‘Newspapers ... are no longer just written, but “designed”, and mutimodally articulated’ (Kress & van Leeuwen 1998, p. 187). The new form of journalism also allows them to monetize their video sites.
News video has become an imperative media. A news article ‘85%of media websites now use online video to cover news’ which was featured on Social Times on 3 May 2011 reported that, based on an online survey, Douglas Simon (cited in O’Neill 2011) concludes that online media has become a video programming network:
‘33% more media outlets are using online video to cover news than they were a year ago … [80% of survey respondents] indicating that [media websites] are currently selling advertising … [84% of them] are using third-party video’.
Below is the related video report from Douglas Simon (cited in O'Neill 2011):
Example of video programming:
‘Video programming is a major component of the Wall Street Journal Digital Network (WSJDN)’ (Dow Jones n.d.).
According to Walsh (2006, p. 24), ‘multimodal texts are those texts that have more than one “mode”, so that meaning is communicated through a [synchronization] of modes’. The affordance of online video news clips enhances the involvement and interactivity between audiences and news organizations. Instead of reading a wordy news article, many consumers these days are more prefer to watch a short news video. As Nielsen (2010) reports that ‘video/movies [including news sites] was the only other to experience a significant growth in share of U.S.
Unlike print-based texts, ‘video clips can often feature graphic, emotionally intense, graphic video and audio in news stories’ (Hane; Karrfalt; Strupp, cited in Wise et al. 2009, p. 532). Video clips increase the interactivity and immediacy as the audience is “being there”, the ongoing situation, by watching them online. This type of revolutionary form of journalism is also defined as convergence. ‘Convergence transforms the consumers of media products from passive … to active audience’ (Sutu 2011, p. 49). Consumers can control when, where and how they access online news information.
Furthermore, ‘in a recent Nielsen survey, 85% of Internet users believed that online content that is currently free should remain free’ (cited in Ernst & Young 2010, p. 7). Thus, the news organizations mainly rely on advertising-based models to monetize their video sites. On the other hand, because of the growing number of online news audience, more advertisers are interested in Internet advertising. In addition, ‘ComScore found that product videos increase the likelihood of purchase by [64%]’ (The Social Newsroom 2011). Thus, video news sites are becoming one of the dominant media for advertising. Through the cooperation of both advertisers and news organizations, they share mutual benefits and able to increase their revenue.
The convergence of online video news clips has fostered the integration of news organizations, advertisers and readers. There will be more media companies transforming themselves into online video networks. This trend may affect the traditional form of media in the future.
A view from the opposite perspective:
News organizations receive some critics, saying that the third parties may alter the videos and mislead the audiences (like what has been discussed in the previous post about photojournalism ethics). According to Ugland & Slattery (2005), ‘many mainstream news organizations have taken seriously the need to establish written codes of ethics for their journalism employees. These codes … help ensure consistency of practice [and] give the audience some sense of what to expect’.
References:
Dow Jones n.d., Wall Street Journal Digital Network – video programming, Dow Jones & Company, viewed 8 November 2011, <http://www.dj.com/djcom/FactSheets/wsjvideofactsheet.pdf>.
Ernst & Young 2010, Monetizing digital media, Ernst & Young Global Limited, viewed 8 November 2011, <http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Monetizing_digital_media/$File/Monetizing_digital_media.pdf>.
Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 1998, ‘Front pages: (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout’, in A Bell & P Garrett (eds), Approaches to media discourse, Blackwell, Oxford
Nielsen 2010, ‘What Americans do online: social media and games dominate activity’, Nielsen wire, blog posting, 2 August, viewed 8 November 2011, <http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/what-americans-do-online-social-media-and-games-dominate-activity/>.
O’Neill, M 2011, ‘85% of media websites now use online video to cover news’, Social Times, 3 May, viewed 8 November 2011, <http://socialtimes.com/85-of-media-websites-now-use-online-video-to-cover-news_b60505>.
Sutu, RM 2011, ‘Convergence, the new way of doing journalism’, Romanian Journal of Journalism & Communication, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 48-53, viewed 8 November 2011, <http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.taylors.edu.my/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=59580601&site=ehost-live>.
The Social Newsroom 2011, ‘Online video use on media sites jumps to 85%’, The social newsroom, blog posting, 2 May, viewed 8 November 2011, <http://www.press-feed.com/blog/?p=289>.
Ugland, E & Slattery, K 2005, Ethics: third-party content needs more security, The Digital Journalist, viewed 8 November 2011, <http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0511/ethics.html>.
Walsh, M 2006, ‘The ‘textual shift’: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 24-37.
Wise, K, Bolls, P, Myers, J & Sternadori, M 2009, ‘When words collide online: how writing style and video intensity affect cognitive processing of online news’, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 532-546, <http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.taylors.edu.my/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=11347c54-5fb0-42f8-b007-5a347c828cf1%40sessionmgr111&vid=2&hid=9>.
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