributor in the public space, involves one’s
moral compass and demands a personal sense of ethics and responsibility.

21.  10. Citizens, too, have rights and responsibilities when it comes to the
news
 The average person now, more than ever, works like a journalist.
 Writing a blog entry, commenting on a social media site, sending a tweet,
or “liking” a picture or post, likely involves a shorthand version of the
journalistic process. One comes across information, decides whether or not
it’s believable, assesses its strength and weaknesses, determines if it has
value to others, decides what to ignore and what to pass on, chooses the
best way to share it, and then hits the “send” button.

22.  Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel (2001), The Elements of Journalism,

23. Tabloid Journalism
 The tabloids play a larger role in popular culture and in the publishing
industry than many people like to admit.
 In this lesson, we're going to check out the history of this tradition and see
how it got to be the sensation it is today.

24.  These are magazines focused on salacious celebrity gossip and sensational
news, which you know must be considered with a certain degree of
skepticism.
 Love it or hate it, tabloid journalism has a long and enduring history as
not only a form of entertainment but also a metric by which to evaluate
our devotion to the freedom of speech.
 Tabloids are over-exaggerated, sensationalized, and often false, but we
love them anyway. Want to know more? Well, let's read all about it.

25.  Print media has played a very important role in Western history, particularly in
places like England and the United States.
 In American history, for example, the ability to communicate through
newspapers helped American colonists form a national identity and spread
ideas about revolution.
 For nearly as long as print media has existed in the hands of private industry,
the desire to sell more papers has encouraged a degree of sensationalism.
 True tabloid journalism, as we know it however, begins in the late 19th century.

26.  The first registered use of the word ''tabloid'' came in 1884 from an English
pharmaceuticals company named Burroughs Welcome and Company
 The term tabloid had spread, referring to anything that was compressed.
 It wasn't long until the popular condensed newspapers of England, which
only presented compacted articles on popular topics, became known as
tabloid papers.

27. Yellow Journalism
 While the term tabloid first described a small and condensed newspaper, it
quickly grew to define a style of journalism based around graphic crime
stories, gossip, and even astrology.
 This form of media made its way across the Atlantic and found a new
home in the United States, where yellow journalism (journalism based on
exaggeration or misrepresentation) was already a dominant trend.

28.  During its heyday in the late 19th century it was one of many factors that
helped push the United States and Spain into war in Cuba and the
Philippines, leading to the acquisition of overseas territory by the United
States.
 News as a commodity to be bought and sold in the market place of
information.
 The media are run, like any other business or industrial enterprise.

29.  In 1833, Benjamin H. Day began printing The New York Sun, a cheap
publication that he sold for a penny.
 At the time, newspapers were only sold by subscription, and not all
Americans could afford them.
 But everybody could afford The New York Sun, and Day kept profits high
by printing often-outrageous stories, including one in 1835 that claimed
life had been discovered on the moon.

30.  James Gordon Bennett ran over-exaggerated crime stories in The Herald,
 William Randolph Hearst published salacious gossip and popular stories in
the San Francisco Examiner,
 and Joseph Pulitzer capitalized on the dramas of life in crime-filled New
York with the New York World. Yes, this is the same Joseph Pulitzer after
whom the Pulitzer Prize is named.

31.  Pulitzer, Hearst, Bennett, and Harmsworth took the genre beyond simply
reporting the news. They made news.
 In one famous account, Hearst paid for celebrity French actress Sarah
Bernhardt to have a night out on the town, complete with a trip to an
opium den.
 He then had the accounts of the evening written up and published as
celebrity gossip.
 If there was no good gossip to be had, then the tabloid journalists would
simply have to create news themselves.

32. Alternative journalism
 What constitutes alternative journalism? In the literature the term
encompasses a wide range of practices, from a simple description of the
marginal (ethnic minorities, amateur publications, dissidents, etc.) to a
focus on the type of information presented or the practice of a politically
engaged or oppositional journalism.
 Alternative journalism can refer to an oppositional stance, to a more
participatory mode of journalistic practice, to the subject matter being
covered, or to the position of its producers outside of dominant media
channels (whether commercial or state-sponsored).

33.  Its definition is complicated by changing political circumstances and by
developments within specific media outlets themselves.
 Members of the US-based Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, for
example, were once embedded within a broader countercultural and dissident
movement.
 Today, some retain significant vestiges of that oppositional stance, while others
are more focused on arts and entertainment.
 Media outlets once solidly oppositional can be co-opted into the mainstream,
whether as a result of regime change (such as not only the overthrow of
dictatorial regimes, but also through elections), changes in ownership, etc.

34.  Ethnic and other minority journalists may simultaneously aspire to uphold
mainstream journalistic values while implicitly challenging the established
order by giving voice to marginalized communities, or, in the case of
émigré publications, they may simultaneously support established opinion
in the new homeland while filling an oppositional role in the home
country.

