Albanian online media and functioning models

Abstract

The creation of the first information portals in Albania has a relatively short history that goes a little further than a decade. Online media are currently an undeniable reality, and along with the positive innovations that they have brought to the media market or media industry in Albania, they have been accompanied with some problems. The nature of these information portals in itself or of different journalist blogs, which rush towards the last minute news, prompted by the big competition on the web have a somewhat difficult rapport with the reliability of the information that they publish. Often times the audience is suspicious of the veracity of the information and it is expected that they read the same news on many different websites to make sure that it is true.

The online media, as the whole media market, needs financial revenues in order to survive and continue the activity. But how much do these portals guarantee revenues, what are their relations with advertisers and how much their behavior has changed in delivering advertising budgets?

On the other hand, these new media have also created an additional market for the journalists or new reporters, who now form an important community. Even though some years ago being a journalist was only connected to the job in a television, newspaper or radio, we now have a large number of reporters engaged full time or part time only in online media. The need to study related to the status of these journalists employed in these portals arises from this new reality. How are they treated financially, does their professional engagement change because they are only employed in an online media, how does their status change related to the source of information compared to the colleagues in traditional media?

This study aims exactly at finding answers related to the questions arising towards the models of functioning of the online media in Albania, their rapport with reliability and the status of the journalists employed in these media.