Journalism in the Digital Age

Theory and practice for broadcast, print and online media

John Herbert

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 1999
• ISBN:
  9781136029936
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Provides the practical techniques and theoretical knowledge that underpin the fundamental skills of a journalist. It also takes a highly modern approach, as the convergence of broadcast, print and online media require the learning of new skills and methods. The book is written from an international perspective - with examples from around the world in recognition of the global marketplace for today's media. This is an essential text for students on journalism courses and professionals looking for a reference that covers the skill, technology and knowledge required for a digital and converged media age. The book's essence lies in the way essential theories such as ethics and law, are woven into practical newsgathering and reporting techniques, as well as advice on management skills for journalists, providing the wide intellectual foundation which gives credibility to reporting.

 

1 Journalism in the digital age

In Britain in 1999 there were 10.6 million people on-line, and the numbers are growing. That is about 18 per cent of the population. In the United States it is 27 per cent and rising.

The broadsheet newspapers have been on-line for several years. In 1999, the two largest selling newspapers in the world, the British Sun and Mirror went on-line. The Sun jumped on the bandwagon with a website called CurrantBun.com, whilst the Mirror has a site called ic24.co.uk, which stands for I see 24 hours a day. The Sun believes that the Internet is no longer for nerds and boffins, it is for ordinary people like you and us. Its aim is to prove that the Internet is fun, cheeky and dead easy to use.

The effect the digital age is having on journalism is also starkly seen in the way photos can now be in the paper within minutes of being taken. In the old days it would take hours, if not days.

In the pre-digital age, getting a photo back to the newsroom would mean fast cars, film being hurled onto passing trains, boats and planes, and time-consuming processes in the darkroom. All it takes now is a digital camera, a mobile phone and a laptop computer. Once the photo is taken on the digital camera, the camera disk is plugged into the laptop, which takes about a minute to read the disk and its images; it then downloads the images onto the laptop screen (another 20 seconds). The computer is hooked up to the mobile phone, and the images are beamed to the newsroom — all in about 2 minutes. The picture editor in the newsroom or newsagency then spends about 2 minutes checking the quality of the images and adding a caption before sending them instantaneously down an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) line to wherever they need to go (sometimes to newsagency offices around the world). Images made this way can also be manipulated, so they can be used to design a website, be presented on a television set or beamed via satellite anywhere where they can be downloaded. Some digital cameras also come with an inbuilt microphone to enable recording of a running commentary on the pictures, which can be played back with the pictures.

Newspaper editors can also use the system in reverse. They can use the Internet to look through the camera viewfinder, and advise the photographers what shots they want from thousands of miles away. The digital age is changing journalism forever. Now, anyone with access to the Internet can order on-line personalized news services that deliver to their computer only the kinds of stories that interest them. Major news organizations update their overseas news on the Internet every hour. In other words, the digital age of journalism makes available to customers the news they want when they want it.

Digital age journalism is now also interactive. Until recently it was a one-way process, and we had to trust the editors, reporters and photographers and take what they gave us. That is no longer the case. Discussion and debate over all kinds of issues is enhanced by the digital age.

The digital age means that journalism is taking on a new style of writing and editing. Traditional journalistic writing was based on linear storytelling, often called the inverted pyramid (discussed later in this book). This provided the reader, listener or viewer with a summary lead and details in descending order of importance. It works well on the printed page, but not on the computer screen. Hypertext now enables journalists to write on-line stories that are multi-dimensional. The journalist can structure the story differently, and it allows readers to pick their own path through the story. Perhaps one reader will click onto a sidebar or to a set of definitions of technical terms; another to a related feature about a particular fact in the main body of the story. Every story published on-line can be read in many ways, and entirely as the reader wishes. The links are built on association of ideas, which is a very different approach to the way traditional journalism is compiled, logically and analytically.

The computer also allows journalists to find facts in a very different way. Searching for facts is now easy. However, this form of computer reporting means the journalist must still check the facts, and not take them as gospel because the computer says they are right. Anyone can put anything on the Internet. Luciano Floridi (1995) argues that the Internet ‘resembles a huge library where every half hour a new load of books is dumped at the doors and every day they change the position of the books on the shelves’.

