Convergence: The International
Journal of Research into New
Media Technologies
http://con.sagepub.com
A Sea-Change in Journalism: Convergence, Journalists, their Audiences and
Sources
John V. Pavlik
Convergence 2004; 10; 21
DOI: 10.1177/135485650401000404
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A Sea-Change in Journalism:
Convergence, Journalists, their
Audiences and Sources
John V. Pavlik
In
two
reporting day’s events, journalists rely most fundamentally on
on
key relationships:
the
the relationship with their news sources and with
their audiences. These relationships are most fundamental for at least
three reasons. First, without reliable sources, a journalist cannot get the
facts needed to prepare the story. Second, without an audience, there is
no point in telling the story. Third, and most important, maintaining
integrity in the relationships between journalists, their sources and their
audiences is fundamental to establishing and maintaining the credibility,
or believability, of journalism, the only real value a journalist has. When
the integrity of the reporter-source-audience relationship is violated, not
only does the individual journalist suffer, but the credibility of the entire
news organisation or even institution is damaged. Consider the 2003
case of former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, who, as the Times
itself admits, ’fabricated comments, concocted scenes and lifted material
from other newspapers and wire services’.1 Not only was Blair forced to
resign his post at the Times, but the Times’ top editors were forced to
relinquish their posts over the credibility crisis.
Convergence, defined in terms of the integration of media forms in a
digital environment, fostered by both technological and economic forces,
is exerting profound influence on these relationships, both in subtle and
not-so-subtle fashion.
The conflicted Throughout most of the 20th century, journalists have had a conflicted
reporter-source relationship with their sources and their audiences. At times, reporters
relationship have nurtured close relationships with their sources, often cultivating
them over a period of years while on a ’beat’. Reporters covering
hall to the White House, the environment to health,
everything from city
science and
technology, all develop reliable, expert sources they can call
upon when needed for a breaking story, an investigative report or a
feature. Yet, reporters can not afford to get too close to a source.
Although reporters want their sources’ trust so they will revea) sometimes
uncomfortable, even dangerous truths (consider ’Deep Throat’, the
famous, anonymous inside source key to Washington Post reporters Bob
~ Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s investigation of the 1972 Watergate
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22
break-in), they do not want to compromise their journalistic
independence. They do not want to be co-opted. Reporters covering the
police sometimes go so far as to ride in patrol cars with cops on their
own beat. The reporter cultivates police sources to get a truthful picture
of what really happens on the street. Yet, the reporter does not want to
start becoming a cop’s buddy, or risk losing the critical, skeptical edge
necessary to effective journalism. The reporter who gets too close to a
source can sometimes fail to ask the tough question, the question that
needs to be asked ... and answered to fully inform the public.
Convergence is transforming the reporter-source relationship, partly by
introducing more technology into the equation. Prior to the advent of
personal computers, email, the internet and World Wide Web, reporters
usually communicated with their sources in either of two ways. First, and
primarily, they talked with them face-to-face. Reporters went to sources
and interviewed them. They went to locations of breaking news and
talked to witnesses, officials on-site and those affected or involved. Since,
the rise of the telephone as a widely adopted technology in the first half
of the 20th century, reporters have also used the phone in talking with
sources. The phone was especially helpful in setting up interviews, finding
sources, and interviewing sources who were not available locally or when
the reporter was on deadline and there was not time to meet someone
face-to-face. Face-to-face always had the advantage over the telephone.
When meeting a source face-to-face, reporters could be sure they were
talking to the individual they thought they were talking to. They could use
non-verbal cues to guess when someone might be lying or when a
question deserved a follow-up. Even when on the phone, a reporter
might sense from the tone of a source’s voice when a follow-up question
was in order.
Rarely, reporters resorted to postal mail, faxes or telegrams to
communicate with a source, but generally these were inadequate and
usually too slow for a reporter on deadline (and they are almost always
on deadlines that preclude the mail). Some sources deluge reporters with
written communication, including press releases, but most reporters
generally disregard or discount this type of communication as public
relations.
