With the increased development in digital age such as the widely use of mobile phones, the phenomena of news publication also changed, basically from print-only to either online-only or both. In the following four journal studies, it will demonstrate the adaption of news work through the changes, like readers favourable news factors published online, the affects to journalists and editors to the change of journalism, the transform to absolute online-only news and the effect on local commercial news. Buhl, F., Günthe, E., & Quandt, T. (2019). Bad News Travels Fastest: A Computational Approach to Predictors of Immediacy in Digital Journalism Ecosystems. Digital Journalism, 7(7), 910–931. Florian, Elisabeth and Thorsten, who are from the Department of Communication in University of Muenster, have developed an ecosystem perspective to examine the prevalence of immediacy in digital news work. The diffusion processes of 95 news events within 28 online news sites in Germany, published between June 2013 and March 2014 have been studied to test whether different event attributes and the time of the day would affect the diffusion rate in digital news work. By pooling the first report of every particular events, the authors have calculated the time lag between the earliest coverage from other news sites and also used the time stamp of the first released online news article of an event to record whether the diffusion was emerged from daytime (7 a.m. to 7 p.m.) or at night-time (7 p.m. to 7 a.m.) to compare the speed of diffusion. According to the result of the study, the authors concluded that among the ten news factors, seven factors have made no difference in the initial phase of digital diffusion processes, while factors related to prominence and damage experienced a positively accelerating rate of digital diffusion after the first report. Surprisingly, the last factor, reach, got a reverse dynamic which means that events affecting a smaller group in society would experience a faster accumulation at the beginning of diffusion processes of the first report. Lastly, this paper also illustrated that there was a steady increase of diffusion during daytime and slower rise at night-time. However, the rise would continue to increase and even exceeds the rate of daytime after 10 hours.
This paper effectively brings out that negative news does travels faster compared to other news attributes which is relevant to its topic. It also provides a lot of data and table to strengthen the results. However, as this research only included news from 28 news sites, thus it may limit the reliability. Westlund, O. (2013). MOBILE NEWS A review and model of journalism in an age of mobile media. Digital Journalism, 1(1), 6–26. Oscar, Professor at the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Oslo Metropolitan University, examined the importance of mobiles in nowadays society so as leading to a widely increase of mobile news, from news alert by SMS or MSM to mobile news sites. In this paper, he has applied many literature reviews and research reports to discuss the changing of legacy news media into mobile news and the formative and contemporary development of news media. By implying some of the cases of other news sites like Goteborgs-Posten, Expressen and The Guardian, Oscar discussed the phenomenon of arising of mobile journalists and citizen journalism as well as the highlighting some important areas of future digital journalism. Throughout the paper, Oscar stated the emerging practices of using mobile for reporting news, which generated the exist of mobile journalists, meaning that they can edit and publish through mobile technology. Citizen journalism allows citizen to also report immediate news due to the advance in mobile, enabling two-way communication.
A model of journalism also been presented, discussing four approaches, human-led customisation to technology-led customisation and human-led repurposing to technology-led repurposing, meaning the change of news media publishing activities, from manually editing by human to involving the use of technology for customising and purposing the ways to access the news. Lastly, the author emphasised that although mobile devices are rapidly developing, it shown that legacy news media are also mobilising to make sure that journalism are able to adapt the transforming speed. This paper had greatly reviewed the changing of news journalism in the age of mobile media by Oscar, who is specialising in journalism and media studies which helped to increase the authenticity of the study. However, unlike the previous study by Florian, Elisabeth and Thorsten which included data and research from a particular place, it only contained different literature reviews to support his view, therefore it may lower the reliability. Thurman, N., & Myllylahti, M. (2009). TAKING THE PAPER OUT OF NEWS A case study of Taloussanomat, Europe's first online-only newspaper. Journalism Studies, 10(5), 691–708. Neil and Merja, graduated from School of Journalism, City University, in this paper illustrated a case study of a Finnish financial daily Talossanomat, in which it turned from print version publication to online version publication, becoming the first online-only newspaper in Europe. By taking both a one-week formal and informal interview with editors and journalists at Talossanomat, the authors analysed the loss-and-revenue comparison before and after, the working conditions of the journalists, the adaptions of the change and the problem of redundancies. The aim of this paper is to use this particular example to point the situation of online-only news publication, whether it is advantageous or inauspicious.
The study with the editors and journalists concluded that this change has brought to a 75 percent fall of income due to the loss print-advertising and subscription revenue, however, the CEO the cost savings is still greater than the loss. Importantly, although online- only news seems more convenient to the readers due to the advance in mobile technology, the became a concern to editors and journalists. It had led to a redundancy from 52 to 31 editors and many of them are dissatisfied to online medium as they news republished are mainly stories from news agencies instead of original reporting. The authors covered that even the move to online-only can increased visitors, it still need to be innovated and adapted more intelligently to compete with those who had retained a printed version. Comparing with the above two studies, this paper is gaining more accuracy as despite just doing information research, the authors did interviews with the journalists and even the CEO to collect current-experiencing information. Also, the focus of the paper was just one news company which means that data could be more specific and valid, however, it also brought a drawback that it cannot completely represent the exact situation of other online-only news company. Hess, K. (2013). BREAKING BOUNDARIES Recasting the “local” newspaper as “geo-social” news in a digital landscape. Digital Journalism, 1(1), 48–63. Kristy, from School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University, illustrated in this paper the reconceptualisation of the role of “local” newspaper into “geo-social” news due to the shift of newspapers into both print and online versions. By referring to ten commercial newsrooms in the United Kingdom, Oregon, Canada and Australia which have a strong connection to a specific geographic area, Kristy explained the operation of them and argued the need of the shift to “geo-social”.
The paper used a lot of direct quotes from interviews to clearly explain the role of “space of flows” and “sense of place” so as to emphasis the importance of the concept of “geo-social” news as well as the changing nature of audience in this digital age. The author stated that is it appropriate to adapt a shift towards “geo-social” because it can help readers to connect with local events or people which catch their interests. “Community newspaper” were produced to serve people who lives together within a geographical space with a clear local-first emphasis on news, however, some of them also attracted large media operations thus “hyper-local” emerged. The role of “space of flows” means the transmission of the flows of information, showing how community newspaper maintained an influential position in social flows to global news. While for “sense of place”, it assumed that in “geo-social” news, it was not necessary that reader should be reside within the “place” but can be the one who once been or lived there. Overall, the development of digital age, small newspaper should serve well by mastheads that can act as a representative to the geographic identity and a reconceptualision was needed with the increase in information flows. Comparatively speaking among these four researches, the last one was not so much focused on talking the increase publish of online newspaper, instead it brings out the influence of online world to the local commercial newspaper. Also, reliability was limited as the research method of this paper was mainly the evolution of local newspaper with some direct quotes from interviewees and it was published in 2012, so timeliness was affected compared to the above three.