Just try to attract your audience!

James Curran is one of the many scholars who have dared to explain how journalism of the future will be. For him, citizen journalism is the key for this profession, so that anonymous people will create journalistic content. As we have said in other posts, it is necessary to leave this job to professionals who have studied for it. Besides, it is scientifically demonstrated that the blogosphere is successful but that there are many blogs which are not read and just a few are consulted by many people (specifically, this effect is called ‘longtail’).

This way, although the Internet arrived to our houses long time ago, we can say that comments on posts or in the blogosphere are not precisely the ones that add quality to the stories published. In other words, many of them are only intended to criticise or insult.

In his analysis, Curran sees the context of actual crisis as an opportunity to reconstruct the profession, to become more serious and be able to reach the audience in an efficient way. Thus, since lots of journalistic businesses have dismissed many workers, it is quite difficult to think that editorial offices with less people will be able to rebuild the journalistic model. For me, it is not a question of more or less people, it is a question of trying to achieve people interested on public affairs.

An example could be to make people read economic data. How? Introducing analysis and personalising economic pieces of information is a clear way to reach society and instruct it in matters that are necessary –and that are so common as go shopping and taking into account some useful advices. There are other aspects that also are quite important for society such as what does imply an economic intervention from the European Union or what does it mean that the Spanish government will increase taxes. These are questions that society need to know and journalists are the ones trained to explain.

Another way to attract your audience is to use multimedia in an appropriate way. That is, to promote all the possibilities that the Internet allows. Use audiovisual elements so that society can understand what you explain without getting bored.

To end up, I think that there is a public service broadcaster that really serves society and tries to suit the information for it. They use audiovisual elements in the Internet versions of their news and they personalise reports. Still, in the BBC Radio they are also capable of getting the attention of their public in radio reports since they use all the possibilities that the medium allows (natural rounds and not only human voices). Thus, the BBC can be taken as a model for other public broadcasters. But this is a question that will be explained in other posts!

Àngels Mulet

Trainee student at Signe Words