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Journalism Studies
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The Impact of Technology on Journalism

John Pavlik Available online: 12 Dec 2010

To cite this article: John Pavlik (2000): The Impact of Technology on Journalism, Journalism Studies, 1:2, 229-237 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14616700050028226

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Journalism Studies, Volume 1, Number 2, 2000, pp. 229237

The Impact of Technology on Journalism

JOHN PAVLIK

University of Minnesota, USA

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ABSTRACT This article proposes that changing technology in uences journalism in at least four broad areas: (1) how journalists do their work; (2) the content of news; (3) the structure or organization of the newsroom; and (4) the relationships between or among news organizations, journalists and their many publics. Although new media such as the Internet, World Wide Web and digital video are perhaps the most visible examples of technologies that are transforming journalism, the history of journalism is in many ways de ned by technological change. The article concludes with a proposed research agenda for the study of journalism and technological change. KEY WORDS: Digital, Internet, Journalism, Online, Technology

Journalism has always been shaped by technology. Since Julius Caesar ordered the Acta Diurna in AD 59, distributing information about the important events of the day has been enabled, if not often driven, by technological advances. Gutenbergs printing press not only made possible the printing of the Bible and other religious texts; it also laid the foundation for mass literacy and the invention of the newspaper. Alexander Graham Bells invention of the telephone not only made possible widespread telecommunications; it also transformed how journalists gather and report the news, frequently conducting interviews by telephone, and sometimes distributing news via the telephone. In fact, there were trials of newspaper delivery by telephone in the early 1900s, transformed later in the 1970s into the widely popular audiotex services offered by more than 1000 daily newspapers in the United States. This article proposes that technological change in uences journalism in at
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least four ways. Technological change affects: (1) the way journalists do their job; (2) the nature of news content; (3) the structure and organization of the newsroom and the news industry; and (4) the nature of the relationships between and among news organizations, journalists and their many publics, including audiences, competitors, news sources, sponsors and those who seek to regulate or control the press.

The Way Journalists Do Their Job

Technology has, for better or worse, exerted a fundamental in uence on how journalists do their jobs. Although the best reporting is, and always has been, so-called shoe-leather reporting, or news-gathering when the journalist is on the scene, more and more journalists spend increasingly less of their time out in the eld observing directly the events and processes on which they report. Since the intro2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd

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duction of the telephone to the newsroom in the early 1900s, journalists have used telecommunications technology to gather news. Many, if not most, interviews are conducted via the telephone. Some might ask what is wrong with that? Perhaps, sometimes, nothing; but it is not always possible via the telephone to be sure of the nonverbal communication that accompanies a verbal answer. Moreover, it is not always possible to be sure you are really speaking to the person you think you are speaking to. With the development of the Internet the problem can be even worse, with journalists sometimes even conducting interviews via e-mail. Conversely, the Internet can also help to improve the quality of news-gathering, especially when on deadline or in after-hours situations. With increasing amounts of public records and corporate information published in complete form online (e.g. the Federal Elections Commission now publishes on its web site, www.fec.gov, in real time the data it collects on campaign contributions, making it both a highly reliable and timely source for journalists covering political campaigns), reporters can now effectively use online tools to gather news and information, check facts and even nd sources off the Web, from list-serves and chat rooms. Similarly, the US Department of the Census (www.census.gov) plans to make all of its raw census data available on its website not only for journalists but for all citizens to sort, sift and otherwise analyze. Research by public relations professional Dan Middleberg and journalism professor Steve Ross provides a revealing look at how journalists use the Internet. The authors four-survey trend report, Media in Cyberspace, is based on more than 2500 responses and shows that journalists increasingly use the Internet and other online re

sources in their work. Here are some of the most notable survey ndings: Almost all journalists now use online tools for researching and reporting. Fully 93 per cent of respondents say they or their staffs use online services in some way at least occasionally. Almost half the respondents say they or their staff go online every day (more than half for newspapers). Only 2 per cent say they or their staffs absolutely never use online technology. When reporting a breaking story after hours journalists try to reach the source rst almost every time, but indicate that they turn to company websites second for information. During non-business hours, or when live sources are not available, websites are playing a signi cant role in delivering information to media. Many journalists are going online to obtain story ideas. Amazingly, listservs, e-mail, the Web and Usenet newsgroups together were named by 9 per cent of respondents as their primary source of story ideas together, about the same as newswires; but live sources remain far and away journalists biggest sources of story ideas. Most respondents indicate that they are using the Web for gathering images and other materials that had to be carried physically to the newsroom just a few years ago. More than half of all respondents can now access the Internet from work, compared to a little more than a third of the entire sample in 1995. Only 9 per cent of the respondents said they had no individual Internet access. The editorial and production processes of journalism are also greatly in uenced and shaped by technological change. In the analog world, the limits of technology often made it impossible to work close to deadline with-

