This document discusses the changing landscape of journalism in the digital age. It notes that the internet has disrupted the traditional model of large media institutions controlling the dissemination of news ("Big Media"). Now, ordinary people can participate in news gathering and distribution by uploading photos, videos, and reporting on events. Several examples are given of citizen journalism, such as during the 2005 London bombings. The document also examines statistics on changing newspaper circulation figures and the growth of online news consumption. It explores some of the opportunities and challenges faced by both traditional and new forms of journalism in the digital era.

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Journalism and the Internet
#MED122
robert.jewitt@sunderland.ac.uk

2. 2
• “The internet is the new printing press. It’s the
mass medium that is changing how we read
and digest content”
• (Tom Anderson, IT Blogger)?!?!

3. 3

4. The end of “BIG MEDIA”
• “In the 20th Century making the news was
almost entirely the province of journalists…
The economics of publishing and
broadcasting created large, arrogant
institutions – call it Big Media…
• “Big media … treated the news as a lecture.
We told you what the news was….
Tomorrow’s news reporting and production
will be more of a conversation, or a
seminar…
• (Gillmor, 2004:xiii)
4

5. 5

6. We the media?
• July 7th 2005
6 http://moblog.net/view/77571/

7. Helen Boaden, BBC director
of news
• Minutes after the bombings occurred in
London last Thursday, newsrooms around the
capital were being deluged with pictures and
video clips sent directly from the scene. The
long-predicted democratisation of the media
had become a reality, as ordinary members
of the public turned photographers and
reporters.
• Julia Day, July 11th 2005, 'We had 50 images within an hour’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/jul/11/mondaymedia
section.attackonlondon 7

8. We the media?
• “As cameras become just one more thing
we carry everyday, everyone’s becoming a
photographer (Gillmor, 2004:34)
8

9. 9
Scale
• 2000: 200 million web users with over
800 million pages of content (Hall, 2001)
• 2008: 1.46 billion web users
• 2010: 1.97 billion web users
• 2012: 2.41 billion web users
• http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

10. The Internet
• ‘For all its global range and its millions of
users it refuses to fit neatly into the category
of mass media. For media producers and the
advertisers who underwrite them new
paradigms seeking junctions and
commonalities of geography, age, gender,
income, race and niche interests are
required. How do they deliver news to an
audience that is at once local and global?’
• (Jim Hall, 2001: 2)
10

11. 11
History: news online
• 1994: TIME magazine used
web to communicate
between journalists and
readers
• For overview see Stuart
Allan, 2006.

12. 12
Breaking News?
• Oklahoma City
bombing, April 19th
1995, was of major
importance

13. 13
Content included:
• Maps of Oklahoma City
• The latest AP news feed
• Graphics of terrorist bombs
• Emotional eyewitness accounts of the
excavation
• Listings of survivors and hospital phone
numbers
• Newsgroups expressing ‘rage’
• Dedicated chat-rooms
• ISPs (AOL) offering aggregated news feeds
and wire services

14. 14
AOL: Timothy ‘Mad Bomber’
McVeigh
• Sunday Mirror:
• HELLO, I’M THE MAD BOMBER
… BOOM!; SICK MESSAGE
FLASHED WORLDWIDE;
OKLAHOMA BOMB SUSPECT
LEAVES MESSAGE ON
INTERNET
• Later revealed as a fake

15. 15
More ‘teething problems’
• 1996 July 17th
• TWA flight from New York
to Paris exploded
• Conspiracy theories
• November: former ABC
journalist, Pierre Salinger,
claimed to have evidence
proving US forces shot
down plane

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Obvious advantages:
• Immediacy – updates can be added as and
when more info is available
• No limit to the amount of content
• Interactivity – capacity for questions to be
asked and for greater accountability

17. Alexa Stats (News)
Nov 2011
1. Yahoo News
2. CNN Interactive
3. The Huffington Post
4. New York Times
5. BBC News
6. Google News
7. The Weather Channel
8. Reddit
9. My Yahoo
10. NBC News and MSNBC
News
Nov 2013
1. News.yahoo.com
2. Cnn.com
3. Huffingtonpost.com
4. Reddit.com
5. Bbc.co.uk/news
6. Nytimes.com
7. News.google.com/
8. weather.com
9. Theguardian.com
10. FoxNews.com
17

18. Alexa Stats (Global)
2014
18
1. Reddit.com
2. News.yahoo.com
3. Cnn.com
4. Huffingtonpost.com
5. Nytimes.com
6. News.google.com/
7. Theguardian.com
8. Bbc.co.uk/news
9. Forbes.com
10. weather.com

