On 22 March, as part of IJ Week, the International Journalism (IJ) programme hosted a forum discussion to talk about the future of journalism. The two panellists were DHSS Associate Professor, Dr Edgar Yuen, and DHSS Assistant Professor, Dr Mark Hughes, both well-versed in journalism, having coming from industry backgrounds.
The first question asked panel members about what they learned in their approximately 30 years of industry experience, specifically their biggest takeaways. Dr Yuen, coming from a background as a reporter and editor in Hong Kong, said that he learned how to be a great story teller. His experiences have taught him how to present stories, how to keep the reader on the page, and how to make the story attractive as possible. He credited these skills with later making him a more successful professor, because he has learned how to keep students engaged in a classroom.
Dr Hughes, having worked both in print media and television, reflected about how he also learned to keep readers or watchers amused and informed, emphasizing that this differs depending on the type of media.
Dr Chen then asked the panellists if they felt formal education in journalism was essential for aspiring journalists. Both replied that they felt having a background in journalism is important for the profession; however they both said they learned a lot of the skills on the job. Both panellists also discussed the importance of socializing yourself into the journalist culture, because only by blending yourself into the communities you want to report on can you have access to the best stories. Dr Hughes discussed the importance of having good contacts to help you generate stories, and discussed how his career in journalism gave him access to many famous people, and the opportunity to see a lot of extraordinary events up close.
After discussing the field of journalism more generally, the conversation moved to what Dr Chen called “The crisis of journalism”. Dr Yuen argued that it isn’t really a crisis of journalism, because journalism has changed forms many times since the beginning of civilization when “journalism” could be described as verbal story telling. He argued that instead it is a crisis of print media, as the internet and new media are becoming preferred over traditional newspapers.
Dr Hughes discussed how income from traditional print media has been drastically decreasing as readership goes down, and even how the Daily Mail Online, the most read online news source, makes less money than printed media once did. People are increasingly consuming their news in new ways. Dr Yuen discussed the time period when people would pay for newspapers and spend hours reading through the whole thing are becoming a thing of the past. People don’t need to pay for their news anymore, and often prefer shorter and more concise stories. Readers of news generally don’t seem to care to differentiate between journalism and information.
A question was raised if the general population even needs quality journalism, and many in the room agreed that the general population only really needs the information, which could explain the popularity of online media. The panel also discussed how readers used to have media loyalty, however not so much anymore.
The conversation then moved into media bias, and how journalism should be neutral; however most news is either slanted left or right in its writing. Panellists advised readers to try and consume media from a variety of sources, with Dr Hughes saying “You have to develop an awareness that not everything you read is true”. He ended by saying that readers must consider “Who is telling me the news, and why are they telling me?”
More from IJ Week: IJ Week begins in style
Reporter/Photographer: Samantha Burns
Editors: Samuel Burgess, Deen He
(from MPRO)
