4.6 Online Journalism Redefines News

The proliferation of online communication has had a profound effect on the newspaper industry. As individuals turn to the Internet to receive news for free, traditional newspapers struggle to remain competitive and hold onto their traditional readers. However, the Internet’s appeal goes beyond free content. This section delves further into the Internet and its influence on the print industry. This book will explore this topic in greater detail in Chapter 11 “The Internet and Social Media” of this textbook.

Competition From Blogs

Weblogs, or blogs, have offered a new take on the traditional world of journalism. Blogs feature news and commentary entries from one or more authors. Many old-school reporters do not believe blogging ranks as formal journalism. Unlike journalists, bloggers do not have to support their work with credible sources. This means that some stories published on blogs provide neither verified nor verifiable information. As Jay Rosen, New York University journalism professor, writes, “Bloggers are speakers and writers of their own invention, at large in the public square. They’re participating in the great game of influence called public opinion (Rosen, 2004).” Despite the blurry lines of what constitutes “true” journalism, many people still seek out blogs to learn about news. Thus, blogs have affected the news journalism industry. Print journalist and blogger Gina Chen said, “Blogging has changed journalism, but it is not journalism (Chen, 2009).”

Advantages Over Print Media

Beyond the lack of accountability in blogging, blogs stay free from the constraints of journalism in other ways that make them increasingly competitive with traditional print publications. Significantly, Internet publication allows writers to break news as soon as it occurs. Unlike a paper that publishes only once a day, the Internet provides constant accessibility, where users can find information ready at the click of a mouse.

In 1998, the Internet flexed its rising journalistic muscle by breaking a story before any major print publication: the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal. The Drudge Report, an online news website that primarily consists of links to stories with conservative appeal, first made the story public, claiming to have learned of the scandal only after Newsweek magazine failed to publish it. On January 18, 1998, the story broke online with the title “Newsweek Kills Story on White House Intern. Blockbuster Report: 23-year-old, Former White House Intern, Sex Relationship with President.” The report gave some details on the scandal, concluding the article with the phrase “The White House was busy checking the Drudge Report for details (Australian Politics, 1998).” This act revealed the power of the Internet because of its superiority in timeliness, threatening the relevancy of slower newspapers and news magazines.

Print media also continuously struggle with space constraints, another limit that does not plague the Internet. As newspapers contemplate making the transition from print to online editions, several editors see the positive effect of this particular issue. N. Ram, editor in chief of The Hindu, claims, “One clear benefit online editions can provide is the scope this gives for accommodating more and longer articles…. There need be no space constraints, as in the print edition (Viswanathan, 2010).” With the endless writing space of the Internet, online writers have the freedom to explore topics more fully, to provide more detail, and to print interviews or other texts in their entirety—opportunities that many print journalists have longed for since newspapers first began publishing.

Online writing also provides a forum for amateurs to enter the professional realm of writing. With cost-cutting forcing newspapers to lay off writers, more and more would-be journalists turn to the Internet to find ways to enter the field. Interestingly, the blogosphere has launched the careers of journalists who otherwise may never have pursued a career in journalism. For example, blogger Molly Wizenberg founded the blog Orangette because she didn’t know what to do with herself: “The only thing I knew was that, whatever I did, it had to involve food and writing (Wyke, 2009).” After Orangette became a successful food blog, Wizenberg transitioned into writing for a traditional media outlet: food magazine Bon Appetit.

Online Newspapers

With declining readership and increasing competition from blogs, most newspapers have embraced the culture shift and have moved to online journalism. For many papers, this has meant creating an online version of their printed paper that readers will have access to from any location, at all times of the day. By 2010, over 10,000 newspapers had gone online. But some smaller papers—particularly those in two-paper communities—have not only started websites but have also ceased publication of their print editions entirely.

In 2009, Seattle’s Post-Intelligencer stopped printing, “leaving the rival Seattle Times as the only big daily in town (Folkenflik, 2009).” As Steve Swartz, president of Hearst Newspapers and owner of the Post-Intelligencer, commented about the move to online-only printing, “Being the second newspaper in Seattle didn’t work. We are very enthusiastic, however, about this experiment to create a digital-only business in Seattle with a robust community website at its core (Folkenflik, 2009).” For the Post-Intelligencer, the move meant a dramatic decrease in its number of staff journalists. The printed version of the paper employed 135 journalists, but the online version, Seattlepi.com, employed only two dozen. For Seattlepi.com, this shift felt doubly unusual because the online-only newspaper did not function like a traditional newspaper at all. As Swartz articulated, “Very few people come to our website and try to re-create the experience of reading a newspaper—in other words, spending a half-hour to 45 minutes and really reading most of the articles. We don’t find people do that on the Web (Folkenflik, 2009).”