35.  Many of these media reach small audiences, whether as a result of
governmental or other external controls, a lack of financing and access to
distribution channels to reach larger audiences, or a commitment to a
deeply participatory communications practice that requires intimacy to
succeed.
 Nonetheless, alternative journalism has been around as long as journalism
itself.

36. Historical perspectives and new trends
 It used to be incredibly expensive to publish a story and make it available
to a mass audience.
 An expensive propaganda tool, telling the story of events in the way that
the state ordered them to be portrayed.
 The production, transmission and survival of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
relied on the knowledge of writing being passed down through the
Church.
 The printing press broke the monopoly of the scribes

37.  This lead to a flourishing of ideas as people were suddenly able to read
and produce pamphlets on all kinds of subjects, not just rely on the chiefly
religious and philosophical texts approved by the church.
 The content varied from news of war and political developments, through
story-telling ballads of crime and punishment, to the utterly fanciful.
 Of course the technology of producing newspapers has also gradually
evolved, and nowadays page layout is done by computers. The printing
presses themselves are huge industrial machines, in contrast to this
antique press.

39.  But really it has been the development of the World Wide Web over the last 15
years or so which has utterly transformed the publishing landscape in our era.
For mainstream journalism this has meant vastly increased distribution.
 A new speed
 Digital publishing has compressed the timescales for journalists and
newspaper production staff. In years gone by, news of suicide bombers
underground in the Russian capital would have meant producing a graphic for
the following day's paper - a lead time of several hours.
 Now we can get an interactive map of the bombing locations finished,
accurate, and published on the website as quickly as possible.

41.  New voices
 The world wide web also means increasing competition for newspapers.
 Not just from TV and radio companies that have moved into producing
news in the written word format - the BBC News websiteis essentially a
newspaper that doesn't happen to have a printed edition - but from
companies and services like MSN and Yahoo!, and from a multitude of
independent voices.
 The emergence of self-publishing platforms like the Geocities of old, or
Wordpress blog of today, has reduced the barrier and cost of publishing
virtually nothing.

42.  New digital ethics
 The growth of easy digital publishing technology brings with it new
dilemmas for journalists.
 Even as the press write scare stories that Facebook can give you cancer
and is a danger to your children, newspapers use it as a valuable research
tool.
 Whenever a young person is in the news, Facebook or other similar social
networks are usually a ready source of images. No longer does the news
desk have to wait for a family to choose a cherished photo to hand over.
journalist can now lift photographs straight from social networking sites,
and often, in the most tragic cases, newspapers republish tributes to lost
friends that have been posted online.

43.  A new mobility
 They also have access to all of the other freely available tools as well.
Publishing platform like Tumblr.
 It sometimes seems like the only way you can't publish to the Internet is
folding up a message into a bottle and throwing it into the sea.
else - email, voice phone call, desktop app, iPhone app - is catered for.
 There is no reason why a journalist cannot use Tumblr or YouTube or
Dipityto tell their story. They are not forbidden from using the same tools
as the 'citizen journalist' or blogger.

44.  The Tumblr blogging service allows users to publish to the web via a huge
range of options.

45.  The amount of equipment needed to cover events has also drastically
decreased. A single decent smartphone can replace the separate camera,
sound recording equipment and laptop needed to report from events even
just a couple of years ago.

46.  Live blogging
 "Live blogging" is becoming increasingly prevalent across news sites.
Somewhat taking its shape from the over-by-over or minute-by-minute text
sports commentary, these are rolling articles on a topic updated during the
day as a story unfolds.
 There seems to have been a particular focus on them for this year's election
campaign.
 It is very much a pick'n'mix hybrid type of coverage, and seems particularly
native to the web. Unlike the traditional written article, or the two minute
or audio slot, you can't translate the live blog directly to another medium.

47.  Linked Data
 Another area where I expect to see technological innovation impact on
journalism is the concept of 'Linked data'.
 This is a movement to make the web more 'semantic', taking us from a
collection of hyperlinked documents to a collection of hyperlinked data
and facts.
 In some domain areas, like music, the principle is becoming well
established, and media companies are already making use of it.

48.  This BBC webpage about
the band The Magnetic
Fields uses 'Linked Data' to
automatically aggregate
content from sources such
as Wikipedia and
Musicbrainz.

49.  Living Stories
 A third trend is illustrated by Google's "Living Stories" project.
 This experiment was a partnership between the search and advertising
behemoth, and two rather more traditional American media companies -
the Washington Post and New York Times.
 "Living Stories" is a system that allows news organisations to build a hub
page where a story unfolds. I think there is something very attractive in
this idea.

50.  Journalism in the digital age
 One crucial thing to remember is that the concept of 'journalism' is a
separate thing from the concept of running a newspaper.
 Whilst the recession and structural changes in the industry have put the
business model of making and selling newspapers under severe strain,
journalism in a digital age will undoubtedly continue.