Journalism 2.0: Assessing How the Internet has Changed Journalism
By Clare O’Beara
A8JL116
Traditional News
My father brought home the Evening Press and Time. Television news was delivered seriously; this was the time of Troubles. Footage was black and white on RTE, though BBC had colour.
Our channels were:
· RTE
· BBC1 NI
· BBC2
· UTV
My friend Eileen Gormley, a freelance journalist, started uploading file copy to newspapers via her laptop in 1996 rather than fax it or dictate on the phone. ARPAnet, the precursor to Internet, was first used 50 years ago this week. The web of telephone lines connecting Internet providers like CompuServe gave us bulletin boards and e-mail on dial-up modems, with initially no images, but it could send news around the world.
According to Kevin J Barnhurst, early papers carried fifty stories and adverts on the front page. Images were hand drawn. The World Wide Web was invented by Sir Tim Berners Lee while working at CERN in 1989. News websites were static, providing articles and photos. The Irish Times was the first newspaper to buy its domain name in Ireland, in 1994.
Paper and magazine income:
· Subscriptions
· News stand or vendor sales
· Advertising copy
· Sponsored content — ‘advertorial articles’
Broadcaster income:
· Licence fee for public service broadcasters
· Advertising
· Sale of branded goods like magazines

According to Robert Colvile, the more industrialised and advanced the economy, the more fast-paced the culture. In 2006, worldwide, people were covering the same length of ground in ten percent less time than they had in the 1990s. Web 2.0 was created by Tim O’Reilly in 2004, enabling user generated content (UGC), interactive sites, and the Internet Of Things (IOT). The consumer market exploded and companies registered to exploit it.
Moore’s Law: computers will double in computing power or halve in price every eighteen months.
News media today
· Traditional — papers, magazines, tv, radio
· Online only — former papers like The Independent; blog, video or audio sites
· Social media — network platforms, Facebook, Linked In; microblog sites, Twitter; content sharing sites, YouTube; messaging apps, What’sApp.
· Owned — websites, apps and blogs owned by a non-media producer; Google, Apple.
· Search engines — Google, Bing, Safari, which rank paying news media higher in search results.
YouTube has the most used search engine in the world after its owner Google. When users upload a video, the cloud storage computer creates four different versions of the video. When a device interacts with the platform, the computer learns what screen and operating system (OS) it has, and what download speed is available. Then YouTube sends the appropriate version.
Threats facing traditional news sources
· Loss of advertising revenue
· Loss of physical copy sales
· Loss of licence fee
· Saturation of media with alternative entertainment
· 24-hour news channels
· Sports tv and websites
· Viral spread by microblogging
· Podcasts replacing radio
· Live streaming on social sites
· Unwillingness to pay for web content
· ‘Already seen’: Phys.org produces an article which is reproduced by news sites
· Fake news
· Echo chamber in which users select news that suits their political leanings.
Fake News
“We ended up finding a small cluster of news websites all registered in the same town in Macedonia called Veles,” Craig Silverman, Media Editor, Buzzfeed.
The term ‘fake news’ arose in 2016, during the US Presidential Election. According to Craig Silverman, streams of fake political stories appeared on Facebook. The content aimed to gain advertising revenue, spreading through Facebook’s algorithm which promoted content to interested users. President Trump started using the term ‘fake news’ against authorised media, beginning with Jim Acosta of CNN.
Facebook sells its users’ data to a Russian search engine, and sold to UK firm Cambridge Analytica to influence the Brexit vote. The platform allows advertisers to selectively target users (age, gender and location) for marketing.
One in six Twitter accounts is probably a bot (automated account spreading selected content). USA Today cleared one million bots off its followers.
Fact-checking sites
· Snopes, originally an urban legend checking site, run by David Mikkelson; he is not a journalist but started on anime site 4chan.
· Storyful, a company supplying verified news to media, founded by former RTE journalist Mark Little in 2010, and bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in 2013 for €18m.
· The ‘wires’, Associated Press and Reuters, prepare items without political leanings, and disclose sources, in order to sell an item to many news outlets; if the information has not been verified they will say so.

Newspaper consolidation for printing economy brought small papers under the umbrella of a larger one. As new technology required fewer staff, newspaper unions resisted change, but Rupert Murdoch moved The Sun from Fleet Street to Wapping in 1986. Copy could be filed online, computers replaced compositors, and digital photos replaced chemical processing. Today with a Content Management System (CMS) the journalist can upload copy to the website form, providing details like headline, key actors, updates; the story may go to a subeditor or instantly appear.
Consolidated media firms
· Vertical — a firm owns media such as tv, radio, magazine, newspaper, website, blog.
· Horizontal — a firm controls several versions of the same medium; The Times and The Sun owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Entertainment firms bought up news media, increasing their coverage of entertainers (including sports stars) instead of foreign affairs. According to Journalism After September 11 this is why many people in the West were unaware of the issues leading up to the atrocities on 9/11/2001. (The Evening Herald splash I observed that day was ‘Posh And Becks’ gossip; hastily replaced.) The World Trade Center supported broadcast and cellphone masts, and when those went down, news firms were unable to respond instantly. The Washington Post dropped ads and stopped tracking users, so the pages would load more quickly. The public turned to UGC sites to find information and post messages. After this, most news media had to include serious content and foreign policy.
Economic Models
According to a study by Lewis et al, in 2008, 60% of press articles were sourced either from Public Relations (PR) or wire services, and only 12% of material had been fact-checked. Pressure on journalists has increased to file three stories daily, with soundbites and video clips.
Revenue models include a paywall, or subscriber only articles and benefits; The Irish Times allows a number of free articles weekly before a paywall. The Irish Independent depends on advertising; but web users increasingly employ adblocking software, unhappy at being followed from site to site by ads using tracking cookies.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) means a story can rank high in searches organically (without paying) by its content, keywords, and freshness. This can cause ‘clickbait’ headlines. Media also send RSS content into aggregated feeds for users.
The Future of Journalism
With the ability to update, and to embed tweets of instant responses by politicians, news media have become extremely agile. The next step is augmented reality and virtual reality. This could put the user in the Oval Office as a statement is being made, or in a town recovering from disaster, via an immersive experience on a headset like the Oculus.
Short form may appear on glasses; or a machine-spoken version, ideal for people visually impaired.
Long form, like this look by Rosita Boland at Laos. This feature contains text, photos, map, animated gif, podcast, videos, interviews, infographics, lists, embedded links.