During this transitional time for newspapers, many professional journalists have taken the opportunity to enter the blogosphere, the realm of bloggers on the Internet. Journalist bloggers, also known as beatbloggers, have begun to utilize blogs as “tool[s] to engage their readers, interact with them, use them as sources, crowdsource their ideas and invite them to contribute to the reporting process,” says beatblogger Alana Taylor (Taylor, 2009). As beatblogging grows, online newspapers have harnessed the popularity of this phenomenon and taken advantage of the resources provided by the vast Internet audience through crowdsourcing (outsourcing problem-solving to a large group of people via social media). Blogs have become an increasingly prominent feature on news websites, and nearly every major newspaper website displays a link to the paper’s official blogs on its homepage. This subtle addition to the web pages reflects the print industry’s desire to remain relevant in an increasingly online world.

Even as print newspapers add the digital realm to their portfolio with greater or less success, Internet news sites that never existed in a print format entered the lexicon. Early online only sources The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast remain prominent players in the digital news landscape, though the media ecosystem has evolved significantly since their founding (just ask The Drudge Report, a once influential conservative news aggregate). New platforms and outlets have emerged, challenging their dominance. For instance, social media giants like Facebook and Twitter have become major sources of news consumption, and subscription-based services such as The New York Times and The Washington Post have expanded their digital offerings.

Moreover, the rise of personalized content algorithms and the proliferation of fake news and misinformation have raised concerns about the quality and reliability of online news. This has led to increased scrutiny of digital media outlets and a growing demand for trustworthy, independent journalism.

Some newspapers have made even more dramatic transformations to keep up with the changing online world. In 2006, newspaper conglomerate GateHouse Media made a pioneering move by publishing under a Creative Commons license. This approach, while innovative at the time, hasn’t become a widespread practice within the industry. Today, most major news outlets offer some level of free online content, but with varying degrees of access and restrictions.

As outlined by Lisa Williams in her 2006 PressThink.org article, GateHouse Media had a goal to attract more online viewers and ultimately boost advertising revenue. The strategy focused on leveraging the “cut-and-paste” culture of blogs, hoping that easier access would lead bloggers to link back to newspaper stories. These links were believed to improve search engine ranking and drive traffic to the newspaper websites, potentially increasing online ad revenue (Williams, 2006).

However, the media landscape shifted dramatically away from online news sites. The rise of social media as a primary news source has lessened the reliance on blog linking. Additionally, many news organizations have adopted a freemium model, offering a limited amount of free content with paid subscriptions unlocking premium articles or in-depth reporting. This approach allows them to retain control over their content while still attracting a wider online audience.

GateHouse Media’s decision to alter its newspapers’ licensing agreement to boost advertising online reflects the biggest challenge facing the modern online newspaper industry: profit. Despite shrinking print-newspaper readership and rising online readership, print revenue remains much greater than digital revenue because the online industry has not produced an innovator like Benjamin Day to develop a breakthrough to make newspapers profitable again. As one article notes:

The positive news is that good newspapers like The New York Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal now provide better, richer, and more diverse content in their Internet editions…. The bad news is that the print media are yet to find a viable, let alone profitable, revenue model for their Internet journalism (Viswanathan, 2010).

Many news organizations give away their information for free on the Internet yet receive far less revenue for online advertisements. As National Public Radio (NPR) reports, “The online-only plan for newspapers remains an unproven financial model; there are great savings by scrapping printing and delivery costs, but even greater lost revenues since advertisers pay far more money for print ads than online ads (Folkenflik).”

Despite these challenges, newspapers both in print and online continue to seek new ways to provide the public with accurate, timely information. Newspapers have long adapted to cultural paradigm shifts, and in the face of losing print newspapers altogether, the newspaper industry continues to reinvent itself to keep up with the digital world.