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This paper was presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and
Mass Communication in San Antonio, Texas August 2005.
If you have questions about this paper, please contact the author
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Thank you.
Elliott Parker
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Experiencing Journalism:
A new model in online newspapers
Abstract
A descriptive analysis of four online newspapers supports Deuze's
(2003) contention that
journalism is morphing into a connective, interactive, multi-media,
dialogical form of news
dissemination online. This paper also demonstrates how Internet
attributes engage audiences
in new ways. The author suggests an expansion of Deuze's (2003)
online model to include a
concentration on public experience, incorporating both a citizen
journalism participatory
function as well as a presence function.
1 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
The New York Times revamped its campaign Web site for the 2004 presidential
campaign to emphasize interactive elements ("Campaigns," 2003). The
Washington Post
asked readers for questions to pose to presidential candidates and
then displayed the
transcripts of their answers in a Web special available throughout
the campaign ("Politics,"
2003). Online newspapers are using the new medium to provide a more
layered journalism.
Many theorists have written about how the Internet will change
traditional newsmaking at
least theoretically (e.g. Newhagen & Levy, 1998; Morris & Ogan, 1996;
Martikainen, 2000;
Deuze, 2003). This paper provides a descriptive analysis of four
national online newspapers
USA Today, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The
Washington Post to
demonstrate that traditional news publications are evolving their
journalism for the Internet
and creating something all together different from the profession's roots.
Online, the traditional model is being shaped by the Internet's
attributes, which
combine all the different channel characteristics of television,
radio and print into one
medium. Not only does the Internet allow more news stories, graphics
and features, it also
eases the need to prioritize because of space constraints. Readers
can now take part in
deciding what they want the journalists to write. The concepts of
"interactivity,"
"multimedia" and "connectivity" journalism have developed in online
newspapers.
Interactivity is the ability of people to engage with the text online
by using hyperlinks or
other features to dictate content; "multimedia" refers to the ability
of a journalist to use all of
the Internet's media to tell a story. This would include converging
audio, video, text,
interactive graphics and art into a package. "Connectivity" is a
broader concept that refers to
the result of these other two online features. This can be defined as
the characteristic of the
Web that people can create and maintain social, political and other
kinds of cultural and
democratic ties. Deuze (2003) folded these ideas into a new model for
online journalism, a
2 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
model that begs traditional journalists to change their concepts of
storytelling in order to take
full advantage of this new medium.
This paper does not argue that news itself is changing definition,
but rather that the
process of displaying and relaying of information is dramatically
altered, and that in turn
transforms the resulting knowledge. The premise behind such a
statement can be found in the
readings of medium scholars like McLuhan (1998/1964) or Postman
(1993), but the
statement is not meant to be technologically deterministic at least
not substantially so. This
analysis supported Deuze's theoretical contention (2003) that
journalism is morphing into a
connective, interactive, multi-media, dialogical form of news
dissemination online, even for
these media industry bastions. In addition, this analysis showed some
new uses of the
technology that engage the audience in new ways, inviting the reader
along with the
journalist and, in some cases, replacing the reporter with the
audience member. Therefore,
the author suggests an expansion of Deuze's (2003) online model to
include a concentration
on public experience, incorporating both citizen journalism
participatory function as well as a
presence function.
Literature Review: Traditional model of journalism:
What is journalism for, asks scholars from Lippmann (1920) to Carey
(1987). The
answers vary in their specifics. Wright (1986) presents a functional
journalistic purpose:
News media reinforce the dominant social structure. Fallows (1996)
argues that journalism's
goal is to inform the public debate. Most researchers connect
journalism in some manner
with democracy, which Schudson (1995) defines as political life. For
any journalism to be
effective, however, it must relay the truth (Siebert, et al.,
1956/1963). Reporters create truth
through a set of standardized professional norms and routines that
serve to frame public
discourse (Bennett, 2003; Pan and Kosicki, 1993). They "select some
aspects of a perceived
reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a
way as to promote a
3 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral
evaluation and/or treatment
recommendation. Typically, frames diagnose, evaluate and prescribe"
(Entman, 1993, p.
294). Patterson (1993) notes that the "interpretive style of
reporting that has come to
dominate election coverage is a version of truth telling. It requires
the journalist to give shape
to things that cannot be seen and to understand things that cannot be
easily grasped" (180).
This makes the journalists important "custodians of fact," in the
words of Jamieson &
Waldman (2003).
Over the years journalists have moved from being stenographers to
interpreters,
posits Schudson (1995), suggesting that the way in which journalists
frame perverts the news.
Journalism scholarship has long lamented the seemingly unceasing
decline of journalism
integrity in relating political reality (see research dating from
Lippmann, 1922, to Jamieson
& Waldman, 2003). Herbert (2000), however, hopes that the digital
press could stem this
tide. With each new technology, he writes, the form of journalism
language becomes more
precise and more real. Schudson (1995) suggests we would be better
off with no journalistic
form at all, only information, and that new technologies might serve
to achieve such a thing.
