The digital world .. Will it offer the opportunity to bring the audience closer to news organizations?

In 2012, a US citizen opened fire on a street in Colorado, killing 12 people. This tragedy has become a talk of radio stations and news channels, which moved the event with all its charms. CNN's news coverage, however, was to open up its followers to the blog page on religious topics to comment on what had happened on a different side. The site posted a blog on its Belief Blog titled "Where was God in the municipality of Aurora?" So that observers can discuss the role of God in such incidents that some consider that they would not have happened if there was a just God and true mercy.

In a few hours, more than ten thousand commentators commented on this blog and increased people's interaction on this issue in the social networking platforms in the days that followed. CNN complemented its interaction with the public by assigning a column on its website to one of the academics specializing in religious sciences to talk about the subject and present its opinion from an academic perspective.

The reaction of the interviewers was not coincidental. It was a result of CNN's understanding of the public's mind and giving it a space that showed its interest on an important subject that had aroused its attention. Follow-up of audience interaction on news sites is not enough. Editors should also follow the audience on more vocal platforms, such as social networking sites. Often the public does not know how to interact with media professionals and journalists, and here lies the important role of news sites in offering services that facilitate communication between the public and the source of news. According to Andy Carvin, an editor at NPR, listening to the views of observers gives us the opportunity to slow down the news and receive different views to understand the event in a more comprehensive way.

Followers differ in their interaction with the news, but the pattern of interaction is the article's admiration or participation on social networking sites. Some consider that with the ease of modern communication and niche sites, the interaction of attendees is associated with news events, political engagement and communication with news editors, Emily Ramshaw, editor of the Texas Tribune news site.

Interacting with such a segment of the audience will increase their loyalty to the news pages that you hear them express their opinions and take them seriously. This will not only help journalists get to know the news more broadly and create a more comprehensive content from angles not yet discussed. And then the overarching view that the journalist appears to be always right and that the follower is only a musician or reader who has no opinion on the daily incidents.

Another example of the importance of using modern digital media is what ABCNews.com called "Election Control Room" in collaboration with Yahoo.com during the US elections in 2012. The site featured live broadcasts of its channel, Both Twitter and Facebook, and put a comment box to allow viewers to interact with the event. The site wanted to open the door to the viewers to control the news sources and interact with them directly to convey the idea of ​​the control room in the news channels on a website available to all.

Also among the ways journalists can interact with the public is the humility of their stories to become an important source of news sites that can be defined as crowdsourcing or resource mobilization. For example, NBC.com asked the public in one of its blogs: "What are the most important problems facing middle- and low-income people?" Hundreds of responses came to the blog page through which the site was used as sources to publish many articles about the same situation.

Sometimes the use of digital means is important to bring the audience closer to journalists. Many foreign newspapers have begun to ask their correspondents and employees to create their own blogs and websites to express their opinions separately from the agenda or perspective of the newspapers they work for but without compromising journalistic professionalism. The public feels that the journalist or reporter is like any ordinary citizen expressing his views independently of his work and interacting with others spontaneously away from the clamor of newspapers and news channels.