Convergence of Online and Print Media

Ten years ago, the Internet was used for email and research by academics. Today, the Internet has become something most American households have and many people cannot live without. While this has changed many facets of our lives, the most noticeable change is in the way we get our news. Though papers such as USA Today and the Boston Globe increased their circulation numbers, many papers, including those owned by Gannett have experienced decreased circulation by two percent.[1]

If news consumers obtained their information just from major media websites, this would be an easy phenomenon to trace. However, the ease of obtaining (as well as disseminating) information on the Internet has made the business of news a fragmented one. No longer do text and pictures suffice as news. Major media websites are expected to have news stories complete with pictures, graphics, interactive tools, newstrackers and other bells and whistles. That overwhelms some readers and bores others. Magazines and newspapers with smaller budgets make do with less, but there is still an expectation of functionality appreciated at that level as well. On a different level, there are bloggers, who occasionally break major news stories before the mass media have a chance to. The term “blogger” refers to one who operates a weblog, or better known as, blog. A blogger need not have any kind of press credential nor any type of formal association with a press organization. Some blogs are no more than an individual’s private ramblings while other blogs are commonly respected nearly as much as a major media outlet’s website. Blogs both offer solace to those who do not agree with major media’s take on events as well as take attention away from these major media outlets. However, what does the facility of declaring yourself your own media outlet mean for the major media outlets and for the profession of journalism in general?

DECLINE IN CIRCULATION

“Newspaper circulation is in decline,” stated the State of the Media report in 2004. In fact, in a report released November 2004 by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, ten of the 20 largest newspapers in the country reported their circulations to have decreased since the year before; two of these being in the top five newspapers (New York Daily News and Washington Post).[2] However, there may be a variety of reasons why newspaper circulation is on the decline, some which can be credited to the development of the Internet and others simply to lazy journalism.

Newspapers have added features such as more lifestyle pages, special sections, youth readership efforts, etc, says William F. Gloede, former editor of Editor and Publisher, in the State of the Media report[3], yet circulation continues to drop. He suggests that newspapers focus on retaining the readers they have, instead of trying to reach out to new ones. “I submit that a leaner, more focused, better written and edited newspaper is more likely to retain readers and gain new ones whose position in life requires them to be informed,” he says. But while that might be part of the problem contributing to the long decline of the circulation of newspapers, the Internet has also played a large role. Human nature dictates that if one can get something for free or one can pay for it, one will most likely take what they can get for free. When newspapers launched their websites, most of them were (and still are) free to access. However, someone must pay for the ability for us to have free news and most Web readers are reluctant to pay for online news. This raises two problems: how do the media companies make money and how can you gauge online circulation?

The answer to the first question is that advertisers support media companies that make free online news possible. This perplexes smaller papers, such as the Albuquerque Journal with more trouble getting online advertisers, making the online news business an expense to them, rather than an additional income.[4] Another problem with circulation is third-party circulation. Third party circulation refers to papers that are delivered to people who have not requested them or subscribed to them. A few years ago, a change in legislation allowed for third-party sales to be counted as a part of a newspaper’s circulation. This was a substantial change because the paid circulation determines what a newspaper can charge advertisers. These papers are generally paid for by advertisers and many papers across the country participate in this program, including The Miami Herald, The Wall Street Journal, The San Jose Mercury, and The Boston Globe. More than 1.6 million of these papers are delivered every week.[5] Though this practice bolsters circulation numbers, evidence is not conclusive that it bolsters the actual number of readers. “When we know there is someone reaching in their pocket and paying for a newspaper, we feel there is a greater likelihood they’re going to read that newspaper and thus be exposed to our advertising,” said Matthew Spahn, director for media planning at Sears[6]. Spahn cites concerns that those whom receive free papers may not be reading them which leads the papers to lose touch with the audience that they are actually speaking to.

