The connotation of in-depth reporting in the multimedia era
The predecessor of in-depth reporting is explanatory journalism, which originated in the United States in the 1930s. American journalism scholars refer to explanatory journalism as a product of the 1929 economic crisis. That economic crisis that swept across the United States made the entire Golden Dollar empire in chaos, Americans were knocked into a labyrinth, not only demanded to know what happened, more urgent need to understand the causes of the event and its relationship with politics and society. Some U.S. journalists also realized that the use of objective reporting techniques to write the pure news has been unable to penetrate the depth of the event, and even more unable to analyze the causes and reveal the impact of the event and the development of the future, which can not meet the requirements of the readers, but also contrary to the duties of journalists. Thus, in-depth reporting came into being.
Currently, there are at least dozens of academic definitions of in-depth reporting, which are summarized as follows:
1.Reporting method. Such as "in-depth reporting is a systematic and in-depth reflection of major news events and social issues, clarify the cause and effect relationship between events, reveal the essence, tracking and exploring the development trend of time reporting style."
2. The stylistic intention said. "In-depth reporting is a relatively independent genre between dynamic news and news commentary."
3. Reporting thinking said. Such as "in-depth reporting is to talk about the new way of thinking reports", "where the thought is profound, can reveal the objective things of the internal attributes, interrelationships and some kind of development of the law of the news reports, can fully reflect the significance of the times, the social significance of the news reports are in-depth reports".
Comprehensively analyzing the above definitions, it is not difficult to see that scholars' definition of in-depth reporting is still limited to the era of traditional media, and does not take into account the comprehensive use of multimedia era. The author concludes in practice that "the so-called in-depth reporting is the comprehensive use of multimedia reporting means, centering on the reality of the social development of the problem, from the vertical and horizontal direction of the news events presented in a way that can show its true meaning of the vein."
Misconceptions of multimedia in-depth reporting
Misconceptions 1: a simple combination of multimedia means. Now, with the development of network information and audio-visual equipment gradually equipped, some journalists are accustomed to online access to patchwork information to combine long reports, rarely in-depth to the scene of the event or find witnesses, parties to conduct detailed interviews, and even lazy phone calls to inquire about the situation, verify the situation, and do not pay attention to find the relevant historical information. So write out something, seemingly magnificent, but read carefully, but found that the connection is not very, or even inconsistent, this report is only in the reorganization of materials; there are journalists accustomed to "text plus map" or "text plus sound", after the interview. The reporter also used to "text plus picture" or "text plus sound", after the interview, he took a photo or a few groups of images as he wished, thinking that as long as he added a mode of reporting and enhanced the auxiliary function of the reporting means, even if he completed the in-depth report, the result became a simple list, a waste of resources.
Myth two: multimedia reporting means cut. Due to the traditional division of labor of the reporter industry, often easy to understand the text will not be engaged in the image, will shoot the film is not good at writing the text of the situation. This situation was possible in the past, because people used to live in a small space, the desire to obtain information is not strong or can be based on their own experience to give meaning to the known events. But nowadays, foreign information is far beyond the scope of people's experience, which requires professionals or authoritative experts to make reasonable scientific explanations for the social phenomena behind such information. And because of the audience's different levels of education, social experience, preferences, etc., it is difficult to solve this contradiction in a single way of reporting, the urgent need to use multimedia means, joint reporting, increase the amount of information and to do with each other, in order to be able to be accepted by the audience, in the competition for news to win.
Myth three: in-depth reporting is a flat overview. In the era of traditional media coverage, in-depth reporting is understood to be a flat discussion, and some media outlets even take the distribution of review articles and the number of words in the article as a measure of whether the report is in-depth. Therefore, in the planning and directing of in-depth reports, emphasis is placed on the textual reports of the print media, and some TV stations also use these reports as the base material, or distribute empty shots, or the hosts come out to tell the readers some big and empty truths. Although such reports sometimes have a certain depth, but the dissemination effect is not good. It is important to realize that in-depth reporting is no deeper than a theoretical article, and it cannot go from concept to concept, from reasoning to reasoning. The audience needs to be multi-faceted, multi-faceted to stimulate reading
Reading interest, and the integrated use of multimedia can achieve this requirement. Multimedia in-depth reporting trend analysis
In the past, we often based on relevance, prominence, importance and other news value elements to determine whether a news fact is worth doing in-depth reporting, but in practice, these elements are still relatively abstract, and based on the communicator's interest. In the information dissemination from the "seller" to the "buyer", from the "communicator-centered" to the "audience-centered". "Today, in-depth reports to grab" eyeballs "to make the audience recognize its depth, the key also lies in the utility of information to the audience. Western journalism summarized three "I" principle: Information (Information), Interest (Interest), Impact (Impact). These three "I", from human instinctive needs to personal experience to survival interests, highlights the relevance of news and audience. ②
Based on the above analysis, the author believes that in-depth reporting in the multimedia era, there are several tendencies:
Tendency 1: in-depth reporting on the selection of topics, objective, dialectical multimedia awareness will be further strengthened.
