Digital Renaissance

As the millennium sunrise shone its golden glow on the shores of the Philippines,
it brought a promise of change for a better future. Similarly, as the dawn of digitalization
in the country began around this time, Filipinos only had a vague idea of what was to
come.

Seventeen years later, as we ride the meteoric rise of digital and social media, we
still only have a small idea of what is to come, especially when it comes to the future of
journalism.

In its Digital News Project journal published in 2016, the Reuters Institute for the
study of Journalism predicted a bleak future for the honorable profession of print
journalism.

A double-digit drop in print advertising revenues in many markets led to

consolidation, job cuts and closures in the traditional media while it has become ever
clearer throughout the year how big tech platforms are able to leverage their scale to drive
the majority of online advertising revenue, the global study said as it assessed 2016.

Currently, print media goliaths in the Philippines like the Philippine Daily Inquirer
and the Philippine Star have web equivalents available on PressReader (e.g.,
philippinedailyinquirerplus.pressreader.com) and applications available on Android and
iOS to compete with standalone online newspapers like Davao Today (davaotoday.com)
and Rappler (rappler.com) who possess a sizeable influence in the web.

The Reuters study also noted how significant the shift to online media has become.

In almost all countries more people now rely on social media as a source of news
than printed newspapers. More than one in ten (12%) now consider social media as their
main source of news and around a quarter of adults under the age of 25, it said.

With this noticeable evolution to accommodate the rising prominence of digital

media, fake news has risen to prominence as well, something which New York Times
Company CEO Mark Thompson has written about.

Our digital eco-systems have evolved into a near perfect environment for distorted
and false news to thrive, he said in his 2016 book Enough Said: What's Gone Wrong
with the Language of Politics.

Fake news is not a new phenomenon; it even dates back to the 1896 Philippine
Revolution according to Emilio Aguinaldo Suntay III, the great-grandson of the first
Philippine president, in an interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer last May 2017.
Regardless, the environment on which fake news is now thriving on will also help
traditional media outlets bolster their credibility.
 Paul Bradshaw of Birmingham City University held a hopeful view of the future of
the press in the age of fake news.

Nothing stimulates technological development like war, and the information wars
are already generating increasingly augmented journalism as news organizations - and
social media - develop the weapons to fight back, he said.

As journalism evolves and the society it seeks to serve continue to change its
demands, we will not see the profession wither and die. Instead, we will witness a digital
renaissance, a reclaiming of the public trust that was once lost in the rapid advance of the
new revolution. As long as truth is still alive and sought after, so will the art of delivering
the truth.

By Allyster Astronomo