If it is that hard to track circulation of paper newspapers with “paid” subscriptions, how can you track how many people are looking at a news website? At newspapers and magazines, you can attempt to verify readership through audits. Broadcast media use ratings to estimate viewership. The Internet was originally supposed to do away with the variables involved in estimating news consumption by the public. Websites record impressions of visitors to the sites, which is not as simple as it seems. Paid subscription websites, such as Wall Street Journal and TheStreet.com can measure how many subscribers have paid for their services but online media have no general consensus of what constitutes a reader or a viewer. In the early days of Internet tracking, “hits” were used to determine how many visitors a certain page had received. This quickly became an outdated way to measure visitors after the realization that the same person logging in from two different locations counted as two hits and that just clicking on the page, even if the page didn’t complete loading, was still considered a hit[7]. As the Internet news business evolved, a “page view” became a more accurate way to estimate page views, but only slightly. The problem with the “page view” lies in stories which, as most do, have multiple pages. If a story has a link to the next page at the bottom, they are considered separate pages and thus separate page views, making it look as though there are more readers than there actually are. Determining numbers in this way makes it possible for ESPN, for example, to have 1.3 billion page views in October 2004.[8] However, there are not even 1.8 billion people that have Internet access, so it is impossible to call this figure the number of readers of ESPN’s website. The “unique visitor” model of measuring audience has emerged recently as a dependable way to gauge readership. A unique visitor is a reader who has visited a site within a specific period of time. Companies such as Media Metrix, an online equivalent of Nielsen ratings, use a sample audience to attempt to gauge the amount of “monthly unique visitors” and release their data monthly. The company says that its samples are the best way to measure a site’s audience. Ledbetter suggests another way to counting readers is for the Web sites to submit their visitor logs to auditors, in the same fashion as print magazines as newspapers.

In general, the subscription model only works in markets where the information is exclusively available at one site, such as The New York Times’ crossword puzzles, or exclusive sports reporting at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Human nature dictates that if someone can get the same thing for free somewhere else, they will.

INTERACTION BETWEEN ONLINE AND TRADITIONAL MEDIA

Newspapers are considered static entities, changing infrequently and very slowly when they do. The websites linked to these newspapers are not dissimilar, according to Boczowski.[9] News websites linked to traditional media have changed much slower than those with fewer ties to traditional media. He also argues that “their pursuit of permanence, undertaking innovation to stay the same, newspapers have nonetheless ended up generating substantial change”. There are three factors which determine how successful a media outlet’s website will be: the relationship between the online and print newsrooms, the inscription of a vision of the intended user in the technical and communication content of the product, and the character of newsroom practices as either reproducing editorial gate keeping or enacting alternatives to it. Different combinations of these factors have led to different online innovation paths and different media artifacts, says Boczowkski.[10]

The first factor involves the relationship between the print and online newsrooms. There are several factors impacting the success of a news website, all which have to do with the print newsroom. Print newsrooms have been around for a long time and have been generally successful, giving them some authority on decision-making. Also, by this point, newsrooms are very rigid, subscribing to a “tried and true” model of working, which makes it harder to change. In the beginning, the news websites needed to depend on the print newsrooms for financial livelihood, as they were not yet advertising. This meant they had to answer to their older, more traditional counterparts. In Digitizing the News, Boczkowski uses three case studies: the New York Times on the Web’s Technology section, HoustonChronicle.com’s Virtual Voyager, and New Jersey Online’s community connection. The editors at the Times spent a significant time interacting with their online staff, Boczowski said, and this is evident in the seamless way that their Technology website mirrors the print Technology section. However, in both the Houston Chronicle and New Jersey Online sites, the online staff did not spend as much time interacting with the print staff, which is obvious as the online products look completely different from their print counterparts.

The second factor involves forecasting who the viewers of the site will be, or the “inscription of a representation of the intended user”. The final product of a site has much to do with the editors’ perception of the viewers’ web-savvyness. If the editors/producers believe that their readers are not very technologically savvy, the website they build will reflect this, such as the simple interfaces and textual information in both the Technology section and Community Connection. However, the Houston Chronicle’s page showed that they believed their readers to be very savvy and took advantage of the web’s multimedia capabilities with their Virtual Voyager.

The other factor involves how information flows. Traditional media involves a flow where the readers consume the media. Their only outlet of responding to what they have read is a letter to the editor, which most people lack the energy to write, and even fewer actually get published. The new online model allows for more interaction. Once editors realized that consumers wanted to produce their own content, websites began featuring more venues for readers to voice their own opinions. The Community Connection website is a good example of this, as much of its content is produced by the consumer, rather than the editor. Once readers began to contribute content, there became multiple information flows. There are many ways that consumers can produce their own content, from discussion boards, to online chats, and phenomenon such as on Community Connection where the reader can contribute their own content in the form of a short news article or press release.

