One of the perils of blogging is that it makes plagiarism easy, but one of the perks is that you easily catch the culprit. Now what?

Take the case of Niranjana Iyer, who is an Indian blogger based in Ontario, Canada. You can read her post on the issue here. But Niranjana’s post, which came to my notice (via @twilightfairy) on Twitter, clearly shows how Ms. Damayanti Datta plagiarised her post. Apparently, this is not the first time, that Ms. Datta has plagiarised, she did it for another story before.

Why am I writing about this case?

First of all, when I checked out Niranjana’s blog I read few of her published stories and I couldn’t stop. I was compelled to write about the incident, because she is a sensitive writer whose writing touched my heart.

Second, despite the fact that Canada and India are oceans apart, it was quite easy to find out about the incident. This also shows that the readers are aware and they are reading both the online and the mainstream press. It also points out to the issue of “Crisis of accountability” that Jay Rosen mentioned in his talk.

The worst aspect of this scenario is that I loved reading India Today while I was in India and it is indeed a leading Indian magazine (atleast to my knowledge). I still read it once in a while to keep in touch with the important issues back home. I am also using story from India Today in my dissertation as reference. The magazine has built a reputation over several years and this one mistake can ruin it’s reputation.

It is really sad but it’s important to create awareness and I want you to judge for yourself.

Today, I listened to an interesting talk on “journalism in the Web Age” by Jay Rosen. In his talk he focused on the “crisis of the press”. He first talked about the problems that the old press media is facing today and he summed it up very nicely in three words – “sustainability, puzzled, unsolved.” The real problem the old school journalism is facing today is of “sustainability”. They can’t sustain themselves if they keep on doing, what they were doing. He said that the press industry faces five crisis -

1. Crisis of Adaptation – the real failure of print media is in it’s inaibilityto adapt to the new system. If they had, they wouldn’t be in this state.

2. Crisis of Advertising – In the earlier system, 50% of the advertising money was wasted. The internet has solved this problem and advertising has become more efficient. 

3. Crisis of Authority – Newspapers had authority and they have let the people down.

4. Crisis in teaching, learning and training – The Journalism training needs to change as technology is changing very fast. New training models need to evolve.

5. Crisis of accountabililty – The internet is holding press accountable.

I found his talk very interesting and thought provoking. His insights on why old system of journalism is at it’s decline, provides a starting point to start thinking.

After the talk we had a very engaging discussion on how journalism schools can adpat to this changing environment and what needs to change. One very important point he made during the discussion was that right now, the way things are changing it’s very difficult to predict what’s going to happen and how things will shape up. As the industry is in a state of flux and the new system is evolving. At this time, the best thing would be to reflect and see what went wrong and to analyse what is it that is going to remain of the old system.

It is time to seek questions, answers will evolve!!!

As Indian elections are approaching, journalism in India is getting more interesting. Exchange4media.com reported that BBC has commissioned a “India Election Train” which will carry its reports across India to report the latest on Indian elections to the global community.

Internet is redefining the news media. In this article, Ronald A. Yaros, assistant professor of journalism at UMD and director of the Lab for Communicating Complexity with Multimedia, writes about the complexity facing the journalists in this digital world in Nieman Reports, published by Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. 

The evolution of internet has changed the way young people receive and process news. He writes that, ”The technologies (that deliver news) and the news audience of 2019, will be very different than what they are today”. Therefore, it is imperative that we understand “how digital natives now use media for entertainment, information, education and social networking.”

According to him, there are three phases of how technology is adopted:

1. Awareness and exploration of the new technological tools
2. Learning how to use the new tools
3. Applying these new tools to daily life.

Digital Natives (the young people) who blog and social network are in third phase of adoption, whereas the news organizations are in the second phase. This gap, presents a challenge to the traditional media journalists and the news organizations, about how to communicate with an audience, who is tech-savvy and ”values shorter, fact-driven multimedia.”

He proposes a PICK model for future journalism, which when combined with traditional journalistic values may be effective in engaging audience. 

PICK stands for:

1. Personalization

2. Involvement

3. Contiguity (or coherence)

4. Minimal distractions (cognitive kick-outs)

PICK defines multimedia as an environment (i.e. a full page or entire Web site) where multiple elements—hypertext, video, slideshows, blogs, forums, graphics and animation—are presented with text and personalized to the user.

1. Personalizing the News:

Personalization in news means, “the extent to which a user can choose content congruent with his or her interests.” “NewsSEEN” is a prototype in research phase, which not only provides news, but also priortizes news by level of interest. The basic purpose of NewsSEEN is to see ”how professionally produced, personalized content (or PPP) can be combined with, yet differentiated from, citizen-produced content.” Although interactivity is very important in digital news, too much of it can kill the reader’s interest, therefore, it is important to have right amount of interactivity.

2. Involvement:

It is “the degree to which users input choices and/or content.” The level of involvement may vary, “for example, Clicking a “play” button for a one-minute video represents much less involvement than reading a few sentences, choosing steps in a related animation, selecting a 10-second video, and then posting comments about the story. “

3. Contiguity:

“Contiguity in multimedia is how the elements of hypertext, photos, animation, slides, links, blogs, video and audio, all combine to communicate one coherent message.” It only takes 50 milliseconds for a reader to form an opinion, and if there is no coherency in the content, the readers terminate their engagement which he calls “kick - outs.”

4.  Kick – outs: It is basically the termination of engagement with the content. There are many reasons why an audience may lose interest in the content, and some of these can be controllable. For example,

“The most obvious kick-out is a broken link, but others include too much text, lengthy video, pop-up windows, unfamiliar terms, confusing graphics, or interactive animation that’s too complex.”

So the challenge is to enhance how news is presented and recogninze how to prevent kick-outs.

Adopting the PICK news model, does not mean abandoning traditional journalism values, but the challenge he says, is to combine effectively

“techniques of personalization, involvement, contiguity and minimal kick-outs with clear, accurate, ethical journalism.”

PICK model in my opinion, outlines some of the key points to consider when delivering news via digital media. For some time now, since I started this blog, I have been using twitter, both for social networking and to receive news and the concepts of PICK model apply to the form in which news is delivered on Twitter. However, I also think that it would be important to understand the “expectations” with which digital audience come to the digital platform to receive news.