With the internet becoming more and more powerful as a medium for the delivery of news, information and entertainment, traditional media forms are finding it increasingly impossible to survive.
There are many reasons why the internet is going to be the most powerful media tool of the century, and it is certainly not just the newspapers who are going to suffer because of the emergence of this ferocious new media beast.
In the new technological age of the twenty-first century, the power of the internet is there for all to see. As people begin to consume news and information at an ever faster rate, media organisations are finding it harder and harder to keep up. Nowhere is this problem felt more acutely than in Britain’s print media sections.
With national newspaper readerships dropping off dramatically, journalists are having to look for new ways to diversify and keep their readers interested. So, they have gone online, too. But it appears that this is not enough. Such is the power of the internet that if readers find it even remotely troublesome to get to the information as soon as they want it, they merely go to a different website.
Local Interest
The theory of hyperlocal news, however, provides the media with a chance to fight back against this demoralising downturn in their print circulations. By definition, hyperlocal news suggests that people’s interest in a news story is governed by their distance from the epicentre of the story.
Thus, someone living in London, for instance, will more than likely be fairly uninterested in a news story from Africa, while they will be quite interested in a news event in London itself, and probably intensely interested in any news worthy events occurring in their own street. So, this provides newspapers with the ability to provide their online readers with niche stories.
However, there lies the catch twenty-two of the internet, as because newspapers are having to go online themselves, they are only fuelling the power and expansion of the internet, and adding to its value as a credible news source in its own right.
Ultimately, the internet cannot be beaten. Instead it must be embraced. As its growth continues it may well wipe out traditional print media forms altogether, and so the only way for these historic institutions to survive will be to reinvent themselves in one form and another, and inevitably to embrace the size and strength of the internet and to find a way to use it to their advantage.
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