The rise of computer-mediated communication has begun to erode
face-to-face and even telephone interviews. Although topflight journalists
still prefer face-to-face interviews, the fact is that in many cases sources
may be tough to reach or pin down, and when on deadline, reporters
may take whatever means they can get to reach a source ... and that
may often be email. This is especially true when follow-up information is
needed, or when a reporter is fact-checking a story. Expert sources,
especially those in science, medicine or higher education, may have a
strong preference for email communications, and may specifically
request that a source contact them via email, particularly if they want a
timely response. For the business news wires, reporters rarely leave their
desks, doing almost all their reporting either via the phone, email or
other internet-based communication.
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23
On the other hand, email communication, can provide certain
improvements to the reporter-source relationship. For example, local
reporters, especially those on the tight budget typical of small or
medium-sized newspapers, television, radio or cable news markets or
online news sites, can greatly expand the diversity of their source pool by
using email, as well as other online sources, such as list-serves, news
groups, and websites. Through email, a local reporter can reach an
international expert in health research for a story on an important
medical breakthrough, when a face-to-face or even telephone interview
might be impossible because of scheduling, time zone differences or
travel/time constraints.
Research shows that reporters are making increasingly extensive use of
email, the web and other online sources for information. In a national
survey of journalists, public relations executive Don Middleberg and
Columbia journalism professor Steve Ross find that use of the internet
and email by journalists has grown dramatically.2 More than
three-quarters of those they surveyed in 2001, roughly 400 magazine
and newspaper editors, said they use the internet on a daily basis
compared with just 48 per cent in 1 998, spending five hours on average
online at home and nine hours online at work each week.
Email also makes it more practical and efficient to fact check stories,
especially those dealing with complex technical issues, including health,
science, technology or business. In the past, the reporter might first
conduct a face-to-face interview, and then fact check with a phone call.
But doing fact-checking over the phone necessarily limits what can be
done on deadline; it also reduces the chances of error detection since
the source will not actually see what is written and may not catch, discern
or effectively correct an error heard over a phone call from a harried
reporter. But, via email, the source can see exactly what the reporter has
written, and respond in writing when an error is identified. Such precise
communication can prevent serious mistakes from occurring and its
value can not be overstated. Faxes can be used but have far less utility in
today’s modern high-speed email environment. Of course, reporters
need to be careful when and to whom to show portions of their stories. If
it is a critical investigative report, a source may not only strenuously
object to publication of material that contains criticism, but may take
legal or other action to do so or to subvert that publication (e.g. a
source may publish material on an alternative website contradicting the
reporter’s story even before the reporter’s story has been published).
...
Reporters also do not want to tip their hands to potential competitors on
a scoop.
Technology has also given reporters greatly expanded access to entire
classes of source material previously rarely if ever seen. For example,
remote sensing satellite imagery is now a routine part of reporting on a
variety of stories, ranging from environmental reporting to military
conflict. Satellite imagery can provide vital access to denied areas,
helping the public understand critically important stories in a timely
fashion. Dan Dubno, Producer and Technologist, CBS News explains:
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24
The of getting satellite imagery into the hands of journalists
success
in breathtakingly timely manner is the first part of whatI see as the
a
major transition to astonishingly accurate graphical displays. By that I
mean imagery coupled with geographic information that’s updated
on a nearly instantaneous basis. Basically, we’ve now seen satellite
imagery delivered in an extremely timely fashion so people in
newsrooms are getting imagery within hours or, at worst, days of
when they request it. This imagery is being merged with other data
that are significant for more insightful news stories, including GIS
(Geographical Information Systems), crime statistics, census data,
economic data, weather and disaster-related information. None of
this would be particularly useful without base imagery to clearly show
the viewers what’s going on.
We’ve transitioned from simply getting imagery to now integrating
imagery with real-time data or data with other significant news value.
A year ago I doubt if anyone in newsrooms could tell you what a
DEM (digital elevation model) was or even what GIS is. Now every
significant news entity is exploring how to integrate geographical
data into its news graphics.3
Dubno, an expert in newsroom technology applications, notes on his
website that ’Broadcasters are using these [satellite] pictures to reveal
&dquo;denied areas&dquo; of the Earth: taking viewers to places where governments
or nature otherwise bar access. In recent days, North Korean and Iranian
nuclear sites have been made public,.’4
These same opportunities are beginning to transform journalist-source
relationships at newspapers, including those at medium- or small-sized
titles, although the impact is still in its beginning stages. Herb Jackson, a
veteran journalist at The Record (Bergen County, New Jersey) and
inaugural journalist-in-residence fellow at Rutgers University, is an expert
in the applications of GIS and other data to reporting. He observes:
At a regional daily like mine, its use will continue to be uncommon,
but will grow to be a more common tool in reporting the news as
editors see what major dailies like The New York Times and lately
even The Star-Ledger can do when databases are combined with
maps and aerial photography to tell stories. New Jersey seems to be
on the leading edge of this curve, with many base maps available for
free download and satellite photos available on CD or DVD at a
nominal cost.
