How do the different formats treat the latest developments of a story?
Newspapers are printed hours before they are read, whereas online news is read instantly.
With the continuous updates in technology, journalism has vastly changed, and improved over the years, with features such as live blogs and social media. New technology allows stories to be constantly updated and posted to the news outlet’s website, this gives audiences 24/7 news updates that were never previously available.
Live feeds go straight to websites allowing audiences to be aware and updated with news happenings minute-by-minute, and social media has allowed journalists to live-tweet in a similar way, whether that is from the scene of a crime to the press box in the Royal Court of Justice.
Print cannot always be fully up-to-date, for example, a newspaper may read “Girl gone missing”, but this was printed the night before, and by the time it is being read in the morning/afternoon, the girl may have been found. This would not happen online, as the website or twitter feed would have been updated immediately.
This is clearly visible when comparing online and print, today’s Guardian front page story is on the NSA surveillance, but the lead article on the Guardian website is an updated version of the story with a live blog featuring different sources and angles on the surveillance, this offers much more to the audience than the print newspaper, and evidence that technology is changing journalism for the good.
Print can’t match online for it’s use of technology and social media, but copes with this by printing as late as possible, most daily newspapers do not print until the early hours of the morning, to ensure all stories are as up-to-date as possible.
This means that online and print handle on-going stories in different ways, for example the Madeline McCann story where new evidence was released by the press and broadcast on Crimewatch, live blogs were constantly being updated, as twitter was exploding with news and comment on the case, while print followed up on the stories for the next morning, releasing new information day-by-day.
Print newspapers feature their bolstered Sunday editions, which give the audience in depth analysis and comment, something that online does not do, every day is the same online, whilst weekend newspapers offer readers much more than their mid-week papers.
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