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out risking a complete breakdown in the reporting process. Today, digital online tools make it increasingly possible to work right up to deadline, especially signi cant in opening up possibilities for on-deadline operations in video journalism. Moreover, in the analog world, the rules imposed by the broadcasting unions greatly constrained the production of television news. Each individual function, such as changing a tape or making an edit, was performed by a union member under strict rules. None of these rules apply in the digital age. In the digital newsroom any journalist can perform any editorial or production operation on the video. Thus, any reporter can produce video, editing in the eld and/or on deadline. Of course, this might have signi cant negative implications for television news, as individual reporters come under increasing pressure to act as oneperson news and production crews. It is perhaps some consolation that the tools are increasingly easy to use, and will soon be as easy to use as is a word processor for editing text. At KGO-TV, the San Francisco ABC af liate, the digital newsroom is complete, at a cost of roughly $ 22 million. According to Jim Topping, the ABC owned TV stations senior vice president who oversaw the implementation of the digital system (he is also former general manager of the station), the transition to digital is both a threat and an opportunity. The opportunity is especially great for stations in major markets with the staff size and experience and other resources to implement a digital system fully and successfully. The danger is greatest in smaller markets, Topping says (in comments at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, August 4, 1999, New Orleans), where inexperienced reporters will be asked to serve as one-

person crews, sometimes on major stories that occur in relatively remote, small markets.

The Nature of News Content

Technology also has exerted a profound in uence on the content of news. Writing and language are, in fact, technologies and as such reporters have always depended on them for the reporting or storytelling of journalism. History is replete with examples of how more recent technologies also have shaped the content of what we call news. Adam Clayton Powell III, now vice president of technology for the Freedom Forum and a veteran of the television and radio newsroom (with many years as a producer for CBS News and vice president of news and information for National Public Radio) conducted a study for the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center that showed how the introduction of video in the 1970s transformed the storytelling of network news once produced on lm (Powell, 1993). Powells study showed that prior to the use of video, television news reports featured longer shots, fewer edits and more slowly paced narrative. The introduction of video exerted a powerful in uence on network news. Edits became faster-paced, shots were shortened and the narrative became much faster-paced. As former CBS News veteran Bud Benjamin once quipped, it became NTV, or news MTV-style. In todays digital, online world, content is once again undergoing a profound transformation, largely enabled, if not driven, by technological change. No one can dispute the increased speed of news ow. Stories break at the speed of light, circling the globe instantly via the Internet. Reports on online nancial news sites, such as www.thestreet.com, can in uence

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market performance in seconds, as day traders react to the instant reporting of company performance reports, pronouncements from Federal Chairman Alan Greenspan or even rumors on Internet chat-rooms and bulletin boards. All this has given new-millennium meaning to the old observation of journalist A. J. Liebling, I can write better than anyone who can write faster, and faster than anyone who can write better. There is no debating the ascendancy of high-speed news. The question is whether it is better journalism. Partly, it depends how it is regarded. Consider the case of the Columbine, CO shooting in the United States in the spring of 1999. Would you rather have waited to nd out about the shooting until the next day when your local newspaper would have reported about it in the morning paper, having had 8 or more hours to check the facts, or would you rather have learned about the shooting moments after it occurred as it was reported via the Web, with little time for fact-checking and a fairly high likelihood of some errors? Although no one has a de nitive answer to this question, the 1999 Middleberg/Ross survey also provides useful data on online content trends for newspapers online. The data show the following. The trend for online scoops continues. This year almost one-third of publications websites allow the Web to scoop their print product, at least sometimes. The growth of online publishing is simply tremendous. More than half of responding journalists indicate they use the Web to distribute news. Fiftyve per cent say that their publication, or portions of it, is already online! That is double the 25 per cent reported 2 years ago. Only 9 per cent of respondents this year said

