Presented by US Pandey January 1, 2012 john v. pavlik journalism and new media USP Journalism and New Media Presented by US Pandey January 1, 2012 USP Presented by US Pandey January 1, 2012 USP Journalism and New Media Presented by US Pandey January 1, 2012 John V. Pavlik columbia university press new york USP Presented by US Pandey January 1, 2012 columbia university press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex Copyright ᭧ 2001 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pavlik, John Vernon. Journalism and new media / John V. Pavlik. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–231–11482–6 (cloth)—ISBN 0–231–11483–4 (paper) 1. Electronic news gathering 2. Journalism—Data processing 3. Journalism—Computer network resources 4. Journalism—Technological innovations I. Title. PN4784.E53 P38 2001 070.4Ј0285—dc21 A 00–065710 Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America c10987654321 p10987654321 USP Contents Presented by US Pandey January 1, 2012 Foreword by Seymour Topping vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Understanding the Impact of New Media on Journalism xi Part I: Altering News Content 1 1. Transforming Storytelling: From Omnidirectional Imaging to Augmented Reality 3 2. Assessing the State of Online Journalism 28 Part II: Transforming How Journalists Do Their Work 47 3. New Tools for News Gathering 49 4. A Reporter’s Field Guide to the Internet 61 5. Journalism Ethics and New Media 82 USP vi Contents Part III: Restructuring the Newsroom and the News Industry 99 6. Newsroom for a New Age: Managing the Virtual Newsroom 101 7. Digital Television and Video News: A Crisis of Opportunity 115 Presented Partby US IV: Pandey Redefining RelationshipsJanuary 123 1, 2012 8. Audiences Redefined, Boundaries Removed, Relationships Reinvented 125 9. Business Models for Online Journalism 149 Part V: Implications for the Future: The Telecommunications Act, Intelligent Agents, and Journalism Practice and Education 159 10. Long-Term Consequences of the Telecommunications Act of 1996: New Rules of the Game 161 11. Implications of Intelligent Agents for Journalism: Ghosts in the Machine 183 12. New Media and Journalism Education: Preparing the Next Generation 193 13. Job Prospects in Online Journalism 209 Afterword. Contextualized Journalism: Implications for the Evolving Role of Journalists in the Twenty-first Century 217 Notes 221 Index 237 USP Foreword Presented by US Pandey January 1, 2012 John Pavlik has provided us with a comprehensive and in- valuable guide to understanding and utilizing new media in journalism. In exploring the potential of contextualized journalism, with its use of new digital capabilities in video and audio, Professor Pavlik argues convincingly that these techniques offer opportunities for the practice of better journalism, which will bolster public faith in the media. In practical terms he tells us how journalists in their reporting and storytelling as well as the business practices of their managers will have to adapt to an increasingly networked world. He does not minimize the enormous problems ahead in managing the Internet, certifying what is reliable, and maintaining standards as media Web sites compete in continuous news coverage. While his book serves as a very useful reference on everything from organizing a New Age newsroom to job hunting in new media, the general reader may be most impressed by Professor Pavlik’s evocative passages on the positive and negative forces that will shape journalism in the digital age. He believes that on balance jour- nalism, with the tools of new media, can play a larger and more useful role in our society. The wealth of information and analysis Professor Pavlik brings to bear in his impressive book reassures us that his optimism is not misplaced. —Seymour Topping, administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes and professor of International Journalism at the Graduate School of Journalism of Columbia University USP Presented by US Pandey January 1, 2012 USP Acknowledgments Presented by US Pandey January 1, 2012 I offer my sincerest thanks to all those who helped me in writing Journalism and New Media. Ann Miller, my editor at Columbia University Press, offered more than three years of editorial guidance and encouragement in the development and evolution of the book. I am deeply indebted to the anonymous reviewers commissioned by Columbia Univer- sity Press to comment on earlier drafts; their comments and insights were of tremendous value in shaping and refining my ideas and my analysis of the changing new media landscape and its impact on journalism. Adam Clayton Powell III, vice president of Technology for the Freedom Forum, offered a critique of the early drafts of the book that were of extraordinary value in making it clear in its focus. Seymour Topping, administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes and professor of International Journalism at the Graduate School of Journalism of Columbia University, has contributed