Is the Fourth Estate Being Eroded by the New Media ?

COMM 332 News: Content and Practice Assignment 1

David Robbins

Student: 097047659

TOPIC 1: Is the Fourth Estate being eroded by the new media?

Serious journalism, or the Fourth Estate, which accurately informs the public and scrutinises the powerful, according to the pundits, is an endangered species and its demise is fairly imminent.1 Although mainstream journalism has been eroded by a combination of emerging new communications technology and the self inflicted wounds of the business of journalism, the Fourth Estate is gradually being transformed. The integration of new media is reshaping journalism into a new and potentially better form.2 The Fourth Estate has been eroded by the new media. Both newspaper circulation and advertising revenues are in decline as the print media audience seeks greener pastures online.3 Broadcasting too has become dramatically affected by a persistent loss of audiences and revenue. With the increasing popularity of online social networking, television has ceased to be the fundamental source of people’s entertainment, news and information.4 As a consequence of the attrition of the Fourth Estate, there has been a widespread reduction in resources and staff numbers. This siphoning off of resources from the newsroom has led inexorably to a decline in journalistic standards, exacerbated a
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S, Hinchcliff -Pearson, ‘The Hard Truths About Journalism’, Centre for Internet and Society, Stanford Law School, 2009, Downloaded from

http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/sarah-hinchliff-pearson, September 7, 2010. J Pavlik, ‘ Introduction: Understanding the impact of New Media on Journalism’ in Journalism and New Media ,Columbia University Press, 2001 ,pp xi-xii
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J Ewart, ‘News Connections: Regional Newspapers and the Web’, in New Media Technologies, Issue 7, 2003. N, Goc, ‘The Fourth (or Fifth) Estate’ in Media and Journalism: New approaches to theory and practice, Oxford University Press, 2008 pg

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