Sixth Lecture - Web News

There are three web iterations at the moment. There is Old Media which is also known as the traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. The second media Web 2.0 which is where we are at the moment is the Social Media. We're producer-users “prod-users” where the production of media is led by the users. The third media is said to be the future of news where the web will be personal and mobile, Semantic Web. Semantic Web adds machine-readable meaning to the packets of information on the web. Smart phones will be the devices powering semantic web.

The web is very interesting and makes it easy to access news but also could be the death of journalism.

Bruce Redman did a little analogy with the class by giving us all a bag of jelly bellies. He allowed us to have a few, but if we wanted more we would have to pay. However, because he had given it to us for free with feel we are entitled to continue eating them for free. It is the same as online news. In the past we have been able to access it for free so why do we need to pay for it in the future?

I think that paywalls are a great idea for some online newspapers, but not for all. I would understand if the more exclusive online newspapers had paywalls because they have extra articles and columns. But some people just want to know what's going on and should be entitled to that.