The digital age means that information is drifting away from governments into the hands of journalists. It also means new opportunities for the modern journalist. Word processing was one of the first products of digitization to enter the newsroom, and spreadsheets and databases for storing and analysing data followed. Later, the Internet revolutionized news sources and information search strategies.

Databases are like old-fashioned card files. If you’re looking for specific information, such as a particular person, for example, it is easy. You might want to know statistical facts, and the computer database via the Internet will do it for you. Spreadsheets consist of rows and columns, with a cell on each junction. These cells contain text, figures and formulas. A spreadsheet is more powerful than a pocket calculator because it not only does the calculations, but will tell you what they mean as well. For example, when writing a story about the government budget, the journalist can enter a suggested change in the spreadsheet and the computer will instantly calculate the consequences for the total budget.

The databases and connected networks on the Internet are invaluable for journalists. All kinds of documents, news and information can be found easily. This changes the task of the journalist in the digital age. Instead of finding and disclosing information, the task is now fighting through the information glut and selecting the most important information. It is therefore important to know how to find what you are looking for, and you need time to sift through the information to find exactly what you want.

Taking part in discussion lists and news groups is one of the best ways to remain informed about news stories and to update yourself easily. A basic research tool is e-mail, and home pages of journalists are also good sources. Everyone is a journalist in the digital age!

The digital age journalist has to become a specialist who knows how to search for information on the web and turn it into news. Readers do not have this training or ability. The great on-line opportunity, says Katherine Fulton, is finding ways to inform people more deeply and save time.

The question is whether people will turn to journalists or to someone else in 10 or 20 years, when they need a better information filter. Journalists, who have already lost so much authority and standing in the culture, are going to have to re-earn their right to both.

At its simplest level, news gathering consists of three stages: getting the idea; finding the information; writing the story. Using the Internet for reporting allows the journalist in the digital age to locate and gather the information. Selecting, verifying and writing is still personal and creative, and needs training, knowledge and experience.

FURTHER READING

Floridi, L. (1995). Internet: which future for organised knowledge, Frankenstein or Pygmalion? Paper delivered at the first UNESCO Philosophy Forum, Paris, March. (seen at: www.unleyhs.schools.sa.edu.au/issues/floridi.html)

Fulton, K. (1996). A tour of our uncertain future. Columbia Journalism Review, March/April, (seen at: www.crj.org/html)

Granato, L. (ed.) (1998). Newsgathering on the Net. Macmillan.

Ross, S. (1997). Columbia Journalism School survey of online media (seen at: www.mediasource.com/study/CONT.HTM).

2 A questioning profession

Journalism is a simple profession. It is all about asking questions. The questions – of people, about events – provide the facts, and it is the facts that make the news. Without the facts, there is no news. So the profession of journalists is focused, in the end, on knowing the right question to ask; being able to ask it in the most knowledgeable and open way, and then being able to communicate it in the most interesting, creative and forceful manner. In order to ask that question the profession requires much knowledge and ability, and it is asking the question despite pressures not to, that protects freedom. Journalism is the ultimate expression of democracy and freedom. Governments and politicians realize this and constantly try to legislate against total journalism freedom, and this is particularly bad in broadcast journalism. The relationship between journalism and democracy is a complex one. How and to what degree do the news media contribute to democratic practices and structures? And how do democratic processes shape the news of the day, the institutions themselves and their practices and routines?

News is a living, changing thing, showing at any one time only a snapshot of reality. For this reason, journalism is often called the first draft of history. Of course, this definition is easier to understand for print journalists than for broadcast journalists. In print there is time to think about the facts before publishing, whereas in broadcasting there is never this luxury. Broadcast journalism depends on an uncontrolled succession of events which in themselves make news, hour by hour, day by day. Each part of the jigsaw is put together hour by hour, and is seldom complete from the start. Each bulletin adds or detracts from the knowledge that is available.

Since the 1989 English translation of Jurgen Habermas’s The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, a growing body of theoretical literature has attempted to put this journalism-democracy question within a proper public relationship. In a true democracy, everyone has the right to know and to discuss what is going on round them. Their elected representatives may try to set legal restraints on the right to know. The judiciary measures one public interest against another and does not hesitate to say ‘publish’ when the defenders of concealment and strict confidentiality fail to make their case. There are many examples. In Australia, a High Court judge refused to injunct as a breach of confidence a book that reprinted diplomatic cables between Canberra and Djakarta, because the government failed to show that the public interest required restrictions on material that might cause diplomatic embarrassment and political criticism. News exists to serve the right to know. Prior restraint of reporting is usually a drastic interference with freedom of speech and should occur only when there is a risk of grave injustice (Denning, 1982: 264). Lord Denning, the famous English judge said The remedy is to take action afterwards. The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state, but this consists of laying no previous restraints on publication. The European Court of Human Rights says there must be a social need sufficiently pressing to outweight the public interest in freedom of expression (Denning: 265).