Abramson, et al. (1988) point out that "the shift from one type of
democracy to the next
coincided with changes in the media" (70).
Online model of journalism
The online world eases space and time constraints present in print
and broadcast
worlds, and shifts our notions about news form and displays of truth.
Newhagen and Rafaeli
(1996) and Kopper, Kothoff, and Czepek (2000) suggest that scholars
examine the Net's
architectural differences and its resulting implications as a
product. Newhagen and Levy
(1998) contend that the Net's architecture is fundamentally changing
the look and feel of
traditional journalism. Internet writers can employ a nonlinear
format for storytelling to
create a two-way current between senders and receivers. Williams
(1998) argues that the very
4 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
concept of news transforms online. When the public can access that
U.S. Census report by
themselves, "who is to say that won't be regarded as news by the
public? And where does
that leave the journalist?" (Williams, 1998, p. 37).
The Internet serves up several new attributes not available in other
media. Once
posted, stories have the potential to become part of an interactive,
multimedia universe that
only begins the life of the narrative (Davis & Owen, 1998). The
beauty of interactivity lives
in its one-to-one, few or many interpersonal engagement (Morris &
Ogan, 1996) as well as
the content empowerment it allows (Khoo & Gopal as cited in Massey &
Levy, 1999).
Massey & Levy (1999) further note the variations and levels of
interactivity according to the
complexity of choice available online, the responsiveness of the
user, the ease in adding (and
manipulating) information and the facilitation of interpersonal
communication. The term
multimedia indicates the integration of a variety of information
methods from verbal cues to
text to animation. Marmolian (1991) understands multimedia as a way
in which we can
engage multiple senses through one channel. Sundar (2000) studies
whether multimedia
allows for better synthesis of the news because of its repetitive
functionality for information
delivery and its ability to position the viewer in a more realistic way.
Bardoel (1996) suggests that this new technology must expand our ideas of
journalism, and of publics. In 1996, he tentatively drew a first
online model paralleling
traditional concepts of journalism in having a dual, but enhanced,
purpose: orienting and
instrumental. Journalists can use the Web platform to bring
information much like a
stockbroker brings investors options from which to choose (as opposed
to what Bardoel
refers to as "classical" journalism, in which reporters gather
information and then serve it up
on a platter like a waiter who can only carry so much). Furthermore,
people can utilize the
online attributes to find news that they can use (Bardoel, 1996).
5 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
But Deuze (2003) recognized that these peculiar Internet characteristics
interactivity and multimedia alter Bardoel's model of orienting and
instrumental
journalism:
Living up to the characteristics and potential added value of
journalisms online
particularly challenges perceptions of the roles and functions of
journalisms as a whole.
The suggested added values and characteristics of online journalisms
cannot simply be
incorporated one-by-one without fundamentally changing the 'nature of
the beast' the
beast being that particular newsroom culture and the professionals
involved. (Deuze,
2003, p. 216, emphasis in original)
Deuze proposes a new model built on Bardoel's traditional concepts of
news media, but also
incorporating all the characteristics of the Internet, particularly
hypertextuality, interactivity
and multimediality. His new model centers on the concepts of
monitorial journalism and
dialogical journalism (as first proposed by Schudson, 1999, and
Martikainen, 2000). See Fig.
1 at the end of the paper.
Under the connectivity model of journalism, Deuze (2003) connects the
concepts of
"monitorial" and "dialogic" functions, putting them alongside
orienting and instrumental
journalism. Monitorial refers to when "journalism still
professionally feels the pulse of
society; and it does not function as sole provider of content. One
could imagine that a website
is a specific, useful platform for allowing citizens to voice their
opinions and questions
regarding the issues about which they care" (Deuze, 218). And,
dialogic journalism is a more
extreme concept when "the content of a news medium is fully
maintained by journalists
interacting with citizens. In other words, a strict division no
longer necessarily remains
between producers and consumers of news content, as all become
'prosumers'" (219). Deuze
(2003) is indicating that the audience member (or the receiver) is
taking an active role in
6 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
journalism in a way not possible in the other types of journalism of
newspaper, television and
radio.
If Deuze's model is occurring, journalism in the online environment
should empower
people by allowing them to interact with the news media in
nontraditional ways. But we need
evidence that this is happening. This search for evidence suggests
three exploratory research
questions:
R1: What kinds of online elements of journalism exist in these newspapers?
R2: Is Deuze's model (2003) for a new monitorial/ dialogic journalism
occurring online?
R3: How does this new environment change the product dynamics between
journalists and
their audiences, technologically?
Method: A qualitative analysis
USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal
committed extensive resources to the national presidential election
campaign coverage. All
four publications had specific reporters following the candidates,
full pages in the print
newspaper dedicated to the campaign, and large online news staffs
creating Web sites for the
election material. These four publications have also had a Web
presence for at least five
years. Ten days were chosen during the presidential campaign in the
summer of 2004: The
days surrounding the Democratic National Convention that ended July
28, 2004, the
Republican National Convention that ended Sept. 2, 2004, and the
election on Nov. 2. In all,
more than 400 online features were analyzed by a qualitatively
scrutinizing how the
technology altered journalistic form. Deuze's model framed this
largely exploratory analysis.