The third factor in understanding the interaction between the print and online newsrooms involves the character of editorial function. The problem with journalism is that, in its simplest terms, it is just communication between one (a writer) to another (the reader). The fundamental problem here is how to define when one is a journalist. Journalism is different from dentistry, whereas knocking someone’s tooth out does not make one a dentist but writing down your interpretation of events can, loosely, make one a journalist. This idea has made traditional print journalists insecure and has contributed to past reluctance to let readers have input into editorial content. However, the combination of these three factors has contributed to new patterns in journalism. This shows that online journalism is not growing in just one path, but in multiple paths.

These evolutions of online journalism also have served to separate it from traditional media. The consumers become producers as well and the news moves from being mostly journalist-centered, communicated as a monologue and primarily local, to being audience-centered and communicated, part of multiple conversations, and micro-local, in websites such as www.backyardfence.com, a local neighborhood “news” website Studies show that the number of players involved in disseminating news increases greatly when online media is considered. There are at least four important groups to consider, which include newsrooms (two of them: online and traditional). Advertising and marketing personnel also become involved in online media more than in traditional media, since most online media is supported by ad sales. Technical and design personnel become involved as well, since they have an input to the story with multimedia features as the visual interface becomes nearly as important as the written, reported story. Finally, the readers become involved, by voicing their opinions in chat rooms, forums and publications under the umbrella of the news outlet. As users link these pages to personal homepages and websites for advocacy groups, they appear to shape the concept of what is newsworthy. Thus, new “news worlds” emerge.

SITE-TO-SITE COMPARISON BETWEEN WASHINGTONPOST.COM AND DAILYNEWS.COM

But each news website has a different level of functionality, though some of the major news websites are somewhat alike in their coverage of stories. The Terri Schiavo media circus is a good point for comparison, using washingtonpost.com and dailynews.com, the site of the Los Angeles Daily News, a second paper in the Los Angeles Times market.

On March 18, 2005, Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed, inspiring a frenzy of media coverage, leading up to her death on April 1, 2005, dates obtained from a timeline on the NY Times’ story online.[11] The initial stories on washingtonpost.com and on dailynews.com vary greatly. The Daily News’s story is a report from the AP wire with an AP photo[12]. The Washington Post coverage of the story was much different. Though the Post also used an AP photo, the story was written by a staff writer.[13] The Washington Post story also had a variety of other online features, including two other articles, a live discussion with a University of Pittsburgh law professor, a link to documents from the case, and a video of Majority Leader Tom Delay speaking on the case. Most of the Daily News’s coverage was written from AP reports while much of the Post’s coverage was written by staff writers. On the day of Schiavo’s death, April 1, a package of stories included a related story about hospice nurses helping patients whom are near death.[14] An article titled “The Life and Death of Terri Schiavo”[15] also ran on the day of her death. This was the most content-rich article in the Daily News’s online coverage that included what the site calls “Online Extras”, including photo galleries of AP photos and a link to a guestbook[16] where one can express their condolences to Terri’s family. The article also included links advising readers how to create their own living wills to avoid this kind of situation. Other Schiavo articles contained occasional links to AP videos or more links to sites about create living wills.

The Washington Post ran a similar article to “The Life and Death of Terri Schiavo”, called “Terri Schiavo’s Unstudied Life” which commented on how Schiavo, a shy girl growing up was the now the center of this media frenzy[17]. The chart below illustrates the comparison between the two stories’ coverage.

LA Daily News

WashingtonPost

links to related articles

X

X

video

X

X

photo galleries

X

guestbook

X

timeline

X

message boards

X

analysis

X

legal documents

X

The Washington Post article that announced Schiavo’s death[18] was surprisingly bare in its coverage, only having a Reuters wire report without pictures or multimedia, but stories with more multimedia elements followed, including one[19] by staff writer Manuel Roig-Franzia, the writer who wrote the initial story about the removal of the feeding tube. This story was extremely rich in content, including: a photo gallery slideshow (with pictures from wire services as well as Washington Post staff photographers), video of Brother Paul O’Donnell announcing Schiavo’s death, a report from Schiavo’s legal guardian, two MSNBC videos of the family’s reaction, news analyses, a live discussion with Roig-Franzia, and both video and transcript of the President’s remarks regarding the case and Schiavo’s death. The site also linked to relevant religion stories for those interested in the religious impact of her death.