Using GIS allows you to take data and present it in a graphical
format that can really grab readers. You can run a chart that says
taxes went up this much in 50 or 500 different towns, but if you color
code each town, with the biggest increases in red and the smallest in
green, everyone’s looking at the map to see if their town is red or
green.I don’t know if there’s a chart if they have the same reaction
5
to a column of
percentages.5
Convergence also poses serious challenges to the independence of
journalists in covering military conflict or even conflict or crime situations
on the domestic front. Here, convergence is not just a technological
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25
matter but also one of ownership or economics. With news organisations
increasingly part of behemoth, multinational public corporations with
media properties of many types (e.g. print, broadcast, cable, online,
satellite), there is increasing pressure on reporters covering military
conflicts to accept Pentagon press rules that mandate or virtually require
the embedding of reporters with the military. As was evident in the 2003
war in Iraq, reporters who were embedded with the US military were
frequently less likely to report critically on the US military than had they
not been embedded. Although some reporters were able to maintain
their independence and critical edge, the result of embedding was
sometimes a blurring of lines between independent journalist and
government representative. Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the
University of Texas at Austin and author of ’Writing Dissent: Taking
Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream’, makes the following
observations in a Boston Globe column, ’Embedded Media Give Up
Independence’ :
CBS News’s Jim Axelrod, embedded with the Third Infantry,
discussed an intelligence briefing he sat in on and said, ’We’ve been
given orders’. Realizing the implications of what he said, he revised
himself: ’Soldiers have been given orders’. On that same day, NBC
anchor Tom Brokaw began reporting on ’how successful we were’ in
a battle before correcting himself: how successful ’the United States
was’. The anchors were similarly American-centric as they had more
somber news to report, including Marines engaged in heavy fighting
in southern Iraq and a British jet shot down by a Patriot missile,
killing two airmen.6
This loss of independence was only natural and to be expected, since
reporters who spent days or even weeks living side-by-side with military
personnel might find themselves relying on them for their personal safety
and would find it difficult to be critical of those same personnel. By losing
their detachment, many reporters lost the critical ability to act as the
fourth estate, or fourth branch of government; to fulfil the watch-dog role
of the press. Instead, the press (referring generally to all media types) in
some cases became more of a lap-dog. The reporting in early 2004 by
CBS News 60 Minutes 2 and by Pulitzer-prize winning non-embedded
investigative reporter Seymour Herson the US military abuses of Iraqi
prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison underscores the need for
an independent press corps during times of military conflict.
The new Just as convergence has exerted dramatic impact on the reporter-source
audience relationship, it is also changing the relationship between journalists and
relationship their audiences. Again, the most basic example arises from the advent of
email. In days past, reporters would typically write or produce their
reports, and only the most unusual stories would generate more than a
letter or two, or phone call (typically from a source misquoted) from the
audience.
With the rise of email, most reporters who have published their email
addresses get deluged with emails from their readers, viewers or
~ listeners. The Middleberg-Ross survey shows that many reporters consider
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26
responding to readers via email as part of their job with more than half
doing so at least occasionally.
The best reporters cull through their emails and find occasional nuggets
of gold, including well-written comments from highly informed experts.
Some reporters also spend time on list-serves, discussion boards or other
online forums where persons interested in particular subjects often meet
to talk. Sometimes, reporters find story ideas or potential sources and
often engage readers who want to talk about a story recently reported by
the journalist. The Middleberg-Ross survey shows that by 2001 a majority
of journalists were using the internet to develop story ideas compared
with just 30 per cent in 1998.