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their publication had no plans to go online at all. Original content being published online has seen signi cant growth. Last year only 7 per cent of newspapers with websites said half or more of the sites content was original, not also appearing in their print versions. This year almost 20 per cent of newspapers with websites said original content was at least half. For magazines, 48 per cent said their websites are at least half original, up from 17 per cent last year. Over 40 per cent of editors or their staffs write copy that ends up on their own publications websites. Digital technology is also transforming the nature of storytelling and the presentation of news online. The oncebasic inverted pyramid news-writing style is becoming obsolete in the online news world. It is being supplanted increasingly by immersive and interactive multimedia news reports that can give readers/viewers a feeling of presence at news events like never before. Consider the case of the collaboration between online crime news service apbonline and the Center for New Media at Columbia Universitys Graduate School of Journalism in the United States. In 1999, West African immigrant Amadou Diallo was gunned down by four plain-clothes police of cers in the middle of the night as Diallo stepped through the vestibule of his apartment building in the Bronx, New York. The four of cers red 41 shots at the unarmed Diallo as he reached for his wallet to presumably present identi cation to the of cers. The apbonline/Columbia collaborative news team, featuring Columbia graduate students from journalism and a number of other elds, used a 360-degree video camera to record the site of the shooting. Posting the omnidirectional video on the apbonline web site

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(www.apbonline.com), the collaborative team report enables visitors to explore the vestibule on their own, panning, tilting or zooming anywhere inside the vestibule, examining the physical space and artifacts left from the shooting, including bullet-holes, messages written by police and other visitors to the site, and the doorway and mailbox inside the vestibule. Members of the audience can use this 360-degree view to examine the crime scene on their own, potentially extracting additional details overlooked by the reporter or even the police. In this fashion, the visitors to the site develop and discover their own story, in marked contrast to the traditions of news reporting based on linear narration. Is it better journalism? I do not know; but it is engaging and in some way perhaps comes closer to the truth by removing one level of ltering.

The Structure and Organization of the Newsroom and the News Industry
Technology is also exerting a strong in uence on both the structure of the newsroom and of the news industry. On one level, this in uence is immediately obvious. The rise of the Internet and the World Wide Web as media of mass communication has made possible the publication of some 5000 news sites maintained by classic news organizations, including newspapers, news magazines and broadcast/cable news providers (www.ajr.com). These sites provide global access to news from all parts of the world. Suddenly, newspapers, television, radio and other news providers all nd themselves in headto-head competition. Consumers, on the other hand, have never had it so good. For the rst time, anyone anywhere in the world can read

the New York Times (online version, which includes all the content of the days paper edition plus much more) any time and at no cost (all that is required is a computer with Internet connection, available free of charge in many libraries across the country and around the world). Whether the thousands of news providers now online will nd successful business models to support their online operations is another matter. In all likelihood there will be a consolidation in this new global news marketplace, as there has been with other traditional media. An important question is, what will happen to local news? A study by Columbia University professors Eli Noam and Robert Freeman reported in Television Quarterly shows that while diversity of news and other media is growing at national and international levels, it is shrinking at the local level. Not all of this is due to technology (much is due to economics), but technology certainly plays a part by making ef ciencies of scale and distribution irresistible. It is also true that the changing economics and technology of online news are reshaping the traditional separation of editorial and business functions, or so-called separation of church and state, in newsrooms across the United States. The lines between advertising and editorial are blurring, as banner advertisements are featured on many online newspaper front pages, a practice frowned upon in most printed newspapers. Many sites feature links from their book review sections directly to online book sellers, a feature attractive to many online consumers but one that sometimes raises troubling ethical concerns about the possible in uence of advertising on editorial content. Within the newsroom, technology, especially online communication, is affecting the centralization and hierarchical character of the newsroom. Traditionally, newspaper and other

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newsrooms have been very hierarchically organized, almost in military fashion, with an editor or news director, exerting powerful control over the news operation, followed by other of cers in the chain of command. The Internet is changing this signi cantly, as more newsrooms become atter in their structure, especially in online editions. In places such as cnet.com or thestreet.com, although there is still an editor-in-chief, the distance between top and bottom in the newsroom is much reduced. Moreover, there is much more frequent communication between newsroom personnel and audience members, often in the shape of e-mail. This dramatically in uences story selection and coverage. Also emerging in todays journalism is the so-called combined newsroom. The Tribune Company, CNN and Bloomberg are perhaps the best examples of news organizations that have created combined news-gathering operations. Here, stories are assigned to reporters who gather news, and then the information gathered is packaged for distribution via any of a number of media outlets, such as television, radio, newspaper or Internet. This combined news-gathering operation is highly ef cient and cost-effective . Newspaper distribution is also being fundamentally rede ned by the online revolution. The Orem (Utah) Daily Journal is reported to be the rst daily newspaper to go online and stop publishing a printed product http:// www.ucjournal.com/(Carricaburu, 1999). After 9 months in print, the paper decided to distribute via only the Internet from August 5, 1999. The reader, of course, can print the product and read it on paper, if preferred. It will be an interesting case to watch and may be the beginning of a trend. The cost of printing and delivery, roughly 60 per cent of the cost of producing the average newspaper, has