The discrepancy in the content of these news stories also involves the staff involved in putting the paper online. The Washington Post Securities Exchange Commission filing[20] for 2005 states that Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, the division of the Washington Post Company responsible for the Washington Post’s online content employs 230 full-time and 35 part-time employees, though not all of them are responsible for distributing content to the Internet. The State of the Media report states that there are four employees whose sole job is to put content from the print Washington Post on washingtonpost.com, nearly twice the number at smaller newspapers.[21] No numbers are known for the Daily News but there are surely less people on their online staff.

BLOGS

As stated earlier, a “blog”, short for “weblog”, is a website anybody can start to opine or offer their own coverage of the news. Some blogs are highly successful and so professionally compiled that they may be mistaken for professional news websites and their creators receive press credentials, while some blogs merely exist for personal ranting and raving, while some fall in between the two.

The 2004 election is a good starting point to analyze the importance of blogs and their coverage. This election was the first one where bloggers received press credentials at the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention, just as reporters employed by more traditional news outlets. A Washington Post article from before the Democratic Convention[22] stated that 60 bloggers would receive credentials to cover the convention. Cyberjournalist.net, a project of the American Press Institute, kept track of those credentialed and those independently covering the convention and its coverage. They listed over 123 bloggers,[23] some of whom were blogging for their own private blogs, some of whom were full-time journalists at media organizations blogging for news sites, and some delegates and party members blogging for various organizations.

But what is the difference between bloggers and traditional reporters? And what can bloggers do that reporters can’t? This is something Slate media critic Jack Shafer addressed in a recent column[24]. Shafer analyzes a mistake bloggers made in covering the Schiavo case. The Washington Post and ABC News reported on a Republican talking points memo circulated about the case. Blogs decried it as false, only to have the two news organizations prove them wrong. Yet, the blogs never issued any kind of retraction or correction. Shafer poses the question: “The Rathergate episode, in which the blogs were right, and the Schiavogate story, in which they were wrong, indicates that the blogs have reached a sort of parity with their mainstream colleagues. This development poses a question: What can the mainstream media do that the blogs can’t? And vice versa.”[25] Shafer comes to some obvious conclusions, such as reporters for professional news organizations enjoy the supposed respectable reputation of their institution and financial means while bloggers have to prove themselves independently based on their own personal reputation. Yet, bloggers, because of their somewhat anonymous position, enjoy some rights that traditional reporters do not. An important point that Shafer makes is that because bloggers are independent, they need not answer to advertisers and have no circulation numbers to worry about, which allows them more editorial freedom. There is no overhead, no media ownership to worry about. With bigger media corporations, there is sometimes a certain amount of selling out and writing content that sometimes blurs the lines between editorial content and advertising content. Bloggers become free from the chill effect that sometimes affects journalists at media outlets. Bloggers have no job security to worry about – they can write about whoever and whatever they want, in whatever light they please.

The Online Journalism Review, a project of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication outlines a sort of code of ethics for bloggers[26]. The code includes: not plagiarizing, disclosing where information has been obtained from, no gifts or money from sources for coverage, fact-checking, and being honest. This code of ethics is distinctly different than the one that print journalists traditionally rely on, from the Society of Professional Journalists. The three main tenets of the SPJ’s code[27] are: seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently, and be accountable. The two codes are similar, but the OJR code is more explicitly spelled out, assuming bloggers might not understand some of these philosophies and also taking into account the nature of their work.

IMPLICATIONS ON THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM

Though this paper has focused on some of the negative implications that online journalism may have on the business, it is important to understand that there are also many positive implications to the information-rich society we now live in. It is important for journalists to use the same news-gathering skills they would use in a traditional environment. The Internet has also opened up an entirely new way of news-gathering as well as other opportunities for journalists. With many online libraries and databases of news and journals, the journalist can now get information they previously may not have had to take days searching for or might not have been able to get at all. The Internet also allows journalists to access a wide network of sources they might now have been able to tap into previously.

