THE TECHNOLOGY OF JOURNALISM CULTURAL AGENTS, CULTURAL ICONS Patricia L. Dooley Foreword by Neil Chase MEDILL SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM Northwestern University Press Evanston, Illinois Northwestern University Press www.nupress.northwestern.edu Copyright © 2007 by Patticia L. Dooley Published 2007 by Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America IO 9 8 7 6 5 4 2 ISBN-I3: 978-0-8IOI-2330-4 ISBN-IO: 0-8IOI-2330-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Pnblication Data Dooley, Patricia L. The technology of journalism : cultural agents, cultural icons I Patricia L. Dooley; foreword by Neil Chase. p. cm. - (Visions of the American press) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-I3: 978-0-8IOI-2330-4 (pbk. : aile paper) ISBN-IO: 0-8IOI-2330-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Journalism-Technological innovations. 2. Journalism-History. 1. Title. II. Series. PN4784·T34D662007 070·40285-dc22 r§ The paper used in tlus publication meets the nUlumum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed LibralY Materials, ANSI Z39.48-I992. CONTE�TS Foreword by Neil Chase ix Preface xv One Introduction Tillo HistOlical Antecedents 23 Three The Dynamics ofChange 61 FOllr More and More News Five Plinters and Readers 115 · Six Electlification 131 Seven Visualizing the News 145 Eight From Desktop to Digital 167 Nine Press as Symbol 185 Ten The Future of Ptinted News 201 No tes 209 Bibliography 231 Index 239 FOREWORD Neil Chase Visit the intersection ofjournalism and technology, as Patricia L. Dooley suggests in this thoughtful volume, and you'll find it's not a place where two perpendicular paths cross. It more closely re­ sembles a beehive. Innovation enters fi·om all directions, mostly in the fo rm of ideas and inventions not originally intended fo r the news business. Publishers and broadcasters reach the intersection either because they are driven there by emotions ranging fi-om cu­ riosity to fe ar to greed or because they've taken a wrong turn. When they meet, journalism finds wondetful uses fo r what tech­ nology has created. Sometimes, it's related to the manufacturing part of the business: a new way to distribute news faster or more cheaply, to get it to more people, or to reduce the money and time needed to cover a stOlY or sell an ad. Often, the innovators are the jOlu-nalists themselves, people who drive into that complex inter­ section looking fo r specific ways to improve the process of news gathering and delivety: • Reporters who used carrier pigeons to send copy fi-om European war zones and then a centmy later adapted satellite phones to do the same thing •. Photographers who turned hotel bathrooms into darkrooms while on out-of-town assignments • Sportswriters who used the first portable (better described as "luggable") computers to cover games without having to return to the office or dictate over the phone ix x FOREWORD • Editors who produced a newspaper using desktop computers in a borrowed office across the street after the 1989 San Francisco earthquake crippled their newsroom and their multimillion­ dollar publishing system (and the graphic artist who remem­ bered the old technology and drew maps by hand that night) In some of the most fa scinating cases, innovative technology ac­ tually changes the nature of the stOlytelling. It makes .the news more relevant, more approachable, more valuable, more enter­ taining, or easier to comprehend. That certainly happened when people figured out how to print photographs in the newspaper, packing a thousand descriptive words into a single halftone image that did a better job of telling the stOly. When radio news gradu­ ated fi'om on-air reading to the use of sound recorded in the field, it brought about another worth-a-thousand-words innovation (followed, perhaps unfortunately, by allowing evelyone in town to call in and rant live on the air). Television gave joumalists the extraordinalY ability to show the news and not just talk about it. Those innovations were moments of major significance in the relationship between journalism and technology. They were big changes, decades apart, in the days when technology meant big machines, big decisions, and big costs. For most of the twentieth centmy, the intersection ofjournalism and technology was mainly populated by large companies. In the 1990S, the informationhigh­ way department reconfigured the intersection. The commercial­ ization ofthe Internet, the evolution ofthe WorId Wide Web, and the related simplification of computer progranulling allowed jour­ nalists to single-handedly create new forms ofstOlyteIling-some­ times within minutes. "Imagine what we could do with this," a fe llowjOU l11alist said as he gave me my first glimpse at the Web in the sunUller of 1994. We