What is 21st Century News?

Through development of technology, the ability to publicise news has increased dramatically. News now is more accessible to the general public as well as being more in the publics general interest. Throughout this blog post I will explore a diversity of meanings when it comes to something being newsworthy, in the public interest and furthermore how technology expands this. I will go back in time and refer to how news travelled and weather this was a reliable source or not, I similarly will talk about the dying trend of newsprint.



Being able to define what is newsworthy differs when it comes to the person reading the news. Similarly, a great deal of this involves the notions involved through the public. Different people may consider a variety of aspects of news as newsworthy, regardless of a personal opinion.

It has been suggested that new information about a subject should primarily be considered news, however there are many published articles where this is not the case. For example, with regards to the Beijing Olympics, we were all aware that they were going to take place, but when it came to publishing new stories on the events, they still will be considered "current news".



It is important to relate back in time when looking at the development of news and technology. What makes 21^st century news today has been greatly influenced by the events that took place in history. Back in the late Bronze ages, if you didn’t appear to own a horse, the fastest most reliable way if transferring news was to walk. Even though this may seem bizarre and far-fetched in today’s society, it was in fact a device used worldwide. Even though publications have developed in the UK and USA, this isn’t however the case in places such as Afghanistan. Regardless of their diverse technology in comparison to the new media aspects we use, it isn’t necessarily a bad way of delivering information.



There have been a lot of studies that have taken place in the outskirts of Africa which have proved that a slow, yet reliable way of transferring news is surprisingly affective. However, transferring information verbally does have its down sides. These could, in turn, be interoperated to out weigh the positives. There is a fine line between transferring messages in a direct way to create new stories and "gossip". There are many aspects which get in the way, such as new media devices; these allow the spreading of information to develop rapidly. This, as mentioned before, isn’t always beneficial as the facts could be inaccurate.



The final issue regarding the news development in the 21^st century, lies with the issue focussing on print journalism. News has in fact, always been about speed, but from analysing the position we are in currently, it is impossible to speed up the delivery time for news anymore than current. If the speed of transferring information speeds up more than it is at now, it will eventually turn into bad journalism. If the production of news stories is done too quickly, stories will soon become false and of a bad quality. 

In the 21^st century a lot of people can transmit messages relating to news, examples include Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other new media devices. In relation to this, furthermore this highlights the problem that print journalism is dying out, and will eventually be nonexistent.

All of these points reflect the development of both technology and news at current, in the 21^st century.