Technology & Journalism, Pt 1

I wrote this paper for my journalistic writing class. I actually had fun doing it and am proud of my work. I will post in three installments.

“This instrument can teach, it can illuminate, and yes, it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is nothing but wires and lights in a box.” Edward R. Murrow said this of the television, but as pointed out in Bradley’s Communication 101 textbook, it can just as easily be used for the computer today. Journalism is in the midst of a metamorphosis, with old media colliding head to head with new media. Technology is proving once again that the craft needs to stay on its toes and not fall behind. Throughout this presentation, I hope to create an accurate sense of what technology has done, is doing, and may continue to do to journalism in the future. It has been a rocky road to get to today, but even rockier times may be ahead.

What we now consider old or traditional media was at one time new media. Radio became a form of mass communication in the 1920s. It was free, and it could scoop the newspaper. As Bradley audio engineer Dave Lennie put it in his production class I took last fall, radio survives largely because of cars. Television came along in the 1940s and 1950s, causing a steep decline in newspapers. It could scoop the newspaper, like the radio, but had the distinct advantage over radio in that you could actually see what was happening.

One of my favorite examples of radio versus television is the 1960 election, pitting Richard Nixon versus John F. Kennedy. During the debates, those that listened to the radio thought Nixon performed better. But those who actually watched on television saw Nixon didn’t look too great in front of a screen, as opposed to the tanned, handsome senator from Massachusetts. Since then, television has dominated culture here in the United States.

Neither radio nor television killed print journalism. But now, newspapers are threatened once again by emerging new media technology, this time in the form of blogs, Twitter, e-readers, and personalized news, all largely due to the ubiquity of the Internet.

This notion of newspapers going online isn’t an entirely new occurrence. As early as the 1970s, the Toronto Globe and Mail allowed public access to its news database. The idea was close to a generation ahead of its time because it didn’t adapt well. In 2001, the New York Times launched its first online edition. It was an exact replica of the print version. Its cost: 65 cents.

Wait, content online hasn’t always been free? Contrary to what one might believe, it hasn’t. In fact, free content wasn’t the intended goal at all. Newspapers and magazines were charging for their content in paper, so why buck tradition?

Web sites originally charged micropayments to consumers in the early 1990s by how many minutes they spent online. The longer content providers could keep a user on the page, the more money they made. This was the original goal of hypertext. Walter Isaacson, a former Time editor, helped invent banner advertisements to bring magazine content online for Wired and Time. The ads generated so much money that they allowed users to view content for free.

Newspapers have more readers than ever, but few of these readers are paying. According to a study from the Pew Foundation, more people in the US get their news for free online rather than paying for it. Traditionally, newspapers have had three modes of revenue – newsstand sales, subscription, and advertising. The web technically produces two of those, but Isaacson only recognizes advertising. “This makes for a wobbly stool even when the one leg is strong,” says Isaacson. But it’s not as strong as it once was. In the fourth quarter of 2008, ad revenue took a dip. The stool just got a bit wobblier.

Similarly, there are three main revenue models for online media. The first is advertising. It seems like a good idea. Banner ads can reach a more vast audience – potentially worldwide – than classified ads that exist in just a particular region where a newspaper is distributed. According to the Pavlik and McIntosh text, this is a disappointing revenue for all but the largest portal sites. Start factoring in sites like Craigslist, eBay, and more, and the slump in advertising makes sense.

Next is subscription, which is used by The Wall Street Journal Interactive and Consumer Reports Online. The latter, as of the last update to Pavlik and McIntosh’s COM 101 text, was charging upwards of $50 per year and gained $30 million in revenue. Currently, subscriptions for Consumer Reports Online cost about $26 per year, but no revenue data was found for that. Both companies use partial subscription methods in order to find out what content people will pay for.

The last revenue model is syndication, in which content providers license their material to content distributors. In 2005, this brought in $6 billion. Pavlik and McIntosh believe this will be a fundamental component in the future.

A reasonable argument would be that content providers should never have stopped charging for their material in the first place. But then again, hindsight is always 20/20 and things were looking good for an ad-supported Web.