The findings suggest that there is indeed a new model taking place
online, but that the
online features are a mix of old and new, and as a result, tend to
overlap old and new
functionality. This paper breaks the findings into Deuze's categories
(2003) of content and
connectivity and adds a new model of journalism that of public experience.
7 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
Findings: Content: Orienting and Instrumental
This study found support for Bardoel's contribution to the online
model. Under the
content categorization, the journalist is serving as gatekeeper; we
are learning from the
journalist in a one-way conversation. The result of this is that we
see the same traditional
frames but they contain more of the same information in new and
different ways. This is
done through archiving, database searching, and the almighty
"package," which refers to the
multitude of ways online editors invent new connections between old
and new material.
Consider some examples of orienting in this sample:
Each site archived hundreds of news stories on every issue into
tidy, themed packages,
such as in The New York Times on the Web's "Past Convention Coverage"
(2004), which
offered coverage of the Democratic and Republican national
conventions dating back to the
1800s, complete with photos.
Online editors attempted to explain old news in new ways through
interactive graphics
that allowed the reader to educate himself about the candidates, such as in
WashingtonPost.com's chart, "Spheres of Influence," that showed
George W. Bush in the
center of a web of lines (Spheres of Influence, 2004). Each line
connected to a (clickable)
person or organization that had either given Bush money or otherwise
"influenced" the
president during his life. This graphic, with its multi layers,
contained much more
information than anything that could be replicated in the print publication.
WSJ Online's "New Hampshire Diary," showcased four New Hampshire undecided
voters as they made their choices in the New Hampshire primary (New
Hampshire Diary,
2004). The voters wrote "diary" entries on specific days, photos and
bios, and charted minipolls
throughout the months leading up to the primary.
Online, the reader could view not just that print election polls
story and graphic, but also
access a searchable database of all the prior polls, which are then
charted against the current
8 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
information. On WSJ Online, the viewer could access similar
information in a variety of
ways, from the "State of the States" map (2004) that showed a
clickable map with poll
information for each state to the "Battleground States Poll" (2004),
which gives more
specific polling information.
All of this fully orients the audience member to both past and
present data, allowing
for a more comprehensive picture of the campaign. The features also
shift the notion of
branded journalism because the information source is no longer just
the publication at hand.
The upshot of such packaging, archiving and database searching is
that such features allow
people who reject traditional information channels to find
alternative methods of viewing
information.
Instrumentally, each Web site also aided viewers in learning all the
specifics of the
campaign, such as a graphic that describes the Electoral-College
process on USAToday.com.
A graphic called "Voting Methods" (2004) displays frame after frame
describing how we can
expect each state to vote, as well as a chart showing the balance of
power in Congress.
Finally, these Web sites provide a huge volume of information not
available to print readers,
including information from alternative, and sometimes competitive,
sources. For example,
the Wall Street Journal online staff put together more than 100
newspaper endorsements
from around the nation for the Web sites (Newspaper Endorsements,
2004). USA Today
constantly ran Associated Press video of the day's news events. The
New York Times On the
Web provided links for all of the related political campaign sites
from Web logs to
competitor sites to the Supreme Court on its "Politics Navigator"
Web page (Meislin,
2004), which listed more than 100 different sites.
Such elements support Bardoel's (1996) idea of enhanced orienting and
instrumental
journalistic functions. Yet, journalists remain the ones who choose
what information is
archived and how you can search it. In "Spheres of Influence" (2004)
for example,
9 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
WashingtonPost.com did not provide a corresponding chart for John
Kerry. Furthermore, by
displaying all the poll data, traditional framing of the campaign as
'contest' as opposed to
issues (Fallows, 1996) are still present; in fact, they seem to be
exacerbated. In some ways,
this enhanced packaging is a more perfect form of the traditional
journalism because the
dominant frames and storyline that scholars have hitherto lamented is
that much more salient.
Connectivity: Monitorial and Dialogic
In Bardoel's conception (1996) of online journalism in practice, the
journalist
continued to bring the audience information in a one-way
conversation. As we move to
examine Deuze's additions (2003) of monitorial and dialogic
functions, we can begin to see
in the analysis a new dynamic building. Indeed, Deuze's model of
connectivity (2003)
implies that the audience is with the journalist, seeing all the data
and the news as the
journalist is seeing the raw information. Furthermore, the audience
may interact with the
journalist on this very information. The Web sites during the 2004
election certainly provided
many examples of this kind of journalism as well.