Female journalists increased representation as equipment became less cumbersome and communication skills and visual presentation became more relevant. Journalists are also educated, according to Tim Holmes and Liz Nice; 98% of UK journalists have a degree. Comcast — owned Sky News employs women and minorities in their newsrooms and as conflict zone reporters.
Sky News
· 24-hour news TV
· Phone apps
· Google plus
· Campaigns — Sky Ocean Rescue hashtag #passonplastic
· Adverts
· Data-driven presentations
· Foreign and war correspondents
The role of journalism in keeping politics and business honest will continue. Recent major exposés were the Paradise Papers and Panama Papers, inside data e-mailed to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. BBC provides news on Tor, the Darknet browser.
Basic stories are now produced by a computer program, freeing up journalists for human interest and complex assignments.
Paper production from wood pulp is a polluting process, requiring a large carbon footprint to shift materials, sell and dispose of or recycle the paper. The closure of the Independent News and Media printing plant was announced on 23rd October 2019.
The content-rich e-zine is the news of the future.
“The decision to shut the plant had been made in light of a continuing decline in circulation and advertising revenues,” Irish Independent.

Word count: 1316 not including references, headings, boxed quotes, photo captions, alt-text, tag metadata.
References
Books
Barnhurst, Kevin G., Mister Pulitzer and the Spider: Modern News from Realism to the Digital 2016, University of Illinois Press.
Chippindale, Peter; Borrie, Chris, Stick It Up Your Punter!: The Uncut Story of the Sun Newspaper 1999, Pocket Books.
Colville, Robert, The Great Acceleration: How the World is Getting Faster, Faster 2016, Bloomsbury Publishing.
Craig, David A., Excellence In Online Journalism: Exploring Current Practices In An Evolving Environment 2010, Sage Publications.
Greenberg, Andy, This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Hacktivists, and Cypherpunks Are Freeing the World’s Information 2012, Virgin Books.
Holmes, Tim; Nice, Liz, Magazine Journalism 2011, SAGE Publications Ltd.
Kierans, John, Stop the Press!: An Inside Story of the Tabloids in Ireland 2010, Merlin Books.
McQuail, Denis, McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory 2010, Sage Publications.
O’Brien, Mark, The Irish Times: A History 2008, Four Courts Press.
Schwartz, Jerry, Associated Press Reporting Handbook 2001, McGraw-Hill Companies.
Simon, Joel, The New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom 2014, Columbia University Press.
Stryker, Cole, Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan’s Army Conquered the Web 2011, The Overlook Press.
Thornburg, Ryan, Producing Online News: Digital Skills, Stronger Stories 2010, CQ Press.
Zelizer, Barbie (ed); Allan, Stuart (ed), Journalism After September 11 2011, Routlege.
Periodicals
Broadcast Magazine 20 May 2016.
Articles may be found online:
Farber, Alex, ‘Broadcast BBC to trial subscription in major digital shake-up’
https://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/bbc-to-trial-subscription-in-major-digital-shake-up/5104160.article
Strauss, Will, ‘BBC tech projects in spotlight’
https://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/bbc-tech-projects-in-spotlight/5104183.article
Online content
BBC, ‘BBC News launches ‘dark web’ Tor mirror’ 2019.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50150981
Boland, Rosita, ‘Death from below in the world’s most bombed country’ 2017.
Dorsey, Jack, tweet, 2019.
https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634360472829952
Hall, Kat, ‘Tor blimey, Auntie! BBC launches dedicated dark web mirror site’ 2019.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/24/beeb_launches_dedicated_dark_web_site/
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, ‘The Panama Papers’ 2016.
https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/
O’Donovan, Daniel, ‘INM to close Citywest print plant with loss of more than 80 jobs’ 2019.
Oliver, Emmet, ‘IN&M sells ‘Sunday World’ site for €18.5m’ 2005.
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/in-m-sells-sunday-world-site-for-18-5m-1.511302
Peiser, Jaclyn, ‘The Rise of the Robot Reporter’ 2019.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/business/media/artificial-intelligence-journalism-robots.html
Taylor, Charlie, ‘News Corp pumps a further €5.5m into loss-making Storyful’ 2013.
US Legal, ‘Paper’ undated.