19. Alexa Stats (Global)
Total News producers only
19
1. Reddit.com
2. News.yahoo.com
3. Cnn.com
4. Huffingtonpost.com
5. Nytimes.com
6. News.google.com/
7. Theguardian.com
8. Forbes.com
9. weather.com
10. TimesofIndia.indiatimes.com

20. Alexa Stats (Global)
Total News producers only
20
1. Reddit.com
2. News.yahoo.com
3. Cnn.com
4. Huffingtonpost.com
5. Nytimes.com
6. News.google.com/
7. Theguardian.com
8. Forbes.com
9. weather.com
10. TimesofIndia.indiatimes.com
1. Cnn.com
2. Huffingtonpost.com
3. Nytimes.com
4. Theguardian.com
5. Forbes.com
6. TimesofIndia.indiatimes.com
7. BBC.co.uk/news/
8. Foxnews.com
9. Washingtonpost.com
10. USAtoday.com

21. • 1997: UK = 4 million web users
• 1998: 8.17 million page impressions
• 2006: BBC one of the largest news-gathering
organizations in the world:
• 42 foreign bureaus
• 13 domestic news centres.
• annual budget of around £350 million
• expertise of over 2000 journalists
• 250 correspondents around the world
• online team composed of 40 journalists
• 2012: huge DQF cuts and crisis in public trust
(Newsnight/Savile affair)
21

22. 22

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Key issues:
• Do newspapers have a future?
• Does paper have a role in the future of news?
• Will there be such a thing as ‘print journalism’ in a
decade’s time?
• Does the source of news matter?
• Do the answers to these questions even matter as
long as there is something called journalism available
to the public on some platform in a few years time?

24. Newspaper circulation: 2000s
4,000,000
3,500,000
3,000,000
2,500,000
2,000,000
1,500,000
1,000,000
500,000
0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
The Sun
Daily Mail
Daily Mirror
Daily Star
Daily Telegraph
Daily Express
Evening Standard
The Times
Financial Times
Daily Record
The Guardian
The Independent
I

25. Tabloid/mid-market circulation: 2000s
4,000,000
3,500,000
3,000,000
2,500,000
2,000,000
1,500,000
1,000,000
500,000
0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
The Sun
Daily Mail
Daily Mirror
Daily Star
Daily Express
I

26. Broadsheet circulation: 2000s
1,200,000
1,000,000
800,000
600,000
400,000
200,000
0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Daily Telegraph
The Times
Financial Times
The Guardian
The Independent

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Newspaper trends
• National newspapers circulations have
fallen by more than 50% in the last two
decades (1988-2007), including the
Mirror and the Express.
• Some increases - Financial Times
(overseas sales)
• Total daily circulation of national daily
newspapers has dropped from over 15
million to around 11.5 million, or 25%
(McNair, 2007).

28. Against all this…
• The Independent launches a sister
paper, i, in October 2010
• First UK paper launch since 1986
28

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Ownership and control
• Concentration of ownership
• Impact on democracy?
• Rupert Murdoch:
• 1988 = 31% of UK paper market
• 2007 = 32.3%
• 140 of his publications around the
world supported the war in Iraq

30. • Murdoch:
• ‘power is moving away from the old elite
in our industry – the editors, the chief
executives and, let’s face it, the
proprietors’
30
• (http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_285.html).

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Technology and Trends
• Accuracy?
• Speed?
• Sources?
• Citizen journalists?
• Dumbing down?
• Murdoch: ‘many of us have been
unaccountably complacent’ in the wake of the
digital revolution

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Murdoch (2005):
• ‘There are of course inherent risks in this strategy --
chief among them maintaining our standards for
accuracy and reliability. Plainly, we can’t vouch for
the quality of people who aren’t regularly employed
by us – and bloggers could only add to the work done
by our reporters, not replace them. But they may still
serve a valuable purpose; broadening our coverage
of the news; giving us new and fresh perspectives to
issues; deepening our relationship to the
communities we serve, so long as our readers
understand the clear distinction between bloggers
and our journalists.’

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• July 2006, Patrick
Barkham:
• ‘the first big British political
story to be driven by
bloggers’
• deputy-PM John Prescott’s
sex life

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Bloggers and Aggregators
• Mike Drudge: The Drudge Report
• Since February 1995
• Republican supporter
• Faced a $30 million libel lawsuit
• January 13th 1998 he broke the story of
Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.

