On May 3, International Press Freedom Day was celebrated. Regarding that date, it is worth mentioning how the Internet has come to modify the ways of receiving, interpreting and creating information. This scenario is only comparable to the cultural revolution started five centuries ago by Gutenberg, with the creation of the printing press.
However, the internet has not been the only technological revolution that has affected the media. The appearance of radio and television came to predict the end of paper. But it didn’t happen. “Television shows, radio tells and the newspaper explains” seemed to be the premise.
Today there are millions of people who begin to search for information independently, creating communities and above all generating millions of pages with news, ideas, contests, sales, etc.
In this sense, and thinking about the reality of the journalistic media, today they are faced with changing in order to provide a better service to the community and take advantage of the revolution in the knowledge processes of readers.
People demand more and more speed to learn the facts that interest them, share their opinions and see the events that the information generates. This process has been facilitated by the Internet and the great access to it. The media clearly no longer have a “monopoly on information”, there are billions of alternatives to know a fact, every person with a cell phone is a potential reporter. But it is precisely in this overabundance of information that journalism and the media become vitally important, the ability to synthesize and verify the facts, deliver hierarchical and processed information with its consequences and context become a guide that allows us to survive in the midst of a jungle of information that bury us day after day. It is in this daily delivery of news that the credibility and professional nature of the media is at stake every minute.
There is a reason why informative sites are widely visited. For example, on our site www.elrancaguino.cl we already have one million monthly visitors and the Twitter and Facebook accounts of traditional newspapers around the world are sure sources that something is happening. As was the case in the past with paper, the Internet supports everything, and not because it is in cyberspace anything is true. But if it is on the New York Times or El Rancagüino site, we have considerable confidence that what is published is real.
Luis Fernando González V
Sub Director