Online dialogues can inform both reader and reporter, and can help
build a healthier relationship between the two. This interaction between
journalist and audience is a significant and dramatic change from the
previous century’s practice of journalism where the typical reporter rarely
engaged the audience in a meaningful conversation. With newspaper
readership eroding steadily in the US, especially among younger
audiences who have grown up living in the world of interactive media,
this fundamental shift in the nature of journalism may be the lynchpin to
survival, at least for print journalism, in the 21 st century. The evolution of
journalism from a one-way to a two-way dialogue can strengthen the
role of journalism as sense-maker in society.
In his book, Digitizing the News, MIT Professor Pablo J. Boczkowski
x explains:
News in the online environment is what those contributing to its
production make of it. News is moving from being mostly
journalist-centered, communicated as a monologue, and primarily
local, to also being increasingly audience-centered, part of multiple
conversations and micro-local.8
Nevertheless, journalists needto exercise caution when delving into the
world of email, chat and other online activity. The
rooms
Middleberg-Ross study reveals that many journalists doubt the credibility
of many online sources, and rightly so. Journalists only rate trade
association websites as more credible than not credible. Journalists say
the most questionable content is found on message boards and in chat
rooms.
CBS News’s Dubno adds:
With the advent of Google, everyone can broadcast information and
everyone can research information across the intellectual universe.
The problem is, as it’s always been, determining the bona fides of
the data and the merits of the information conveyed.
What is truly exciting (though still more promise than reality) is the
likelihood of seeing enhancements to search engines like Google
that will provide measurements of ’credibility’ or ranking of ’value’.
Google’s ’Page Rank’ features now provide a rough measurement of
how well regarded (or at least how widely referenced) an information
-
provider is or is viewed during a Google search. As technologies to
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27
evaluate searches are enhanced I have reason to anticipate an array
of ’authentication tools’ emerging to help journalists and others
make informed decisions on the merit of information posted on the
web.9
Moreover, reporters must always bear in mind their main function: to
report. They afford to get side-tracked into tangential
cannot
conversations with readers or sources, or worse, start worrying about the
consequences of a story to the extent that they experience reporting
paralysis. A journalist maintains a fine balance between telling the public
what it needs to know, even when the truth may cause hurt or pain, and
being responsible and ethical in reporting and respecting personal
privacy.
In someways, a more intriguing development is the growth of the web
log, blog. A blog is ’a series of updated posts on a web page in the
or
form of a diary or journal, often including commentary on, and hypertext
links to, other websites. Posts are in chronological order and can contain
anything from simple text, to music, images and even streamed video.’1°
Although some blogs are created by journalists writing outside the
confines of their traditional news organisation-employer, many are
produced by audience members. Since blogs are not subject to the same
journalistic standards of objectivity, accuracy and detachment of
traditional news organisations, they are often much more passionate and
perhaps honest in expressing the emotional aspects of the truth, for
instance in the case of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners or the terrorist attack
on 11 September 2001. At least in part because of this, and the belief
that blogs may include information traditional news media may edit out,
blogs have grown enormously in popularity, sometimes rivalling
traditional news sites in terms of numbers of unique visitors. Raynsford
reports that Robert L. Belichick, a health care worker from Chicago, is a
reader of blogs because they have ’information that will never see the
light of day in the print or TV media realm ... not one major media outlet
in the US reported that the US excised over 8,000 pages from the Iraq
declaration since it contained information about the US companies that
supplied all of the biological and chemical &dquo;weapons&dquo; to [Saddam].’&dquo;l
Blogs also blur the boundary between who is a source, an audience
member or a journalist. In some cases, the creator of a blog may be all
three. Bloggers may see an item reported in a traditional news outlet,
gather their own information, and post a response on their blog.
Consider the blog of journalist J.D. Lasica. 12 On 26 May 2004, he wrote
about when ’consumers are creators’. He quoted from Jan Schaffer,
executive director of J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, who
on April 2004 spoke at the Broadcast Educators Association
18
convention in Las Vegas, NV on ’Convergent Audiences: When
Consumers are Creators’. Convergence, she said,
...
puts the focus
not on the consumer, our audiences, but on the
supplier,the news organizations. It becomes an exercise in Us vs.
