By Tarusha Mittal:
Online Journalism is a new phenomenon which is revolutionising the way news is being disseminated throughout our nation.
The internet with itself brought about this feature which had had already been its infancy stage abroad, it is recent phenomena in India and there has been tremendous growth in this area in the last ten years.
It started out with Sify, Rediff, Headlines India and Samachar in the early 21st century and these web portals were unique for they were not off-shoots of any newspaper or news channel. They were solely Indian portals with news available at a click, making it possible for people to keep track of events on the go.
With the springing up of journalism on such sites, the news channels and newspapers also scrambled to make their presence felt in the virtual world and hence begun the era of online journalism
A few individual sites, too came up like – Tehelka and the Cobrapost – which in itself is more of portal with myriad links to sites with news.
The present scenario of online journalism is a figure of empowerment and has also given the denizens a platform to voice their opinions on the various news pieces. It has news dissemination more interactive in nature which is hugely successful in projecting and venting emotions. A healthy interaction between the readers and journalists is a relatively new trend wherein renowned names in media have created their Blogs or accounts on various socio-networking sites in order to make their perspective clear on the various mundane, as well as, glass-shattering, news.
Online journalism has gone a step further by journalists, news agencies, channels and papers having their own pages that keep their readers updated of the latest on-goings. Facebook has various pages, for NDTV, TImesnow, etc.
Online journalism and its power can be gauged, simply, by looking around the number of applications available on mobile phones and RSS feeds subscriptions for news agencies.
Moving into the future, one can easily forecast that online journalism is a field with immense potential because the number of people who have access to the internet- Mobiles, Laptops, iPads etc – is increasing by the minute and as the notion goes, the more the consumers – so, to say- the more would be the number of choices that the producers would dole out.
It is a field with immense competition with ever-increasing power being given to the people who would want someone to listen.
There might be a need, later, to fish out the experts from the amateurs. Online journalism is a field that has evolved to a great extent and that too, in just ten years of seeing light in the nation.
Online journalism has, finally, come of age.
Youth Ki Awaaz also is a platform for online journalism, giving voice to thoughts. After all, thoughts precede action and there is no limit to what collective action can achieve!