Journalism is the investigation and reporting of events, issues, and trends to a broad audience. Although there is much variation within journalism, the ideal is to inform the citizenry. Besides covering organizations and institutions such as government and business, journalism also covers cultural aspects of society such as arts and entertainment. The field includes jobs such as editing, photojournalism, and documentary.
Johann Carolus's Relation aller FÃ¼rnemmen und gedenckwÃ¼rdigen Historien, published in 1605 in Strassburg, is often recognized as the first newspaper. The first successful English daily, the Daily Courant, was published from 1702 to 1735.
In modern society, news media have become the chief purveyors of information and opinion about public affairs; but the role and status of journalism, along with other forms of mass media, are undergoing changes resulting from the Internet, especially Web 2.0.
Its the rights and responsibilities of citizens.
In the April 2007 edition of the book , they added the last element, the rights and responsibilities of citizens to make it a total of ten elements of journalism.
Such a code of conduct can, in the real world, be difficult to uphold consistently. Journalists who believe they are being fair or objective may give biased accounts'by reporting selectively, trusting too much to anecdote, or giving a partial explanation of actions. (See Media bias.) Even in routine reporting, bias can creep into a story through a reporter's choice of facts to summarize, or through failure to check enough sources, hear and report dissenting voices, or seek fresh perspectives.
Generally, publishers and consumers of journalism draw a distinction between reporting ' "just the facts" ' and opinion writing, often by restricting opinion columns to the editorial page and its facing or "op-ed" (opposite the editorials) page. Unsigned editorials are traditionally the official opinions of the paper's editorial board, while op-ed pages may be a mixture of syndicated columns and other contributions, frequently with some attempt to balance the voices across some political or social spectrum.
The distinction between reporting and opinion can break down. In the UK, the Press Complaints Commission states that "the Press, whilst free to be partisan, must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact" but some commentators have suggested there can sometimes be a blurring of opinion and fact. Complex stories often require summarizing and interpretation of facts, especially if there is limited time or space for a story. Stories involving great amounts of interpretation are often labelled "news analysis," but still run in a paper's news columns. The limited time for each story in a broadcast report rarely allows for such distinctions.
Journalists around the world often write about the governments in their nations, and those governments have widely varying policies and practices towards journalists, which control what they can research and write, and what press organizations can publish. Many Western governments guarantee the freedom of the press, and do relatively little to restrict press rights and freedoms, while other nations severely restrict what journalists can research and/or publish.
Journalists in many nations have enjoyed some privileges not enjoyed by members of the general public, including better access to public events, crime scenes and press conferences, and to extended interviews with public officials, celebrities and others in the public eye. These privileges are available because of the perceived power of the press to turn public opinion for or against governments, their officials and policies, as well as the perception that the press often represents their consumers. These privileges extend from the legal rights of journalists but are not guaranteed by those rights. Sometimes government officials may attempt to punish individual journalists who irk them by denying them some of these privileges extended to other journalists.
Nations or jurisdictions that formally license journalists may confer special privileges and responsibilities along with those licenses, but in the United States the tradition of an independent press has avoided any imposition of government-controlled examinations or licensing. Some of the states have explicit shield laws that protect journalists from some forms of government inquiry, but those statutes' definitions of "journalist" were often based on access to printing presses and broadcast towers. A national shield law has been proposed.
In some nations, journalists are directly employed, controlled or censored by their governments. In other nations, governments who may claim to guarantee press rights actually intimidate journalists with threats of arrest, destruction or seizure of property (especially the means of production and dissemination of news content), torture or murder.
Journalists' interaction with sources sometimes involves confidentiality, an extension of freedom of the press giving journalists a legal protection to keep the identity of a source private even when demanded by police or prosecutors; withholding sources can land journalists in contempt of court, or in jail.
The scope of rights granted to journalists varies from nation to nation; in the United Kingdom, for example, the government has had more legal rights to protect what it considers sensitive information, and to force journalists to reveal the sources of leaked information, than the United States. Other nations, particularly Zimbabwe and the People's Republic of China, have a reputation of persecuting journalists, both domestic and foreign.
In the United States, there has never been a right to protect sources in a federal court. Some states provide varying degrees of such protection. However, federal courts will refuse to force journalists to reveal sources, unless the information the court seeks is highly relevant to the case, and there's no other way to get it. Journalists, like all citizens, who refuse to testify even when ordered to can be found in contempt of court and fined or jailed.
In 2008, journalism came under heavy fire. The decline of print newspapers has led to a sharp increase in job cuts for journalists. In 2008 alone, approximately 16,000 journalists had their employment terminated ' a budgetary response to declining subscription dollars and the inability to adapt to a free news-driven society. With advertising revenues taking a harsh rapping from the transitional shift of a subscription-based/advertising model to online ad placements, the discrepancy in advertising revenue is making it difficult for traditional newspapers to survive.
The Tribune Company (owner of the Los Angeles Times) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy; The Rocky Mountain News (one of the country's oldest newspapers) closed its doors after 150 years of business; The Christian Science Monitor transitioned from its daily newspaper edition to online distribution; 120 newspapers closed their doors in the first three months of 2009; newspaper circulation was down 7% in the first six months of 2009. However, it is recognised that in high population density distribution areas, traditional newspapers have been in oversupply. The current rationalisation of the free press may not be so much the end of print, as the reformation of an over-saturated medium that now has to compete with the growth of news online.
Newspapers are forced to maximize their current staff in a response to declining advertising and circulation revenue. As formerly relied upon revenues shore-up, newspapers are exploring radically new ways of reaching readers. The New York Times has partnered with Amazon's Kindle DX to bring current subscribers and Kindle users NYT content. This, along with other social media properties, are ways in which traditional media are fighting to stay relevant in the digital age.
With the decline of print newspapers, there has been a wave of new media journalism. New media journalism is also known as convergence journalism. Convergence journalism focuses on using social networking as a means of communication as opposed to traditional print journalism. Many newspapers have begun publishing online to cut production costs; simultaneously, more people find news online instead of buying print newspapers. Recently, convergence journalism has been dominated by websites like Facebook and Twitter. With the evolution of new technologies, some experts predict print journalism will ultimately disappear, to be replaced by new media.
Besides, this new media age features the growth of multimedia, as some newspapers have begun publishing online, some journalists or journalism organizations also add their reporting through the internet on top of their traditional media outlets; and a lot of independent journalism production houses appear as well, which may feature both main stream news or unknown stories that are not cover in the news. Common Language Project is an example of a multimedia production house that features under-reported stories.