Yesterday, I attended a panel discussion on new media, which includes video, audio, photography, text; pretty much anything. I must admit, I'm a little bothered by this term "new media." What's so new about them? Photography has been around since the 19th century, moving pictures and radio since the early 20th century, and text since the invention of the printing press in 1436.
Yes, the videos you can find today on the internet are vastly different from the ones you could watch on TV throughout the second half of the 20th century. Yes, journalists use new audio techniques and combine audio and photographs into slideshows. Yes, digital photography allows for better images than ever before. These media have evolved, but they are not new. What's new is the medium in which they are delivered.
What the internet allows is for journalists to combine these media and use them in ways other mediums could not. In the past, the audience could watch the evening news then read the printed stories in the morning paper. Today, they can watch, read, view, and interact all at once. So while the method of delivering the news is new, the media which we are delivering can hardly be considered new at all. In other words, what we should be referencing is news convergence, not new media.
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