Jayde Tunnacliffe

Since the creation of social media, the way in which news is presented to us has changed. More people are viewing the news online than ever before, and to make sure that online news flourishes, Trinity Mirror have come up with a plan to make sure that digital news is here to stay.

Newsroom 3.0 is a model which suggests that digital media is the future of journalism – the model focuses on journalism on the web and how it can help best present the news to the public.

However, the influx of digital media means that the sales of publications such as newspapers have been rapidly on the decrease. Newsroom 3.0 doesn’t aim to completely eradicate newspapers; it just focuses highly on the use of the internet to spread news stories.

News stories circulate extremely fast across the internet, making it easy for stories to gain publicity at a fast pace. The Newsroom 3.0 model places high importance on the spread of breaking news, which is where social networking websites such as Twitter come in to play. A quick search of the hashtag ‘#breakingnews’ and users are left with thousands upon thousands of tweets which allow them instant access news stories.

Many people also use twitter to promote their own news writing: Jayde Engledew, 23, from London runs an independent music news website called Nelipott.  Jayde is an experienced blogger who took her passion to the next step by buying herself a domain name and starting up her own website.

Nelipott's a hit!: Jayde's website receives thousands of views per month

Jayde sees the value of using Twitter as a publicity tool, “Twitter definitely increases my page views. Whenever I post a new article on my website I will tweet about it to let people know there is something new on the site […] I’d say that 70% of the visitors [to Nelipott] click through an article link on twitter.” She also believes that using social media to promote the news is “without a doubt” an effective resource.

Because of the advanced technology that we experience today, it is extremely simple to find yourself able to read the news that you are interested in, after a few mere clicks of a mouse – which also means that you can tailor what you read. The internet gives us the freedom to access numerous different articles about the same story without having to leave the comfort of our homes.

Jayde says she would rather read the news online than in an actual newspaper “simply because it’s free. I also like that online you can get the same story from different publications.” Clearly, online journalism makes wider reading easier but when asked if she thought that newspapers and magazines would cease to exist in the future, Jayde said no; “I don’t think that magazines or newspapers will ever not be there, but I don’t think they will hold as big a place in the market [as they used to]. For an artist, I doubt there is a better feeling than getting your first printed feature in an actual magazine.”

However, Jayde believes that the online world is already becoming the future of news, especially within the music business, simply because of the ease of access: “You just need a computer and an internet connection, something a lot of us have…The majority of people will use the internet on a daily basis for personal or business reasons, so it’s all about what’s the quickest way to find something out. If you’re sitting at a computer, you’re not going to get up and travel to a newsagents to pick up the paper if you can read hundreds of reports on the same story online.”

It is clear that the innovations within the internet age have allowed news to progress and extend, but at what cost? Has ‘real journalism’ been left behind in the attempt to make the news popular?

It is not within the aims of Newsroom 3.0 to disregard the importance of newspapers, in fact the model strives to do the exact opposite. Newsroom 3.0 wants to use digital journalism to make sure that newspaper journalism is as effective as possible.

One of the most useful things about having a website is being able to track the views that certain pages get, therefore publishers are able to see which stories are the most popular. Using this information, the newspapers can then make sure they’re printing stories which have high levels of interest.

Trinity Mirror plan to roll Newsroom 3.0 out across all of their newsrooms as they believe it will have a positive impact on how news is received. So, the use of more digital news is beneficial because it allows us to see how printed journalism can be improved.

If things carry on to proceed how they have in the past, then newspaper sales won’t be more popular than the internet for news, but there will always be a want, and a need, for real journalism which people can hold in their hands and keep forever. Newsroom 3.0 probably doesn’t spell the end for journalism as we know it.

Visit Jayde’s website here.

Below is a series of voxpop interviews with residents of Preston who were asked if they think the advancements within technology will eradicate the production, and selling, of newspapers.