Practising Journalism in the Coronavirus Age
How has Coronavirus changed journalism?
When famous BBC presenter Nick Robinson came to City, University of London last year, he told journalism students that "real journalism" was about going out and meeting people, not sitting on our laptop and talking to people digitally.
A few months later, even he has minimised social contact and is working from home, on a laptop whilst using technology to communicate.
While the UK prepares to take precautionary measures against the viral Coronavirus, journalists are beginning to find ways to overcome hurdles to their stories.
Technology has made communication easier but has it made it more effective? Is there any true substitute for meeting a source and analysing how they really feel? Human beings have evolved with face to face, direct and physical communication, can a video call replace our established ways of communication?
What about the impact on the mental health of the global population after this crisis? Many stories which were extremely relevant a few weeks earlier have either been scrapped or have been edited to incorporate coronavirus since that is what most people are interested in.
Go to the website of any newspaper and there's a very high chance that the top story is related to Coronavirus in some way. This has led to the public gaining more knowledge about this virus and increasing measures to protect themselves.
The role of the media in trying to fight this global crisis cannot be sidelined. The use of data visualisation techniques by data journalists has explained this crisis in a much simpler and better way than any health expert. Human beings like to compare and contrast, data journalism gives us a deeper perspective and the ability to understand a problem in a deeper way.
As a young journalist, I always believed that the future of journalism was digital but this crisis has confirmed it. Not just journalists but people from all walks of life are now finding ways to adapt to a new dynamic of work, which primarily involves the use of technology in communication.
What impact Coronavirus will have on the distribution of physical newspapers in the times to come remains to be seen but I believe that the time has come for journalists and media organisations of the world to seriously consider making their content creation and distribution models more efficient, viable and scalable.