been greatly reduced (virtually eliminated, in fact). Publisher Levor Oldham said common sense was behind his reasoning. Clearly, the future of newspapers is on the Web. Whether the free online paper can maintain its advertising base will largely determine its pro tability. It is not yet clear what the online readership of the paper is, but in print the paper had a circulation of 7500. Utah is the fourth-ranked state in the nation in terms of Internet penetration at 46 per cent, establishing the potential for substantial online readership.

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The Nature of the Relationships Between and Among News Organizations and their Publics
Perhaps most importantly, technological change is fundamentally reshaping the relationships between and among news organizations, journalists and their many publics, including audiences, competitors, news sources, sponsors and those who seek to regulate or control the press. For at least 500 years, since Gutenberg invented the printing press in Mainz, Germany, the basic relationship between publishers and their publics has been de ned by a broadcast model of communication. The broadcast model emphasizes a one (or few) to many communication ow, with little feedback between source and receiver (or journalist and audience) and a relatively anonymous, heterogeneous audience. The intent of this communication is a combination of persuasion and information. Most US newspapers and broadcast news organizations, for example, provide most of their news coverage with the intent to inform the public about a variety of events and issues important to their communities and society in general. Editorial and opinion pages and columns are in-

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tended to in uence public opinion on matters of public importance. Moreover, the general news coverage has been shown in research to exert an agenda-setting in uence in society, helping to shape public opinion in terms of which issues are most important. Political scientist Bernard C. Cohen summed this up in The Press and Foreign Policy (1963) when he said The press may not be successful much of the time in telling us what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about. This is the foundation for what has become known as the agenda-setting function of the press or the media. Another way to view this traditional set of media in uences is in terms of what public relations research tells us about the world of corporate communication. Public relations scholar James Grunig has described several paradigms of communication in a corporate context, including two that are especially relevant to the traditional analog world of journalism. First is the public information model. In this model organizations, typically corporate or governmental, distribute information to the public with the intention of informing the public on matters considered important. The intention is not to persuade, although an agenda-setting function may be a by-product of this communication function. Although this model has been used to describe much of the process of public relations, it is also clearly descriptive of much of traditional journalism. The second model relevant to this discussion is what Grunig calls the one-way, asymmetric model of communication. In this model, the ow of communication is primarily one directional, from an organization to its public or publics. It is asymmetric in the sense that not only is the ow unbalanced, with one of the communication participants dominating the ow and impact

of communication, but that one party (the message sender/content provider) intends to in uence the opinion, and perhaps the behavior, of its publics. This is an accurate description of communication not only in much of the world of public relations, but also in traditional or classic journalism. Whether via newspapers or magazines, television or radio, news in the world of analog media has largely followed this model of one-way, asymmetrical communication, especially in newspaper opinion and editorial pages where considerable resources are employed to shape public opinion and behaviors with regard to important issues, especially in the realm of the political sphere where virtually every newspaper attempts to in uence its readers voting choices. The advent of the digital, networked world of communication is fundamentally altering these models of twentiethcentury journalism. No longer can most journalists and editors be content merely to publish the news. Instead, the process is becoming much more of a dialog between the press and the public. This is especially the case in newspapers and broadcast news operations which have made a signi cant commitment to publishing online. In these cases in particular, audience members have joined in signi cant numbers in online discussions with reporters and editors to debate and discuss coverage of important events. E-mail has become a vital and instantaneous link between readers and reporters, often shaping reporters knowledge and attitudes as much as an initial report may have in uenced the public. Thus we are seeing the emergence of what Grunig calls a two-way symmetric model of communication in twenty- rst-century news operations. In this model, the ow of communication is much more balanced, much more a

