News in the Digital Age
Newspapers embrace a multimedia future.
by Hope Cristol
The exodus of readers from newspapers to the Net spells the end
of print journalism, say trend watchers and technophiles. But New York Times
publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. responds to naysayers with a flip, "Who cares?"
That's because Sulzberger, along with other major industry players,
believes print's convergence with broadcast and online media will drive the successful
journalism enterprise of the future. The New York Times Company spent $75 million in
January 2002 for a 15% stake in the Boston Red Sox, not for love of the game, but for a
foothold in cable television, according to an article in Online Journalism Review (OJR),
published by the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication.
Tribune Interactive delivers news to AT&T wireless subscribers. And Gannett sends
daily video-feeds of USA Today's top stories to the TV stations it owns in 15
states. These companies are all banking on the potentially viable theory that reaching
audiences through a variety of media is key to turning a profit in the digital age.
"Newspapers cannot be defined by the second word—paper.
They've got to be defined by the first—news," Sulzberger told OJR.
While traditional news organizations try to keep up with the future
by buying more media outlets, new sources of news, information, and opinion are popping up
independently on the Web. In addition to online newsletters published by associations and
individuals, there is the fairly recent weblog phenomenon. Weblogs, or blogs,
are personal Web sites frequently updated (often several times per day) with running
commentaries, topical analyses, and links. They range from personally revealing
(www.librarian.net) to politically incisive (www.instapundit.com). One well-known blog is
the Drudge Report, which gained notoriety for reporting on the Clinton/Lewinsky sex
scandal.
"Weblogging will drive a powerful new form of amateur
journalism as millions of Net users—young people especially—take on the role of
columnist, reporter, analyst, and publisher while fashioning their own personal
broadcasting networks," says OJR senior columnist J.D. Lasica in We've Got
Blog, a collection of blogger essays.
Readers may find blogs more credible than traditional media because
blogs have no corporate interest to serve. They aren't censored by advertisers or
constrained by editorial policies, and they are therefore a more democratic publishing
medium. In the interest of "moving democratic media to the masses," the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab launched Blogdex, a blog tracking and
listing service whose very existence seems to validate blogs as a legitimate trend in
journalism.
We have yet to see how the new generation of high-tech journalism
will stack up to traditional journalism in terms of quality and objectivity; with new
technologies come questions about standards and ethics, warns OJR executive editor
Larry Pryor. The publication launched a new "Future of News" section to address
these questions and more, keeping an observant eye and an open dialogue on journalism's
dynamic, bifurcating future.
"Technology is changing every aspect of our lives," Pryor
says. "We'd like to help lead the discussion not just of where we are going, but what
are the best ways to get there, and what are the new 'best practices' we should follow in
this new future."
Sources: "Newspapers in the Digital Age"
by Dominic Gates, Online Journalism Review (May 2002). Web site www.ojr.org.
"The Third Wave of Online Journalism" by Larry Pryor, Online Journalism
Review (April 2002).
"Blogging as a Form of Journalism" by J.D. Lasica in We've Got Blog: How
Weblogs are Changing Our Culture, edited by John Rodzvilla. Perseus Publishing,
www.perseuspublishing.com. 2002. 234 pages. $20. Order here.
