CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES OF ONLINE JOURNALISM BY ABER MAURINE 11/U/7930/PS

ONLINE JOURNALISM  Online journalism is defined as the reporting of facts when produced and distributed via the internet by journalists who work for mainstream market driven news organization.

Challenges  Print media still poses a threat for online journalism. Even with the downsizing and cutting costs advertisers still prefer print because it reaches its different audiences. Print brings in 50% of the revenue which makes it. Digital journalism is not much of a savior, revenue from digital have not kept pace because audience is fragmented.  It is hard to attract digital subscribers ready to pay for content making it hard to fund online journalism. Online journalism industry is not as lucrative as it should be.

Challenges  With the presence of social media like Facebook. It becomes hard for online journalism to get a platform. Readers usually do not want to look for stories that is why they rely on Facebook thus online journalists have the challenge of marketing their on content so as to compete with other online platforms.  Online journalists lack marketers like print. Print has circulation marketers whose job is to figure out how to make money.

Challenges  To produce impactful on line journalism people have to work as team. For example reporters, developers and designers which is very hard because most professionals do not appreciate and understand each other’s ability and strength.  Advertisers are now going direct to their audiences through social media campaigns. This has made it hard for digital journalism because every professional is embracing the online platform and directly dealing with their audience.  Online journalism constitutes using electricity, internet connection which is very difficult to rely on because the reality in Uganda and Africa at large is that electric power is not reliable thus a challenge for digital journalism.

Challenges  High level of illiteracy, mostly computer illiteracy among the potential subscribers. Sometimes those who have access to internet fail to use it because they do not know to use it.  With the digital era everyone wants to be the first to break a story thus compromising the values of journalism like truth and accuracy thus many people find it hard to trust online content.

Opportunities  Anyone can start up their own form of online newspaper.  With online journalism every reporter who once had a dream of owning a media house can make it happen with this digital era.  For instance this can be possible with personal blogs and websites.  One can run websites for existing and upcoming companies who need web developers.

Opportunities  Online journalism will create an informative society, everyone can tell a story online and be source for each other.  Online journalism has democratized the flow of information that was once controlled by tradition media. It is easy to break through as an online journalist because one makes there work visible to the whole world