Lisa Bu's J676 Blog

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Response to the "Digitizing the News" book

Studying how established print newspapers in the United States respond to technological development from videotext to the Internet, the author argues that "new media emerge by merging existing sociomaterial infrastructures with novel technical capabilities and ... this evolution [instead of revolution] is influenced by a combination of historical conditions, local contingencies, and process dynamics." (p12)

According to the author, the culture of innovation at American dailies, in general, is "marked by reactive, defensive, and pragmatic traits." (p173) The path they take to take advantage of the new capabilities of the web is shaped by three factors (p174): (1) relationship between print and online newsrooms (close vs. distant alignment), (2) inscriptions of news consumer/user (technically savvy or unsavvy), and (3) character of newsroom practices (gatekeeping vs. gateopenning, print media vs. multimedia).

Incorporating both historical approach and case studies, the author has presented a convincing argument in the book. One of the most rememberable parts for me is the mention of America's earliest newspaper, Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick. It had four pages but the fourth was left blank so that readers could add their own news stories on it before passing the paper to other people. It's fascinating that the idea of letting reader participate in news reporting was even in the mind of earliest news practitioners. It seems that we have come to a full circle: with flourishing of blogs, forums, podcasts and other interactive tools, citizen/amateur journalism has finally arrived and started to play a significant role in mass communication.

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