Year 10 Journalism students have been fortunate to have a number guest lecturers visit their classes this term. Finn Tentij (10/LE) shares his reflections from a recent visit below.

Mr Ean Higgins, a senior journalist for The Australian newspaper, talked to our Year 10 Journalism class about the shift from print media to digital, as well as the changing nature of journalism itself.

Technology has been one of the most critical and ever-changing aspects of journalism. The fax machine, for example, revolutionised the way journalists wrote and meant they did not need to post or hand-deliver their stories. This meant reporters could write far more quickly about things further and further away.

An even more impactful change in technology in modern times is the rise of the internet and internet news websites. This has revolutionised the way journalism and to an even wider extent, politics, works.

Mr Higgins uses the words “active and moving” to describe nature of modern journalism.

“You have to be able to change tracks at any time,” he said.

However, with the rise of the internet and news websites, newspapers have been hit hard.

“There’s no money anymore…there used to be rivers of gold in advertising and I lived through that, but the internet basically killed that,” Mr Higgins explained.

 “Our revenues have shrunk enormously and we’ve lost a lot of people. There used to be 15 photographers and now there’s 3. The editorial floor has halved.”

This is one of the main reasons that only one newspaper – The Australian – has held on to the broadsheet format that they see can truly “topple governments”.

 Mr Higgins is proud of the prestige related to being part of Australia’s last broadsheet newspaper when other publications have switched to tabloid.

Despite the financial hardships for publications, there is a silver lining, as many news organisations both online and print are starting to make a profit once again.

Mr Higgins said: “The Australian broadsheet newspaper has started earning money for the first time in a very long time and online newspapers such as the Texas Tribune, have started to make a lot of money.”