Almost without exception, every feature online offers e-mail options, feedback
buttons and active links, which means that anything orienting or
instrumental online overlaps
into the fields of connectivity. In 2004 these publications were
experimenting with a wide
array of truly nontraditional elements. The addition of
user-manipulated video and audio of
many watershed events sometimes narrated by the print or .com
reporters but often
presented as the straight event means that the end user can be with
the journalist, who is
monitoring the information and usually offering sub-links to skip to
significant parts. The
connectivity part comes into play when the end user can fast forward,
pause, rewind or give
feedback to what he is seeing, using his own initiative to interact
with the journalism and
the news itself at hand. The technology allows the end user to
decide what form how fast,
how colorful, how intricate her information takes. For example,
WashingtonPost.com
10 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
provided a debate referee in real-time during each of the election
debates. The referee
provided a sentence or two, sometimes several paragraphs, as a fact
check to what the
candidates said in the debates (Debate referee, 2004). The viewer
could either click on the
referee symbol with the words, "Our Call: Analysis and Video
Excerpt," alongside the text of
the debate, or ignore it. Furthermore, the viewer could also make her
own comment by
clicking on a link titled, "Your Call: Readers' Forum."
This kind of manipulative ability could also be seen in the on- and
off-site links
provided in each story and feature, particularly the online-only
pieces on all the newspapers.
Journalists must still provide the information and act as a guide,
but the power rests with the
audience as to whether the site is visited. Consider, for example,
the "Times on the Trail"
blog at The New York Times on the Web, which offered a full list of
off-site Web sites on
political news, in addition to active links within the text directing
the audience to, say, the
actual military documents of candidate John Kerry (Times on the
Trail, 2004). Or, examine
USAToday.com's campaign blog, ElectionLine (2004), which used a very
informal, secondperson,
conversational tone and contained the more nuanced aspects of the
race that would
not fit into the traditional frame of a news story:
Huh? The Los Angeles Times is out with a poll giving President Bush
an eight-point
edge over John Kerry in Florida among likely voters -- the same as a
USATODAY/Gallup/CNN poll earlier this week. But three other polls in
the last 10 days
give Kerry a slight edge, and the other is tied. One possible reason
for the differences
might lie in the way likely voters are measured, but considering what
happened four
years ago, you have to wonder if Florida voters are just messing with
folks for sport.
Posted at 11:42 a.m. ET
."Filings with the Federal Election
Commission show that
(ElectionLine, 2004)
11 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
Note the active links, all of which went to non-USA Today sites, and
allowed the reader to
see exactly what the reporter was seeing. In addition, the use of the
exact time of the posting
gave the feeling that the reader was receiving the very latest
information, as of that very
minute, adding to the atmosphere of a real-time conversation.
Deuze (2003) suggests that question-and-answer sessions with
journalists could be
part of the monitorial and dialogic functions online, and each of
these sites offers some kind
of discussion forum that actively engages readers. Audience members
could choose from as
many as a dozen such forums on WashingtonPost.com, which asked not
just political
reporters, columnists and editors to talk about the campaign in
scheduled real-time discussion
sessions, but also outside experts and campaign followers, such as
the Democratic and
Republican committee chairmen. Readers could email questions and
comments; editors chose
which ones the respondent answered. The result was a two-way
conversation (if incomplete)
that certainly enhanced debate. For example, WashingtonPost.com
invited veteran
speechwriter Kenneth Khachigian to answer questions on July 27, 2004
in a dialogue that
varied in subject matter. The answers provided not only an inside
look at how speechwriters
do what they do, but also how readers were thinking about the
election. Here, one person
wanted to know about "America's relationship with international
institutions in this era of
increased interdependence." Another used the forum as an opportunity
to directly question
media bias from the journalist himself: "Honestly, I looked at your
editorial and it came
across to me not as advice for Kerry but a disguised list of why
Kerry is bad. I'm not trying to
be confrontational. I just wonder if you really wanted to write, 'I
think John Kerry should
become a Republican.'" (Khachigian, 2004).
This kind of dialogue would not appear in a print version in anything
but a letter, and
even then readers would not see how the journalist or writer reacted
as we do in this last
example: "Well, in reality, I was not seriously expected to help
Kerry cross the finish line...
12 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
so much of what I said was a bit tongue in cheek. but, frankly, what
i [sic] pointed out to
Kerry were his actual weaknesses," wrote Khachigian. Thus, there
appears to be a breakdown
of the barrier between journalists and audience members, enabled by
technology that allows
them to converse in a way that amplifies the dominant political
debate. We see perspectives
we might otherwise have missed because of the traditional frames
(i.e. the argument culture
or news as conflict) of traditional media, or because of the
constraints of traditional media
technology. In the forums with speechwriters and the like,
journalists are merely monitoring
the situation, providing a platform for the dialogue and not impeding
discourse.
Yet, some of these online elements seemed to offer something more
than any of these
past models portray for orienting, instrumental, monitorial and
dialogic journalism roles.
Some other force pushed at the boundaries of these traditional news
publications.
