ALL over the world, the Covid-19 pandemic changed the way most businesses operate, including the media.
The newsroom, as we know it, was upended by considerations of health protocols that came with strict, prolonged lockdowns; and coverage on the beat, in public places, was impacted as well.
TV hosts, whom the public had always seen looking spiffy in suits in the studio, had to report the news from their homes; and most reporters had to limit physical coverage to only the big breaking stories that otherwise could not be reported from home. But for the most part, even the visually-reliant TV news and public affairs shows had to adjust, innovating on work-from-home schemes along the way.
With digital platforms becoming the more relevant means for reaching audiences, all other media had to tweak the way they delivered content.
For most Philippine newspapers, the work-from-home mode had to be the norm during the extended lockdowns that began in March. BusinessMirror was one of those that set up its own “virtual newsroom,” learning along the way to get an entire army of news generation workers to do their job from various locations.
Will the newsroom as we know it ever return? Maybe, but much changed, given the key lessons imparted by the pandemic.
Beyond the shift from physical to virtual, a sea change has also taken place in the public’s attitute toward the professional media, which had to deal not only with the financial and logistical challenges posed by pandemic-disrupted operations, but also the way people consumed information – often from a “chopsuey” of sources, especially from social media that hosted a surfeit of fake news. The professional media, despite physical and logistical limitations, had to learn how to better the way they make sense of the news for the public given the information overload. And, more important, how they tracked the public’s needs and pulse, i.e., their burning questions for the day, the ones that make them most anxious, and the most basic, urgent advisories needed to survive and cope with fast-changing rules and protocols.
A pointed question from Northwestern University Professor Pablo Boczkowski, in an article shared by Nieman Lab, comes to mind: “Audiences have revolted. Will newsrooms adapt?” His context was based largely on the tremendous changes that unfolded in the US media during the pandemic, but they apply, as well, to most media institutions around the world. The pandemic was disruptive, but it allowed those in the news business, to learn to stop conceiving of audiences “in their own image,” as Boczkowski puts it, and to be more sensitive of what they think, feel, need.
The pandemic upped the ante for data journalism, and gave health and science writers more premium. It further made us reliant on tech reporters as well. But in the end, it’s the sense of empathy generated in the crisis that matters most.