immeasurably to the book, both through his editorial suggestions and with an eloquent foreword. My Columbia students, Pamela L. D. Peeters, cofounder of the Unit for Environmental Education, Columbia University, and Reuben Abraham pro- vided valuable research assistance. Finally, my wife, Jackie, and daughters, Tristan Mariana and Orianna Magdalena, deserve special thanks for their love and support during the writing and editing of the book, especially dur- ing the late nights and early mornings when I headed off in the darkness to my computer. USP Presented by US Pandey January 1, 2012 USP Introduction: Understanding the Impact of New Media on Journalism Presented by US Pandey January 1, 2012 Journalism is undergoing a fundamental transformation, per- haps the most fundamental since the rise of the penny press of the mid- nineteenth century. In the twilight of the twentieth century and the dawn of the twenty-first, there is emerging a new form of journalism whose distin- guishing qualities include ubiquitous news, global information access, in- stantaneous reporting, interactivity, multimedia content, and extreme con- tent customization. In many ways this represents a potentially better form of journalism because it can reengage an increasingly distrusting and alienated audience. At the same time, it presents many threats to the most cherished values and standards of journalism. Authenticity of content, source verifi- cation, accuracy, and truth are all suspect in a medium where anyone with a computer and a modem can become a global publisher. Although the easy answer is to point to the Internet, the reasons for the transformation of journalism are neither simple nor one-dimensional. Rather, a set of economic, regulatory, and cultural forces, driven by tech- nological change, are converging to bring about a massive shift in the nature of journalism at the millennium. The growth of a global economic system, made up of regional economies, all interrelated (witness the volatility in the world’s financial markets in Au- gust 1998, when drops in Asian and Russian markets triggered drops in European and U.S. markets) and increasingly controlled by multinational corporate behemoths, has rewritten the financial basis for journalism and the media in general. Deregulation, as outlined in the U.S. Telecommuni- USP xii Introduction cations Act of 1996 and played out in like fashion in many other parts of the world (where privatization of telecommunications has been a driving force), has spawned increasingly powerful competitive forces in journalism and communications. The end of the cold war has unleashed a variety of pent-up cultural and political forces that have yet to stabilize. Together,these forces have created an environment of uncertainty for journalism as it enters this new age in which the alignment of superpowers has been fundamentally altered, shareholders are the most important stakeholders, and competition is morePresented likely to by come US fromPandey a software company basedJanuary in Redmond, 1, 2012 Wash- ington, than from the cross-town newspaper or broadcaster. Fueling this changing environment has been the emergence of the first and perhaps most powerful medium of global interactive communications. As James Carey writes, “The Internet should be understood as the first in- stance of a global communication system. That system, in turn, is displacing a national system of communications which came into existence at the end of the nineteenth century as a result of the railroad and telegraph, and was ‘perfected’ in subsequent innovations through television in the network era.”1 But in many ways the Internet is merely a product, or symptom, of a more fundamental technological change that has been under way for the past half- century and only now is beginning to crystallize: the convergence of tele- communications, computing, and traditional media. Together, this new me- dia system embraces all forms of human communication in a digital format where the rules and constraints of the analog world no longer apply. Some would question whether this convergence is actually occurring. They would point to the fact that most people around the world in 2000 still do not have a computer in the home and that in most homes that do have a computer, the TV set and the computer are still separate devices. They would note that even in the United States in 2000 most TV sets do not connect to a telephone line or any other medium of “upstream” communication capability (i.e., the ability for the audience member to send information as well as receive it). The trend toward convergence is undeniable, however, if not yet com- plete. By 2000 more than eight million U.S. households as well as millions more in Japan and many other parts of the world had subscribed to digital broadcasting services such as DirecTV, which links TV sets to a system of digital video (i.e., computerized) and a telephone line (which is required for the dbs to operate) for ordering pay-per-view programs and the like.