Experiencing: Presence and Participatory
Deuze (2003) initiated evolutionary thinking when he lamented the
"bias" of media
scholars who "tend to implicitly assume the future of journalism is
still primarily determined
by (a monopoly on) storytelling by journalists for citizens" (Deuze,
2003, p.217). However,
even Deuze's monitorial and dialogic functions do not do justice to
the true extent of the
multimedia and interactivity appearing online in terms of what such
features mean for
journalism purpose and motivation as well as for citizen knowledge.
Features online are
taking on new characteristics that speak to "experiencing" the news
through sights, sounds
and analytical text.
This new, third category, "experiencing" is different from dialogic
and monitorial in
the connectivity role. The online platform encourages us the audience
member to become the
journalist taking part in a multi-way conversation or a self-dialogue
that enhances our own
connection with the news in new ways. Video, audio, and other
multi-media combined with
interactivity create something more than mere connectivity. In the
monitorial or dialogic
13 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
functions, the reader is separate and still an observer dependent on
the journalist; in the
"experience" function, viewers are made to feel as if they are
viewing what is going on
directly, that they are "there." This is done in diverse ways,
including allowing us to see the
primary material (i.e. the speech itself through video or
transcript), or allowing us to be a
journalist at the "Spin Lunch" with Kerry and to read a diary entry
about the hardships of
being a reporter (Kaiser, 2004a). For example, we feel Washington
Post's Metro Editor
Robert Kaiser's angst when sources won't give him their names for the
story (Kaiser, 2004b).
In other features, we even feel physically present, such as in
panoramic shots of the
conventions or in the photo galleries of the campaign trail. Presence
theory or other
scholarship about immersive technologies could inform the impact such
elements might have.
Presence theory examines the extent to which a medium allows viewers
to participate
in the exchange, or feel as if they are part of the event as it
occurs on the computer screen
(Lombard, 1997). Various concepts of presence, including presence as
a tool for realism,
depend on the level of interactivity, user choice, multimedia, medium
technology and other
variables utilized by the publication, according to Lombard (1997).
But when it works,
presence can cause arousal, enjoyment, a feeling of involvement,
skills training and
efficiency, memory improvement, and even simulation sickness
(Lombard, 1997). Such
effects in the news environment inevitably alters journalism,
suggests Pryor, et al. (2003):
The space created by the journalist allows a freedom of movement that
becomes the
defining quality of new media: user control of the point of view.
This sense of control
promotes the creation of a virtual self, a sense of being there and
doing things at a level
that engages the unconscious the non-verbal, graphics-dominated realm of
understanding. (Pryor, et al., 2003, p.2)
The journalist, though, is still essential, acting as an "information
scout" and "architect,"
write Pryor et al. (2003, p.3), but the result is that the audience
becomes immersed in the
14 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
virtual world of reality. The audience connects with the news
reality, but also become a part
of it.
In a way, a presence function still positions the viewer in a closed
journalistic
environment for we are dependent on what immersive features the
online editors choose to
provide. But the effect flows beyond connectivity. Let's consider two
of the more prominent
and newest features online: the slide show and the panoramic shot. A
The New York Times
on the Web photo gallery by Times Photographer Stephen Crowley (2004)
displays 10 color
photos packaged together in a feature called "The Campaign Bus". Each
photo is literally
taken through the bus windows, so that some of the photos are
slightly fuzzy and blurred as if
passing at a high speed. We see photos from Florida and Las Vegas and
"Somewhere in
Ohio" and of people giving the thumbs up or protesting or just
walking down the street. No
one is looking directly at the camera, and some aren't even looking
at the bus. We
occasionally see the reflection of the bus window in a storefront, as
we do in one image of a
Newark, Ohio, street on which someone is holding a giant blue
balloon. In this particular
photo, we also get the feeling that we must have just missed
something, the subject of the
photo perhaps, but whatever it was has passed before we could really
get it on film. In
another photo, we see a shop window with mannequins that sort of look
like they are looking
at us, but we see us (the bus) reflected in the store window. In
these photos, we only get a
fleeting sense of the life passing outside the window. Clicking
through each photo quickly is
like flipping through one of those little books whose character image
becomes animated. The
overall impression is that it is we who are on that bus, that we
missed that shot, that we are
seeing the blurred images of the campaign trail pass before our eyes.