Audit Bureau of Circulations Annual Report, 2004.

Bartholomew, Dana and Leach, Eric. “Hospice Nurses Help Terminally Ill Take Final Journey. ” http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200%257E20954%257E2792764,00.html LA Daily News, April 1, 2005.

Boczkowski, Pablo J. Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA: 2004.

Code of Ethics, Society Professional Journalists, http://www.spj.org/ethics_code.asp

“Doctors Remove Terri Schiavo’s Feeding Tube”.L.A.Daily News. http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200%257E24652%257E2770343,00.html

Ethics. Online Journalism Review. http://www.ojr.org/ojr/wiki/ethics/

Faler, Brian.” Parties to Allow Bloggers at Conventions for First Time.” Washington Post. , July 6, 2004. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29588-2004Jul5.html

Frey, Jennifer. “Terri Schiavo’s Unstudied Life”. Washington Post. March 25, 2005. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64459-2005Mar24.html

Hulse, Carl and Newman, Maria. “Judge Hears Schiavo Arugments, but Does Not Rule Yet.”, New York Times. March 21, 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/21/politics/21cnd-debate.html?ex=1113451200&en=2e2469717dd9481d&ei=5070

Ledbetter, James. “Counting the Web.” Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2000

“The Life and Death of Terri Schiavo” LA Daily News, April 1, 2005. http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200%257E20954%257E2792566,00.html

“Newspapers”. State of the News Media 2005, http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2005/narrative_newspapers_intro.asp?media=2

Online News Investment. State of the News Media 2004. http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/narrative_online_newsinvestment.asp?cat=6&media=3

Roig-Franzia, Manuel. “Long Legal Battle Over as Schiavo Dies.” Washington Post. April 1, 2005. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15423-2005Mar31.html

Roig-Franzia, Manuel. Schiavo’s Feeding Tube is Removed. March 19, 2005. Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46505-2005Mar18.html

Shafer, Jack. What Can Bloggers Do That Reporters Can’t? And Vice Versa. Slate. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116498/

Scherer, Michael. “Why Information Will No Longer Be Free”, Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2003. http://www.cjr.org/issues/2003/1/spotlight.asp

State of the News Media 2005, http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2005/narrative_newspapers_intro.asp?media=2

Steinberg, Jacques and Torok, Tom. “Your Daily Paper, Courtesy of a Sponsor”, New York Times. January 10, 2005. C1.

“Terri Schiavo Dies” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15434-2005Mar31.html

Terri Schiavo Guestbook. http://www.legacy.com/LADailyNews/Guestbook.asp?Page=Guestbook&PersonID=3331231

Washington Post SEC Filing

Who’s blogging the convention – http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/001461.php

[1] “Newspapers”. State of the News Media 2005, http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2005/narrative_newspapers_intro.asp?media=2

[2] Audit Bureau of Circulations Annual Report, 2004. < http://www.accessabc.com/sub1/2004annualreport.pdf>

[3] State of the News Media 2005, http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2005/narrative_newspapers_intro.asp?media=2

[4] Scherer, Michael. “Why Information Will No Longer Be Free”, Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2003. http://www.cjr.org/issues/2003/1/spotlight.asp

[5] Steinberg, Jacques and Torok, Tom. “Your Daily Paper, Courtesy of a Sponsor”, New York Times. January 10, 2005. C1.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ledbetter, James. “Counting the Web.” Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2000.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Boczkowski, Pablo J. Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers. MIT Press,Cambridge, MA: 2004

[10] Ibid.

[11] Hulse, Carl and Newman, Maria. “Judge Hears Schiavo Arugments, but Does Not Rule Yet.”, New York Times. March 21, 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/21/politics/21cnd-debate.html?ex=1113451200&en=2e2469717dd9481d&ei=5070

[12] Doctors Remove Terri Schiavo’s Feeding Tube. L.A. Daily News. http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200%257E24652%257E2770343,00.html

[13] Roig-Franzia, Manuel. Schiavo’s Feeding Tube is Removed. March 19, 2005. Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46505-2005Mar18.html