Revolution in newsroom technology

Generally, every newsroom is divided into a few departments. Newsgathering, news production, reporting, news editing, anchoring, and graphics, are very important departments of any newsroom. For understanding the advanced technologies of any newsroom, we have to go back to 1990.

In the early 90s, Indian media or newsrooms started production with huge size of equipment like heavy cameras and recording chips, which were difficult to carry from the location to the newsroom.

The broadcasting technologies were also quite tough at that time. Over time, we got satellites for broadcasting news. In between, technologies for news production also changed. In the early 90s, broadcasting bulletins was very tough, but nowadays we can rely on machines for performing news broadcasting.

For example, in the 90s, we had to fix news in a certain sequence in the bulletins. Today, we can change the sequence of the news as many times as required. This is possible only because of the technology available today.

Change in writing and presenting the news
Today’s newsroom presentation includes many things like the use of real locations, more graphics, more reality, more live bulletins, etc., but in the early stage of news broadcasting, these things were not possible for media houses because of less technical support. Advanced technology also helps journalists write news quickly and also make it presentable.

In the early 90s, the role of anchors was only about reading news, not also producing it. But today’s anchors play many roles because of the technology. Today, with the COVID-19 lockdown media houses have started work-from-home to follow the social distancing guidelines for lockdown and a few anchors are able to read their bulletins from their homes, not possible in the 90s.

Updating technologies
Reducing size with faster speed is the main attribute for today’s hardware, which is used in the newsroom. Today’s media houses use high-definition cameras for producing news, which was not possible in the 90s, but today it is very easy to produce news with such video resolution because of its availability. News viewing has also changed; today’s viewers too watch the news on high-definition video resolution.

In the 90s, the speed of news production too was very slow.
For example, if any natural calamity occurs in a small town today, that is breaking news for the media; they produce that news in a minute, but that was not possible in the 90s, because of fewer resources for transmitting news from the location to the newsroom. But today, it is possible because of advanced technology.

The very important role of graphics
In the last decade, chroma key graphics have been introduced in media. Today, we can see their next version, VR (virtual reality) and augmented reality (AR). The virtual graphics change all dimensions of news production.

In a single studio, we can show any location around space because of it. That makes the news more attractive. The next version of VR graphics is AR with the help of which we can show on entire stadium with every single chair on that ground. These graphics also help to show the huge number of political equations in a single screen. That was not possible in the 90s. News presentation has certainly evolved since the 90s.

The last three decades have been very important for the Indian media. Journalism has been going through major technological changes. In composition the last 10 years have been very crucial for the newsroom.

Indian newsrooms have changed into large media houses from a single-bulletin production house. This kind of change was possible because of technical updation. At the same time, the profession faces some negative impacts too. Today, we are into the golden period of Indian media with the toughest challenges.