The planning of in-depth coverage of selected topics is mainly in line with the deepening of China's reform and opening up of the new situation. In the era of reform and opening up, new things, new problems and new contradictions emerge one after another, requiring the news media to make accurate and scientific explanations and answers. At the same time, news competition has promoted the development of in-depth reporting. Considering that newspaper news cannot compete with radio news and TV news for speed, timeliness and vividness, newspapers firstly make efforts in in-depth reporting, i.e., going for the methods of "graphic interaction" and "news with commentaries", etc.; radio stations begin to use live recordings, experts and commentaries, etc.; TV stations also rush to the development of in-depth reporting. Commentary, etc.; TV stations are also catching up, to make up for the shortcomings, in addition to the use of text, but also issued live footage and interspersed with photographic images, and gradually formed a multimedia in-depth coverage of the initial form, the completion of all of this, are in the selection of the topic before the set, in the interviews of the news, each means of reporting is a part of the development of the news vein.
From the recent years, such as the "fight against SARS", "Olympic Games", "U.S. presidential campaign", "Arafat died of disease "and other major news events in-depth coverage, the media in-depth coverage of multimedia awareness has increased significantly. Such as Harbin Daily, in addition to text, photojournalists, and in recent years has increased the number of journalists specializing in network and audio-visual newswriting, every major topic, all of a sudden sent more than one "kind of soldiers", as long as the audience contact with any of these reporting media, will be guided to watch and listen to other forms of reporting in this media on the matter of in-depth coverage.
Tendency two: in-depth reporting will use multimedia to achieve a more thorough "to solve the problem".
The audience's urgent need for clarification and clarification of the information flow has provided the soil for the growth of multimedia reporting. The audience not only needs the communicator to provide news that can be "read", but also needs the news that has been "interpreted" by the information communicator.
Cognitive psychology suggests that human cognition tends to coincide with the greatest degree of relevance, and that the greater the cognitive effect, the less effort is required for processing, and the greater the relevance. ④ Audiences want to obtain as much information as possible, but almost all of them will consciously or subconsciously choose, contact and accept information that interests them or is related to their own interests, and they are more inclined to accept information in a way that is more isomorphic with their own experiential world. In the first half of 2005, when an unidentified bullet was unearthed at the Harbin turbine factory site, Xinhua News Agency reported the incident by integrating text, pictures, audio and video. After the incident, Shanghai Oriental Television adopted all the text, pictures, audio and video broadcast by Xinhua News Agency. Their editors in the user feedback that the audience of the TV station is diverse and has different hobbies, for this kind of in-depth reports they must have different needs, so we broadcast from multiple angles, which is our need to realize the maximum communication function.
Trend three: the depth of media coverage will be divided into levels by multimedia, in order to achieve the best reporting effect.
Depth reporting is not isolated from other reporting methods, "clarification" and "puzzle" must be based on and beyond the general dissemination of information, often manifested in a gradual process and several sequential arrival level. Scholars have pointed out that there are three ways in which contextual effects are created between new information and the context: new information is integrated with the context; new information reinforces existing assumptions; and new information contradicts or excludes existing assumptions. These three levels are the litmus test of whether and to what extent an in-depth report is close to the truth. ⑤Communication science believes that the communication functions of words and images can be realized at each of these three levels according to the needs of the audience. In order to do this, we need to improve the traditional way of news expression, to be good at using multimedia to express the way of thinking, from the preview, news writing, tracking reports and other aspects of the hierarchy of information until the completion of the event report, the whole vein must be clear and unambiguous.
Trend 4: multimedia in-depth reports will be more to constructive issues, multimedia professional newsgathering staff will become a leader in in-depth reports.
In the past, in-depth reports came more from the monitoring of public opinion, and on the basis of continuing to strengthen the monitoring of the news, the future of multimedia in-depth reports, will pay more attention to capture the "public opinion", reporting on people's real concern about the topic such as re-employment projects, the introduction of the housing reform policy, reform of the health care system, to help poverty alleviation, national fitness, environmental protection and ecological balance, community and social welfare. Fitness, environmental protection and ecological balance, community cultural construction, etc., through the characteristics of different media reporting means to choose the entry point, the appropriate text is text, the appropriate picture is picture.
Under the requirement of in-depth reporting, news organizations have also trained a large number of multimedia reporting talents. Xinhua News Agency, for example, in recent years has been emphasizing graphic interaction, training "multi-habitat reporter", in some local branches of Xinhua News Agency, has realized the text reporter with a camera, audio machine, photography, television journalists also stipulated the corresponding text reporting tasks, in some major breaking news and in-depth coverage, you can often see Xinhua News Agency's Group Army in action. (6) Some media with strong marketization scale have also begun to recruit "multi-talented" talents from traditional media at high prices, which not only saves their cultivation costs, but also enables them to further improve their reporting level.
The competition for leaders, who specialize in multimedia reporting, will be the next focus of the competition for news and communications talent. ■