The introduction of the internet has increased the amount of information available to ordinary people, but not all of this information is necessarily accurate and neither is all the information real news. While traditional journalism was aimed at a small audience based on geographical location or interest, online journalism can reach an almost unlimited audience. This makes the task of the online journalist more difficult because they need to write their stories in ways that maintain the interest of a widely varied audience, while still keeping true to quality journalism based on facts, interviews, resources and maintaining reliability.
Another important aspect of news in the online environment is the fact that although many sites claim that they are news sites, very few in fact are. People with no qualifications and no research other than rumour can easily create their own websites or even post to official looking sites which allow almost anyone to post information and often spread misinformation. No matter how hard search engines, governments and commissions try to combat spam and disinformation on the internet, there will always fake news sites that appear to give the appearance of real news.
It's not all bad however- online news reporting allows the journalist the ability to bring together many different styles of journalism, including video, audio and interactive to involve the audience as never before.
News in the online environment is similar to real world news when defined by impact, how current it is, conflicts, prominence, timeliness and human interest. Online news differs in the areas of proximity and the unusual. As mentioned above, proximity is almost redundant on the internet because of how easily the news can be accessed. The unusual is now often not unusual, but what is defined on the internet as viral - when something seemingly unknown and uninteresting gains a massive audience through online social media. Unusual events may often go viral but they are only a small part of viral events - viral events are often far from unusual.
Although news in the online world bears similarities to real world news - the playing field is more even now. This means that to stay at the top, Journalists have to stick to their ethics and learn to adapt and produce at a faster rate than before - and prove that they are in fact the best choice to report the news in a changing world.