From WashingtonPost.com, users could download panoramic shots of both the
Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Once the feature
downloads, the image
automatically begins to rotate slowly, panning the room as if we had
just walked into the
15 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
room and are taking our first look around (The convention floor,
2004). We may take in a full
360-degree view, both up and down. If we press the clicker down on
one or the other end, the
image spins faster and faster until we are spinning around and around
and our stomachs turn
as if we are getting dizzy and the sights are overwhelming with the
lights and the crush of
people and the blurry balloons falling on our faces. We see other
faces, but no one is looking
at the camera and their faces blur as well when we spin past them. It
is as if our perception of
space and of movement is suspended. No doubt we are only getting a
select point of view
(although several cameras may have contributed to the one panoramic,
it remains one angle
a limitation of the technology), but there is certainly no single
frame, at least not in the
traditional sense. In front of us, someone is standing on her chair
and we can barely see over
her to the stage below. We have to move, the image, ourselves. When
we turn to one side, we
are almost knocked out by someone's camera in the way; at one point
looking up, the lights
nearly blind us. There is much in here that would normally be
rejected for a newspaper
photo: Out-of-focus faces, people's cameras, blinding lights, closed
eyes, bland expressions,
boring imagery. Someone is reaching into his coat pocket and looking
down (i.e. not
appearing to be a part of the picture's subject matter). The New York
Times on the Web has
similar panoramas and USAToday.com similar slideshow photo galleries
that combine
visuals with streaming audio. So as we danced around the panoramic,
looking up and down,
we heard the applause and the roar of the crowd at the same time,
adding to the effect.
Some of the features that Bardoel (1996) would think of as content or
that Deuze
(2003) would consider in only a connectivity role for audience
members also have presence
attributes. The New York Times on the Web's "Protests" (2004) graphic
for the Republican
National Convention displayed a map that could be moved around with
the mouse. Through
clickable text snippets we learn about the angry protests in New
York, and we are oriented
not only conceptually about what is going on, but also
geographically. In addition, the ability
16 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
to manipulate the way we learn about this news adds a feeling of a
connection to the
journalism of the piece. However, other parts of this interactive
graphic help us to further
experience the news itself, not just the journalism presenting the
news. For example, with
each new protest location, a streaming audio feature played the
sounds of the protest even as
we hear the reporter's narration. The ability to zoom in and out of
the map, showing us
specific buildings and streets in New York combined with that
streaming audio makes it
seem as if we are the one choosing which protest to cover.
Or, consider WashingtonPost.com's "Convention Diary", a multi-media scrapbook
by Metro Editor Robert Kaiser and Photographer Lucien Perkins, one
for each convention.
The idea itself is very much about "experiencing" the conventions for
those of us who were
not in Boston or New York. The very concept of a "diary" implies that
we are reading the
inner thoughts of the writer, and seeing life from that person's
perspective, an intimate
perspective. This diary is first person, and intimate. Like anyone
reading someone else's
diary (with permission), we feel privileged to have been invited into
the convention, to
experience life along with the author. This feeling is further
enhanced not only by the format
of putting in the exact time to the minute of each entry, but also by
the multiple forums the
authors of the diary, Kaiser and Perkins, held every day receiving
questions, describing their
experiences more in-depth. When asked about the diary's purpose,
Kaiser answered, "well.
we're [sic] experimenting. we [sic] want to share the experience of
being here" (Kaiser,
2004c). This give-and-take allows the reader too to take part in this
diary, to influence the
diary, even as the stream-of-conscious writing (these exchanges were
full of fragmented
sentences, misspellings and incomplete thoughts) further emphasizes
the effect of being
inside the journalist himself.
This last feature brings us to the idea of audience participation, a
related concept to
presence in some ways but occurring in a much more open journalistic
environment. Readers
17 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
take part in the news by controlling the information, such as
inputting their zip codes to view
information about the candidates in their specific districts; some of
these sites even give
people the option of registering to vote, as USAToday.com did
(Register to vote, 2004).
Although these features have their roots in an orienting and dialogic
journalism, their purpose
is multifarious in that they also encourage the reader to become the
journalist by searching
the site, often ending up offsite. For such a role, "participatory"
journalism seems the most
reasonable term. These attributes are intentional on the part of the
online editors, as
evidenced by the kinds of advertisements for the sites, such as at
this WSJ Online ad:
"Navigate the twists and turns of the campaign trail every business
day from the comfort of
your inbox" (WSJ Online ad, 2004). The wording implied that you
yourself could experience
this campaign as your own journey, and further, that you can do it
from the comfort of your
own "inbox," online speak for home. Similarly, the enticing words
"Sights and Sounds" are
oft repeated in headlines for these features, such as in a
WashingtonPost.com piece by Kaiser
(2004d) on convention protesters and USAToday.com's "Sights and
Sounds" slide show
(2004) of Vice President Candidate John Edwards. Such phrasing
highlighted the multimedia
aspect of the news, which promised to engage multiple senses.
Online, the news or at least information is personalized.