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dialog between both or all parties to the communication. No one group dominates the process of persuasion. Rather, all parties in uence each other, at least to some degree. Although not all news organizations are comfortable with this emerging model, many have embraced it as a way to not only serve their communities more effectively, but to engage younger audiences. We see much of this developing in what is known as civic, or public, journalism. Finally, the emergence of the Internet and World Wide Web as a medium of mass communication in the 1990s is rede ning the notion of who is a journalist. A.J. Liebling once observed that: Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. This observation accurately portrayed the world of journalism until the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web as a medium of mass communication in the 1990s. Today, virtually anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can, in effect, own a printing press and reach not only a local audience, but a global one. As a result, literally millions of citizens in the United States and around the world are active participants in the communication process online. Moreover, this transformation has made it possible for the traditional sources used by journalists to become content providers themselves, sometimes even serving as primary news providers to the public, often bypassing the traditional news gatekeepers altogether. Through their web sites, companies, not-for-pro ts and governmental agencies are all publishing information meant for direct consumption by the public as well as by journalists. Although this is great for the companies, and perhaps for the public, it raises serious questions about the role of journalism in a networked world. What should be the role of the journalist in a world where citizens can obtain

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their information directly from any source? What are the implications for democracy? Most citizens realize that information sources have a vested interest in slanting the information they provide to re ect positively on their organization or the issues they support. Therefore, most citizens realize that there is an important role for journalists to play in providing impartial reporting on those organizations or events they seek to in uence. Nevertheless, the credibility of traditional news providers is at an all-time low, and surveys by organizations such as Jupiter Communications and others show that the public often views online sources as just as credible as those in the off-line world. Clearly, there is an important role for journalism to play in the digital, networked world, but what that role is must still take shape. The credibility and impartiality of news organizations must be re-established, or the public may increasingly look to primary sources for news.

Conclusions
This article has argued that technological change exerts a profound in uence on journalism in at least four ways: (1) how journalists do their job; (2) the content of news: (3) the structure of the newsroom and the news industry: and (4) the relationship between news organizations and their publics. These effects raise a variety of important research questions for investigation in the twenty- rst century. Following is a brief outline of a research agenda for the new millennium.

Research Agenda
1. How are journalists using the feedback function in the online arena,

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2. 3. 4. 5.

6.
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where e-mail transforms audiencereporter relationship? To what extent are reporters using online reporting in place of traditional shoe-leather reporting? How does the combined newsroom affect news quality? Is the blurring of the advertising/ editorial border eroding news credibility? To what extent are online news organizations developing new storytelling formats designed for the online media? Although many American journalists argue that most readers are not interested in international news unless it has a clear impact at home, interest in international sites on the Web continues to grow. To what extent are readers interested in international news, as reported by domestic providers or

as reported by international sources? 7. To what extent is a possible lack of interest in international news merely a function of how domestic news providers have packaged and selected the news, often relying heavily on of cial sources and reported by white, male foreign correspondents? 8. What are the emerging business models to support online journalism? 9. What are the most effective roles for journalism in an age where citizens can increasingly go directly to the source of news? Should journalism focus more on providing context and meaning to the days events and issues? 10. Is the speed and ubiquity of news delivery producing a lowering of quality of news (i.e. more errors)?

References
Carricaburu, Lisa (Jul. 30, 1999) Orem, Utah, Newspaper to Cease Print Edition, Move to Online Publication, KRTBN Knight-Ridder Tribune Business News: The Salt Lake TribuneUtah Copyright KRTBN Knight-Ridder Tribune Business News: The Salt Lake TribuneUtah Copyright 1999 KRTBN Knight Ridder Tribune Business News; Source: World Reporter (TM). Cohen, Bernard C. (1963) The Press and Foreign Policy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Grunig, James E.(1976) Organizations and Public Relations: testing a communication theory, Journalism Monographs 46 and November, 1976. Middleberg, Dan and Ross, Steve (1999) Media in Cyberspace, http://www.middleberg.com/ sub cyberspacestudy.html Noam, Eli M. and Freeman, Robert N. (1997) The Media Monopoly and Other Myths, Television Quarterly XXIX, pp. 1923. Powell III, Adam Clayton (1993) Getting the Picture: trends in television news reporting, in: John V. Pavlik and Everette E. Dennis (Eds) Demystifying Media Technology, Mountain View, CA: May eld Publishing Co. Topping, Jim (1999) From New Media to News Media, panel at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, August 4, New Orleans. http://www.abponline.com http://www.ajr.com http://www.census.gov http://www.fec.gov http://www.thestreet.com http://www.ucjournal.com http://www.mediasource.com/intro.htm