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Mike Drudge:
• I’m a citizen first and a reporter second … The
people have a right to know, not the editors who think
they know better. You should let people know as
much as you know when you know’ (cited in AP, 1
February 1998)

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The Future?
• Kim Fletcher (2005)
• ‘In all this talk about the end of papers, no
one suggests that people don't want news or
information or entertainment any more. On
the contrary, they seem to want more and
more of all three. That demand will be met by
an expansion rather than a retraction in
journalistic output.’

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38. National newspaper website ttrraaffffiicc SSeepptteemmbbeerr 22000088
38
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40. National newspaper website ttrraaffffiicc OOccttoobbeerr 22001111
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40
Daily
browsers
Monthly
browsers
Monthly
change %
Yearly
change %
Mail Online 6,671,641 106,095,618 +4.48% +34.31%
Guardian 3,909,514 71,766,288 +9.84 n/a
Telegraph 2,887,948 56,919,647 +10.72% +25.62%
Sun Online 1,544,721 25,926,115 -2.07% +3.85%
Independent 825,861 17,900,904 9.78% +29.02%
Mirror Group 764,277 16,319,000 +3.67% +3.31%
Metro 276,478 6,971,225 -6.62% -14.74%

41. 41
Funding issues…
•BBC and license fee
•Guardian owned by Scott Trust charity

42. 42
Guardian editor Alan
Rusbridger (2007)
• ‘We've moved from being in competition with
a small pool of British broadsheets to being in
competition with just about everyone, but it's
true. We're no longer a once-a-day text
medium for a predominantly domestic
audience. Increasingly - around the clock - we
use a combination of media in telling stories,
and in commentary, to millions of users
around the globe’

43. Ex-Guardian editor, Peter
Preston (2007):
• The thought of a news collection and
distribution organisation without print or paper
raises the prospect of a quite different future
for journalists: one where few of the old skills
and few of the new convergences are
particularly relevant, one where a start-up
news gathering operation on the net would
train and hire web people, not converts from
print with ink on their hands.’
43

44. 44
Sources
• Stuart Allan, 2006, Online News, Maidenhead: Open University Press.
• Patrick Barkham, September 22nd 2006, ‘Giving it all away’, The Guardian, available at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/sep/22/pressandpublishing.lifeandhealth
• Peter Cole, 2007, ‘The paradox of the pops’, The Guardian, available at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/aug/27/mondaymediasection.pressandpublishing
• Dan Gillmour, 2004, We The Media, Sebastopol, CA.: O'Reilly
• Kim Fletcher, December 19th 2005, ‘A bright picture for newspapers’, The Guardian, available at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/dec/19/mondaymediasection
• Jim Hall, 2001, Online journalism : a critical primer, London: Pluto Press
• Brian McNair, 2007, ‘The British Press, 1992-2007’ unpublished conference paper presented at Future of
Newspapers conference, Cardiff, September 2007.
• Rupert Murdoch, 2005 speech given at the American Society of Newspaper Editors, available at
http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_247.html
• Rupert Murdoch, 2006, speech given at the Annual Livery Lecture at the Worshipful Company of
Stationers and Newspaper Makers, available at http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_285.html
• Salem Pax, 2003-4 ‘Where is Raed?’ available at http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/
• BBC, Reuters & Media Centre, 2006, ‘Trust in the Media’, May, available at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/02_05_06mediatrust.pdf

45. Questions
1. How can news providers convince the public to pay for
journalism?
2. Can too many news sources (plurality) be a bad thing?
3. Do we value the printed word more (or less) than the screen?
4. What are the benefits of digital journalism? Does print have
any advantages over digital?
5. Have you ever contributed articles to a web-site, for example
reviews, features, letters to a newspaper or a magazine? And if
so, have you been expected to work for free?
6. What problems face local news producers in a context of global
news providers?
7. Should journalism be regulated to prevent certain types of
practice (death-knocks, privacy intrusion, etc) and how feasible
is this? 45

46. Questions
• How can newspapers convince the public to pay for journalism?
• Can too many news sources (plurality) be a bad thing? How
does the abundance of information get filtered?
• Do we value the printed word more than the computer screen?
• Have you ever contributed articles to a web-site, for example
reviews, features, letters to a newspaper or a magazine? And if
so, have you been expected to work for free?
46

47. Questions
• Do you read newspapers online? If so, do you find them better
or worse than their printed counterparts?
• What are the benefits of online journalism? Depth, integration of
different mediums, links? Being able to access newspapers
from around the world – different perspectives?
• What are the problems as you see them for online newspapers
– rules and regulations change, journalistic ethics, sensitive
material (eg death of Princess Diana/Madrid bombing/Saddam
hanging photographs)?
47