Limitation is a must

Pros and cons to everything specially on online journalism.

Advantages

Fastest source of information or “immediacy” compared to newspapers, television and radio (traditional ways). Let’s say you are currently on twitter. You will find at your home feed that there are new posts and before you can read all of it, it is already followed by videos on Youtube, status on Facebook, etc. In just a few moments the information was given to you unlike the traditional way that it will took you hours or day before obtaining the information.

Everyone can be a source of information. Even posts on Facebook and twitter can be a source. Journalists may utilize the internet to gather info. They can curate the information and create news content out of it.

Journalists don’t have to be in the event to report it. There are some circumstances that journalist are not able to go to the place where they have to report. Maybe there are no respondents there or the place is far away, but thanks to internet, publishable news are made. You can interview people through Skype to know what is happening there or maybe review the interactions/comments.

Disadvantages

Accuracy at risk. Yes it’s fast but there are people who doesn’t know how to disseminate news and likely to be unverified. They want to publish it that some are not aware of the rule in journalism, ACCURACY!

Overflowing of unverified information. With millions of posts and tweets about an event, it is very hard for news organizations to verify which are true and which are hoax. It can also lead to confusion of the reader.

As we see, there should always be a limitation for everything. And it is a must in journalism. One post and there it is. But what if one of your readers is so sensitive that he/she questioned you and you just find yourself hanging, thinking that what you post is libelous? Think again.