THE HEAR AND NOW!

A PARADOX OF IMMEDIACY
I want to expand on the notion that globalization has presented journalists and their audiences with a plethora of options. We know that the internet has opened up global markets and broken down cross-country communication barriers. Yes these new found capabilities and superseding technologies are keys to our newfound abilities to interact in 'real time', but they also have had a profound impact on our behaviour and expectations.

I believe also that the internet, as the poster child for globalization, has enforced a sense of impatience and impulse upon us; a thought that 'it is all about the hear and now'. Similar to the irrational and impuslive buying habits that some people demonstrate, perhaps so too can the bigotry and the posting of derogatory comments be attributed to the need to produce or live in the moment.

Readers now scan and search online and do not read for long periods of time. In addition, a pleothra of multimedia options and features help serve this 'modernized consumer'. Journalists must organize and coordinate the elements or layers of information to grab attention and then guide the viewer through the text. If they don't do this successfully, then perhaps we are better off with the more definitively linear structure of print.