Everything is about me,
or about the sights and sounds around me. Monitored forums could also
fit into a
participatory and presence combined role, considering that much of
the conversation follows
a "what is it like" track dialogue as in this WashingtonPost.com forum:
Pittsburgh, Pa.: I finally got a chance to watch Kerry's speech this
morning on C-SPAN
(online video). I thought he did a great job! I see they are already
on the campaign trail
this morning in my state, which is supposedly one of the battleground
states. Anyway,
what did you think of his speech and do you think he was able to sway
any "swing"
voters (at least last night)? Lucian Perkins: From inside the hall,
luckily I was on the
18 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
front row, it seemed like he hit a home run. I would have to rank it
as the best speech I
heard him give. Inside the hall he came across as passionate and
resolute. I asked my
wife how it played on TV. Interestingly, she said she would have
given it a 75-80 in a
ranking of a 100. Later, she heard the speech again on the radio and
said you could feel
the warmth of his words and was able to listen closely to what he was
saying and then
rated it much higher. She wondered whether it was his "awkward" movements
detracted from his performance. (Perkins, 2004)
Note in the above conversation, too, the dialogue about the effects
of different media
channels specifically. The WashingtonPost.com offered Kerry's
acceptance speech in six
different formats: regular news articles written by reporters, a
photo slide show, audio
excerpts, full video, video excerpts, and a full text transcript.
Then, there were half a dozen
discussion forums and message boards analyzing it with the help of
audience members.
Finally, within those discussion groups we understand the reaction of
normally objective and
silent journalists like the photographer Perkins who were physically
present at the event. All
in all, this represents a pretty comprehensive view of reality.
Typically when scholars discuss personalized journalism (Bennett,
1996, etc.), they
are writing about how the reporters focus on the personal aspects of
the candidate or event in
order to tell a story through the frames of Gans' values (1979)
i.e. small-town pastoralism,
etc. But online, we're seeing a different concept of personalized
journalism, a more audiencecentric
approach that depends on citizens to manipulate and have opinions and
to look at
everything from a self-absorbed standpoint. Every interactive graphic
allows readers to do
this. WSJ Online provided an Electoral College (2004) game for users
to play with digital
electoral votes for each state to predict ultimate winners;
USAToday.com's "Where do you
vote" (2004) graphic showed specific, user-requested information
about voting by state,
county, even town.
19 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
Most interesting were the reader polls, forums and message boards
online at each site.
Though they are "monitored" by an invisible hand, this is essentially
a free-for-all for users
who pontificate, debate, accuse, praise, and yes, even inform during
their rants and postings.
Readers seem to love them: WashingtonPost.com asked readers to create
their own limericks
on the night of the election summing up the campaign, and ended up
with 60 pages worth
(Ode to election night, 2004); WSJ Online's daily polls recorded your
answer, immediately
tabulating it with thousands of others in a colorful bar chart paired
with a topic-specific
message board that sometimes registered hundreds of responses; The
New York Times on the
Web posted more than 85,000 responses to a call for election comments
during the threemonth
period of the campaign (The 2004 Presidential Election, 2004). Certainly,
misinformation, exaggerations and distortions flowed freely on these
sites, as did outright
rumors and lies. Sometimes the conversation degraded to name-calling and other
unpleasantries:
%There were approx 35000 new unemployment benefit claimants. A That means
another net 200000 eneployed/ Don't worry though, because Bush's crap economy
can't create enough jobs
Their creepy candidate seems to be on the
defensive. [sic]
(The 2004 Presidential Election, 2004)
In this The New York Times on the Web forum, the conversation began
to take a nasty turn
with people being accused of taking a "hissy fit," arguing over how
many job claims there
actually were and making statements such as "Your questions are a
feeble defense for the
bunny in the headlights" or "Are you and your homeys locked and
loaded to try and take
back the country after your hero loses?" People used the forums to
fact check and to
understand the issues better such as in the WashingtonPost.com forum
(Debate referee, 2004)
from a reader: "Bush asserted that Kerry said that it was a mistake
to remove Saddam
Hussein from power. Has Kerry said this?" They relayed anecdotes of
their experiences with
20 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
violent crime, for example, to make their political points more
relevant (Question of the day,
2004). In these examples, readers co-opted journalism, and became the
journalists in
disseminating information, sharing news and analyzing the campaign.
Discussion and Conclusion: Journalism Experiencing in Future Research
Obviously these publications hoped to offer a different kind of
journalism to readers
in these panoramic shots, discussion forums and the like, something
more than mere content.
This paper has suggested that these new technological features lean
toward a public
experiencing of journalism. To this end, we need to tweak Deuze's
model (2003) by tacking
on a third category: Experience, with sub-groups of presence and
participatory journalisms.
See Fig. 2. Whereas the first part of the model (Bardoel's 1996
contribution) emphasizes the
content approach to news with a one-way conversation that orients the
audience, the second
part (Deuze's 2003 addition) recognizes that the audience has now
become involved in a twoway
conversational journalism that monitors the debate and encourages a
dialogic function.
The third tier of the model, "Experiencing", acknowledges that news
organizations are
experimenting with presence and participatory functions of journalism
that may ultimately
replace the reporter with the audience at least for some online features.
But what does this mean for journalistic purpose? Does the presence
of such features
online resolve the criticisms of political media scholars? If
researchers yearn for a journalism
that engages people more (as Gans, 2003 does), certainly the online
forums prove that people
have a new avenue in which to be engaged. But the fact that such a
place exists online
doesn't mean all Americans partake or even know about it.
