Several weeks after, I received a comment for the said entry from someone I do not know. She introduced herself as a member of a Filipino-American Ministry Choir in the United States. She wrote in her comment that her choir had been desperately looking for a copy of the Panunumpa music sheet for piano, but they could find guitar tabs on the net. Then, she wrote, she saw my blog, and asked for my help.

She gave me her email address. I figured that she wanted me to email her the Panunumpa music sheet, so I had it scanned and sent it to her. She thanked me for how I had helped their choir. Well, it was my pleasure to be such a big help even if I do not know and had never her and her choir. Plus, having the music sheet scanned and emailed to her did not cause me trouble nor harm.

That experience made me realize the scope of the worldwide web. Yes, I do know that with the worldwide web, you can reach thousands of people around the globe. That you are able to share information to thousands who use the net. But I never thought that the power of the worldwide web would directly involve me and a stranger living oceans away from me, with me being aware that that stranger had actually viewed my blog and was asking for my help.

If a simple blog was able to reach another person from another continent, imagine how online publications are capable of doing just the same. If a simple blog could be useful to a stranger, how much more can online publications be, with the information they carry?

The advent of new media has enabled journalists to transmit information to their audience through another channel aside from the traditional print and broadcast. Up-to-date information is readily available with just a click of the mouse, as updated news stories can easily be uploaded in the web. Yet it is in the new media’s information-in-a-click feature that journalists have now become lazy to do their legwork. As Prof. Danilo Arao, a journalism professor in the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, had observed, “the convenience of having information just a click away, so to speak, prompts journalists – be they print, broadcast or online – to just simply cite the available information that can be retrieved from the Internet.” The availability of resources on the web seems to render going to the library useless.For why would a journalist spend hours browsing through the archives of, say, the public library when in a click, the information s/he needs to know appear right before his/her eyes?

It’s frustrating to think that the new media, which is supposed to complement our data gathering, add more venues for the exchange and sharing of ideas, and transform journalists into more responsible ones, has made journalists lazy and uncritical – an anathema to the journalism profession.

The validity of the information available on the web must also be assessed. Of course, you wouldn’t want to hyperlink to Wikipedia or to a blog of a journalist wannabe. In this case, a journalist’s critical mind comes in handy.

But on another note, new media did not fail in establishing new venues for the exchange of ideas and information. Several newspapers have their online counterparts, such as Philippine Daily Inquirer, Manila Times, and Philippine Star, among others. The new media has also enabled us to view foreign newspapers through their online counterparts, such as The Washington Post and The New York Times.

Truly, the new media is a double-edged sword. It can surface the best and most creative journalists, and yet it can expose the laziest of them all. The use of the internet therefore boils down to how responsible and critical its users are, especially when it is being used to produce something that is intended to be helpful for people.