were looking at Web pages that could FOREWORD xi tell you whether a coffeepot or a vending machine was fu ll, but his eyes gleamed with ideas fo r online journalism. The stOlY of the years after that sunun er could be told in terms of technology: Web pages becal11_e more sophisticated, starting with text but soon car­ lying photos and simple graphics, then audio, video, interactive tools, database inter£'lces, and much more. As Web users gained increasing amounts of processing speed on their computers and more robust connections that allowed faster access to more com­ plicated pages, the richness of online journalism grew. But that technology time line is overshadowed by the true par­ adigm change: the fa scinating transition in the ways we can tell sto­ ries and the effects those stories can have. Journalism changed. Not because technology changed it but because some velY innovative stOlytellers used that technology to make the changes happen. Consider several ways news organizations have used new tools to improve citizen participation in the operation of democracies: • Elections are vital, but too many people abstain, while others vote without understanding the choices. In Colombia, a weekly newsmagazine prepared voters fo r a national election by creating an interactive "figure out which candidate you support" questionnaire on the Web: answer questions about your positions on key issues and we'll help you decide which candidate is the best match. Thousands used it, and the results collected fi'om users ended up accurately predicting the election results. This undoubtedly brought into the process people who would have otherwise abstained. • One stOlY that's simultaneously crucial and incomprehensible is the annual budget. From a national government to the tiniest municipality , the budget affects evelY citizen. But don't expect most people to understand it. In New Yark City, a xii FOREWORD small independent weekly newspaper decided to change that. So it created an interactive graphic that explained the city's budgeting process and let the reader wear the shoes of a city official. Think the city should spend more on schools? Great, but you have to take money £i:omhighway repair to do it. More cops? You can raise the police budget as much as you want, but you have to take money fr om other services to do so, unless you raise taxes. • When King County, Washington, was considering a tax increase to pay fo r highway and transportation improvements, the Seattle Times built a list of all the projects being considered, the alternatives and costs fo r each, and the possible sources of revenue. It then let readers decide which projects should be completed and how the money should be raised. A stOlY in . the paper clearly explained the results, with more than two thousand people participating, and the voice of those readers led the local government to change its plans. Consider also the new job descriptions fo r journalists. At many newspapers, "print" reporters are recording audio in the field and doing TV-like stand-up reports in fr ont of video cameras. "Print" photographers cany hybrid still-and-video cameras and report sto­ ries differently because they're thinking of slide shows, video packages, and that big photo fo r page A-I. A fo reign COlTespon­ dent fo r a newspaper films a video report from the roof of a house in Baghdad. Another carries a video camera into a troubled African nation and hands it to a fi'eelance still photographer; the two then collaborate on a compelling video report fi'om a place the television networks have never visited. At the same time, a TV station's producer is learning to write in more of a print style fo r the online version of tonight's local news report. And a radio host FOREWORD xlii is now shaving in the mornings because there's a live online video version.ofhis show. There are plenty ofjokes about journalists as dinosaurs, about reporters who can't use a computer because they can't find the carriage-return lever, about the need fo r one journalist to change the lightbulb while another twenty-four reminisce about how great the old one was and how there was no need to replace it so quickly just because it burned out. But in today's newsrooms, it's the journalists who are leading the change. They're writing quick versions of stories fo r the Web during the day; some say that fo ­ cusing on a lead before lunchtime helps them shape their ideas and determine the lines of reporting fo r the rest of the day or week fo r the final version. Perhaps the biggest surprise to traditional news professionals is that evolving technology has even changed the sources of news. When a well-known celebrity died recently, an editor at a nlajor U.S. newspaper saw it on the Web site Wikipedia within a minute of the first news report.