News is important. No effort must be spared to get it right, not only to the satisfaction of professional journalists but also to the general public. This importance makes journalists close guardians of the freedom of speech and the right to know. They are therefore suspicious of the motives of their critics. Both journalists and their critics have to avoid stereotypes. One is the image of the unfeeling and neurotically questioning reporter, whether a seasoned campaigner or one newly arrived from the country with three years of flower shows, Rotary dinners and magistrates courts behind them. The other stereotype is that of the critic who conceals behind fair words a desire to use journalism for any purpose that is not truly journalistic, whether idealistic or sinister. But underlying all this is the need for the journalists of the future to be vividly aware of the need for the greatest professionalism in their work.

Professionalism is central to the role of the journalist as the watchdog of democracy and freedom. Professionalism as a journalistic concept has been around for a long time, yet there are many ideas about what professionalism really means in journalism. Shoemaker and Reese (1991) warn that the term professionalism must be used with caution. Although most journalists are not sure exactly what professionalism means, all journalists should think of themselves as professionals.

While journalists must believe in the neutral, unbiased approach to news, they should do so within the parameters of the three main roles with which they involve themselves in their professional job: they are disseminators of news and information, interpreters of news and information and adversaries of the newsmakers and politicians to test the case and arrive at the truth.

Journalists from both democratic and non-democratic political systems will agree on their role as disseminators of news. They will have more difficulty in reconciling the other two roles, interpreters of events and, most difficult of all, adversaries of newsmakers. It is this last, the adversarial role of the professional journalist, that causes most trouble in both democracies and non-democracies, and it is precisely this adversarial role that marks the free democracy from the restricted one.

However, professionalism has two dimensions: the universal and the specific. Professionalism in any society, under any conditions, implies some general, universal principles. At the same time, professionalism cannot exist in a social vacuum. It is a relative concept, determined by different historical and cultural traditions and defined by specific political, economic and social contexts. The journalism practised in any country is deeply embedded in national culture and history. Common to both groups, professionals and lay people, is a firm conviction from everyone that bent news is bad news, no matter in which direction the bending takes place.

Journalism has come a long way since the Gutenberg Bible of 1455, which was itself the result of new technology; in this case movable type and mechanical printing. Since then, new technology has been at the forefront of journalism developments. Journalism has grown up alongside the telegraph, telephones, satellites and newsagencies. Satellite delivery of copy to printers is now commonplace. Newspaper copy, complete with layouts, is sent by satellite from central editorial offices to remote printing plants, which makes delivery times even faster and global. Computerization is making even greater changes. Software such as Pagemaker and QuarkXPress now allows journalists and editors to do much of the work at their desks on their own computers. Journalists can now carry round with them their own personal newsroom. The technological revolutions of radio in the early 1920s and television in the 1950s transformed the news industry as dramatically as the computer and Internet are doing today. The electronic newsroom, modems and satellite phones have transformed the working life of the journalist. Technological change in television has affected work practices in the broadcast news profession. Video is now universal, and two-person or even one-person reporting teams using lightweight cameras can file by cable or satellite from just about anywhere. Satellites and computers are changing the way reporters collect and write their information. They are also changing dramatically the whole editing and transmission process with digital computer editing and storage. The tapeless newsroom is almost here. Convergence is the new buzzword, in which all forms of communication affect the way audiences receive their information. Journalists now communicate instantly all over the world through cyberspace. At their fingertips are the Internet, electronic bulletin boards, e-mail, the ability to access information from all kinds of public and private sources, electronic databases as sources of information, and the use of database programs, spreadsheets and statistical packages to interpret information. Official electronic databases have sprung up throughout the world’s bureaucracies and large corporations. Databases as sources of information are reliable, easy to access, and often on tap 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Newspapers in the UK are starting down this path, and some European media users are already proficient at it. More than seventy-five per c...