Them....I think we are focusing on the wrong ’C’ word. Rather than
- focus on convergence, we should be focusing on connections and
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28
how new digital tools can help us build all kinds of innovative, new
connections with our audiences. The potential of new media is not
simply more noise but more meaningful interaction and hopefully
more meaningful learning. 13
Audience expectations are also evolving. News via the internet is
on-demand and instantaneous. In a broadband environment, it is media
rich and highly interactive. Audiences are increasingly accustomed to
and demanding news that is customised to their interests.
Conclusion: the Convergence is reshaping the landscape of journalism and the news
coming age of media in a variety of ways. Newsroom structures, journalistic practices,
interaction and news content are all evolving. Perhaps most importantly, the
fundamental relationships between and among journalists, their sources
and their audiences are undergoing a technological transformation. This
sea-change has far-reaching implications for the nature and function of
journalism in modern society.
Reporters increasingly supplementing, and sometimes supplanting,
are
face-to-face gathering with internet-based reporting.
news
Web-searching, email and list-serves are increasing staples in the
reporting food chain. Although most reporters still rely on personal
interviews and observations, they often rely on the internet for material
when on deadline, weekends or doing follow-up work, including fact
checking. Moreover, with economic short-falls afflicting most news
organisations, the need for increased productivity is a pressure felt
acutely in a growing proportion of news rooms, and this sometimes
translates into journalistic shortcuts.
Technological advances simultaneously present new opportunities to
improve news gathering, by enabling journalists on deadline or on a
budget to cast their news gathering net more widely to include
non-traditional sources or experts located in far-away places.
Technology is also reshaping the relationship between journalists and
their audiences, producing a more interactive form of journalism. In the
traditional world of media, interactivity is almost non-existent, limited for
the most part to afew letters to the editor. In the internet age, many
journalists are in almost daily email contact with at least some audience
members.
This interactivity promises to help increase understanding between
journalists, their audiences and sources, bringing the potential for
improved accuracy in news reporting. Achieving this potential will take
more than technology alone. News organisations and the journalists who
staff them need to make a conscious effort to effectively and ethically
employ the digital tools available today and on tomorrow’s technological
horizon. By engaging sources and audiences in a daily dialogue,
whether online or off, journalists and their news organisations can
improve the quality of their reporting and re-establish themselves as
central to the democratic process in the US and around the world.
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29
Notes 1. NYT National Desk, ’Correcting the Record; Times Reporter Who Resigned
Leaves Long Trail of Deception.’ The New York Times, 11May 2003
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/ abstract.html?res =
FB0910FA395B0C728DDDAC0894DB404482.
2. Middleberg, D. & Ross, S.S., ’The Middleberg/Ross media in cyberspace
survey. Change and its impact on communications. Eighth annual national
survey’ (New York, Middleberg+Associates, 2002) http://www.middleberg.com.
3. Dubno, D. CBS News, Interview conducted by telephone by the author on 1
June 2004.
4. Dubno, D. Website,
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01 /23/tech/digitaldan/mam537597.shtm
I (accessed 2 June 2004).
5. Jackson, H. The Record, Interview conducted via email by the author on 3 June
2004
6. Jensen, R ’Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the
Mainstream,’ in column ’Embedded Media Give Up Independence’ Boston
Globe 7 April 2003.
7. Hersh, S.M., ’Annals of National Security: The Gray Zone’, The New Yorker,
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/prevlous/?040531 frprsp_previous1
(accessed 18 June 2004).
8. Boczkowski, P.J., Digitizing the News. Innovation in Online Newspapers
(Boston, The MIT Press, 2004).
9 Dubno, D. CBS News, Interview conducted by telephone by the author on 1
June 2004.
10. dotJournalism, Raynsford, J., email: jodyraynsford@hotmail.com,
http://www.journalism.co uk/features/story604.html Posted: 25 March 2003.
11. dotJournalism, Raynsford, J., email. jodyraynsford@hotmail.com,
http://www journalism co uk/features/story604.html Posted: 25 March 2003.
12. Lasica, J.D., http.//www.newmediamusings.com/ (accessed 26 May 2004).
13. Schaffer, J , Speech to the Broadcast Educators Association convention in Las
Vegas, NV on ’Convergent Audiences: When Consumers are Creators’, on 18
April 2004, http://www.j-lab.org/schaffer041804.html.
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