Many people in Nakuru today use various forms of digital communications in both personal and business lives.
This scenario has played a huge role in situations and decisions regarding news sources made during a single day.
At first, many journalists found news gathering, writing and editing quite tiresome especially the heat and uncomfortable experiences in the field, leave alone meeting deadlines.
Today, many have realised the power of online social network as a site that encourages members in the online community to share their interests, ideas, stories, photos, music, video and news as and when it breaks in.
This has now excluded field work from the equation.
The popularity of online social networks such as Facebook, twitter, and WhatsApp continue to rise among Nakuru journalists as their primary source of news.
These sites have allowed journalists to collaborate with others with whom they typically would not collaborate.
This provides instant collaboration almost anywhere.
Emily Karanja, a journalist in Nakuru notes that, “ since I embraced technology, news has been so easy to get, but the challenge is to locate the media and content that interests my audience.”
For example, though content sharing, like twitter or WhatsApp posts have given journalists the capability to view broadcasts of events that may not be available through traditional broadcasts, and it is through such media sharing web sites that have afforded journalists almost limitless information an entertainment at little or no cost.
“I get news from instant messaging, and picture or video messaging which allows me to edit and exchange content wireless, in fact, this has increased my collaboration and communication because users have instant access to one anothers” Says Margaret Wangeci, a Nakuru-based reporter.
In fact, some services like Hivisasa allow the journalists to edit their content or the content of others directly on the site much like online social networks.
Indeed, media sharing websites have provided a sense of community to a group of geographically separated individuals.