Furthermore, how is name-calling
and arguments over employment numbers enhancing public debate? If
researchers seek a
journalism that discounts pseudo-events or provides a more nuanced
form of reality that goes
beyond the conflict frame (such as Boorstin, 1961/1973, and Fallows,
1996), then the
multimedia video, audio, panoramics and photo galleries of campaign
events like the
21 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
conventions certainly bring readers a more layered understanding of
what happened. But,
such events remain the domain of the political elite, the ones who
orchestrated the
conventions and who lure the journalists in. If scholars want a safe
clearinghouse for "facts
(as Jamieson & Waldman, 2003, do), then the online portal with its
archived stories, polls
and charts certainly allows a more comprehensive smorgasbord of
information to be accessed
all at once. But is it fact? The material must still be compiled and
displayed by journalists.
And yet hasn't our perspective changed as we are able to more
comprehensively view
that campaign speech through not only the news article written by the
journalist, but also the
full text of the speech, the full video of the speech, the full audio
of the speech, or a series of
photos that never make it into a print medium? By asking us to
manipulate the form of news
ourselves and choosing the viewpoint of the event, newspaper Websites
can empower its
audience who can feel a sense of control over the reality around them
and a connection
absent from traditional media channels. By letting us interact with
the Electoral College
through a digital game or providing a place to register to vote,
these sites give us a little
better understanding of our civic duty. Aren't we also therefore
better prepared to fulfill it?
By being given the opportunity to dialogue in writing with people
outside of our small sphere
of influence in online forums, we cannot help but broaden our
perceptions of the political
world; and, for those paradigms that refuse to budge, we are forced
to be more precise in our
thinking in order to articulate our standpoints. At the very least,
such features engage us in a
different political learning process than traditional journalism
does; at the very most, such
layered information tactics just might ease the polarity this country
is experiencing, thereby
getting us back to the democratic ideal of compromise and ideological
tolerance.
These models of online journalism were created in the hope of
understanding all of
what is transpiring in our new media a bit better. They can only go
so far, though, for fitting
every feature into some manufactured category doesn't always work. Many of the
22 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
informational elements discussed in this paper work to provide not
only an orienting purpose
for users, but also a dialogic avenue for journalistic participation
and experience. Much
overlapping among these categories certainly occurs. Rather, the
point is to understand the
transformation that traditional journalism undergoes on the Internet
because of the
technological attributes available, particularly interactivity and
multimedia opportunities.
Such changes have enormous implications for journalistic
storytelling, news form and,
ultimately, the journalistic roles and functions in society. All of
this would need to be
investigated in a much more in-depth manner than any exploratory
paper could allow. In
particular, the message boards, the "package" phenomenon (as it
manifests online), the exact
nature of the presence effect within certain online features, the new
gaming and poll-taking
from within the thread of news frames are all areas ripe for scrutiny.
As Bernard Cohen (1963) said "The world will look different to
different people,
depending
on the map that is drawn for them by writers, editors, and
publishers of the
paper that they read" (p.13). That map is essentially different
online. It is not only a map, but
also an interactive guidance system that reveals and analyzes the
globe. It is possible to take a
microscope to one area of the map, but only if the audience member
knows exactly what he
or she wants to find. Now the audience member can also help design
that map to meet his or
her own needs. Audience members can go to the original documents, as
Williams (1998)
suggested, and bypass the journalist gatekeepers. Editors have begun
to offer those
documents as part of their news packages online. Deuze's new
interactive, connective,
multimedia version of online journalism (2003) as well as new
concepts for journalism's
purpose as it relates to public experience for participation and
presence is beginning to take
shape even with traditional publications such as USA Today, The New
York Times, The Wall
Street Journal and The Washington Post.
23 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
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33 Experiencing Journalism: A new model in online newspapers
facts," 2003).
Appendix I
The four newspapers in this qualitative analysis were further chosen because:
ί USA Today was selected for study because at 2.3 million
subscribers, it is by far the
largest newspaper circulated in the nation. It is considered moderate
in political bias.
More than 40 million people visit its Web site, launched in 1995,
each month ("Just the
ί The New York Times is considered the newspaper with the most power
to set the
national agenda in political campaigns with its circulation to 1.7
million subscribers
(e.g., Mazur, 1987). It leans to the left in its political coverage.
Its Web site launched in
1996, and in 2003 was reaching more than 1 million readers a day
the most of any
other newspaper ("Advertising in The New York Times," 2003).
ί The Washington Post was included because it has a well developed Web site,
launched in 1993, and print section on the political campaign. In
November 2003, it
reached 1.1 million subscribers with its newspaper, and 5.8 million
unique users per
month ("About WashingtonPost.com," 2003).
ί The Wall Street Journal rounded out the political leanings of the
other papers, since it
is generally considered to be conservative. It is also a widely read
national paper with
1.9 million subscribers and has the distinction of being the first
newspaper to generate a
profit off its Web site, where it is one of the few publications to
charge its 4.5 million
online users ("The Wall Street Journal," 2003).
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