Will the Internet and its interactive technologies be challenge, threat to traditional news media?
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Huffingtonpost vs. LA Times and WP
According to the data of Compete.com in September 2009, The Huffington Post's traffic surpassed both the sites of LA Times and the Washington Post. What the data mean that the mainstream media may not the dominant information providers on the Web any more. On the Internet, there are the newly emerged news sources with the profound potential to provide alternative information/perspectives not covered by the major media in general.
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I actually Believe that the reason that this is happening is due to technology. More and More people are packing around laptops, PDAS, Smart phones, ect. Wifi is Offered in many restaurants School Campuses, and with 3G networks people just hop on the internet its easier its faster its the future. When you think of reading the news on the internet your mind automatically blink to a "dot com" versus the actual paper in your area. Also The Huffington post has a lot more diversity in its contributers so instead of just reading one sided arguments it has a little bit more moderation in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteby tegan downs
Yes, Tegan pointed precisely out the greater benefits of online news, easy, fast, and convenient access to news with more diverse news and points of views. Also no doubt we live in the multimedia platform news source environment.
ReplyDelete"The Huffington Post... is a liberal/progressive American news website and aggregated blog... featuring various news sources and columnists." - Wikipedia
ReplyDeleteBoth the LA Times and the Washinton Post are standard newspapers, but the Huffington Post is aimed at the exploding internet community. Not only does it take advantage of the ease of access of the internet (as pointed out by Tegan) which the other two news sources also do, but it also appeals to the kind of internet user that uses the internet for more than Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia - smart, progressive, liberal, with a desire to be linked in socially and able to interact with other users (there are several social networking options avaiable on individual stories AND the main page, not to mention straght up comments on stories), and with a drive to stay informed. The other two? Not as much.
Realistically, though, in order to make a real comparrison we'd also need to know what the circulation numbers were and if they've changed recently.
by Jocelyn Sparks
The internet is a threat to traditional media. The answer to that is accessibility, pure and simple. The reason why more and more people are reading the Huffington Post is because they can access it with a large variety of devices. As I type this I have within reach two devices I could use to access the Huffington Post in several locations, my laptop and my iPod Touch. Many people even have smart phones with access to the internet and the ability to read Huffington Post almost anywhere their day to day travels take them. The LA Times and Washington Post have websites, but those are still fairly limited in terms of ease of use and overall features when compared to the Huffington Post. That was mainly a recap of what everyone else has said, but I believe it to be true.
ReplyDeleteBy Zeph Davis
I do not quite understand the differences between Huffington and LA/WP in terms of access to web sites' news..The answer may be beyond the simple accessibility.
ReplyDeleteThe LA Times and Washington Post are both aimed at the local areas they originate from, a portion of the news is only important to people in Washington or Los Angeles whereas the Huffington Post is always focused on being equally interesting to anyone anywhere in the United States.
ReplyDeleteBy Zeph Davis
Taking information from others posts I would have to agree that internet based news sources are more focused on entire areas such as the whole United States instead of let's say just the east coast. So that simply will bring in a much larger community of readers than a news source that only focuses on a general area. Also with it being somewhat of a newer source the newer generations who are very "tech-suave" are more likely to aim at something as previously stated will be easy to access from their smart phones. So not only are they getting older generations who I personally think read the news more often, they can also grab the attention of the younger generations.
ReplyDeleteBy Randi Arellano
We are in a generation of fast technology. The kids that are growing up are spending more time texting, on their phones, surfing the internet, etc. They are not like their parents who sat down and read the paper at the breakfast table.
ReplyDeleteIf a headline catches their attention while surfing that article has a few short lines to entice them to continue to the end. We want to be informed, but by golly, you'd better get to the point quickly.
I think people are losing faith in "print". We all know that media is owned by bigger and stronger people who have the power to stop a story or sway what information the reader actually gets to know. I think we as a society are fed up with half truths so we are looking to other sources.
I absolutely think that the internet will be competition for the traditional forms of media and the traditional media providers. This blog is prof. Not only are "nontraditional" new sites beginning to be more popular than the big guns but with the creation of blogs anyone can be a news writer. The question in credibility but with time any blogger can create a very loyal following that will believe anything that is posted on their site.
ReplyDeleteBy Alan Bodily