A Web of news virtues: how the Internet redefines journalism

Publishers’ determination to make a profit from the Internet raises questions about exactly what this wonderful new toy might be useful for – very few websites have yet turned a profit. Is it a shiny new vehicle for old, well travelled roads or a hyper-dimensional space jalopy carting the same old ore to undreamed-of worlds?

Regardless of the cargo, it seems clear that one effect of the advent of the Internet has been a challenge to the moguls of traditional media: change the way you do things or stay where you are. New players have created new models for business, new means to motivate, organise and inform the public, and new thinking about the nature of human interaction. The nature of publication has changed and the scope of readership has changed, and with those factors the definition of journalism has changed.

Introductory journalism and media texts speak of ‘enduring news values’ – the things that make news interesting to the public. They are variously listed, but can be basically defined by the following seven characteristics: timeliness, prominence, human interest, novelty, impact, proximity and conflict. These are the features by which the media have, to date, defined their audiences and chosen their lead stories.

But how are those characteristics reflected in the usage figures of the Internet? Do these features of news coverage also define the priorities with which people use Internet content? Perhaps search engine keyword figures will shed some light on public interest in that medium. These figures are far from perfect, of course. They only tell us what people who have access to the Internet but don’t know where to go, are looking for. Nonetheless, they indicate some degree of news value.

According to Lycos, the top ten searches for the week ending July 22 were 1) Pokemon, 2) Big Brother, 3) Survivor, 4) Dragonball, 5) Britney Spears, 6) The X-Men, 7) The British Open, 8) Diablo, 9) WWF, and 10) Tattoos. Clearly, this is evidence that readers’ interests in things that are heavily marketed global phenomena have not decreased.

Evidence of timeliness can be found in the British Open (it was nowhere near the top ten the week before it teed off); Big Brother and Survivor, both immensely popular TV shows at the time; and The X-Men, the latest movie blockbuster. Prominence is seen in Britney Spears and WWF, both popular for no reason other than their immensely successful promotion campaigns. Human interest is manifest in Big Brother and Survivor: "reality TV", preying on the dramas of genuine(?) human interaction instead of fiction. Finally, novelty is noticeable in all of the above, especially Pokemon and Dragonball.

But what of the other news values: proximity, impact and conflict? Where is the public interest in those features of human existence manifested on the Internet? Conflict is, arguably, evident in WWF, the British Open golf and Survivor, though all of these are framed more as entertainment than a manifest example of a clash of values. None of them constitute what is meant by conflict.

Where is the impact? None of these things determines any viewer’s life circumstances. Where is the proximity? And could we please have some genuine conflict?

I believe that the absence of these features from the above list reflects the two most fundamental features of the Internet revolution; a subtle but profound shift in the nature of journalistic endeavour that has confounded purveyors of Internet news content with traditional ‘content for sale’ business models.

The first and most obvious is that the people who are genuinely interested in those features of news are the people who don’t use search engines to get what they want. The Internet is better suited to separate and classify content by topic than any other publication. People with any particular interest can find the site(s) to satisfy their need quickly, and will use the same source(s) as long as their needs are met. Internet users do not need to consume an entire publication in the hope of finding the bit that caters to their particular interest.

This means that consumers will not pay for the unnecessary news provided when an offline news service’s other content is just plastered onto a website. It’s too hard to wade through the guff that the editors think is important to get to the really interesting bits – it’s easier to buy the paper and read it later. At least with a newspaper (even a tabloid) you can scan five or six stories per page without putting your beer/wine/coffee/orange juice down. And you can do it exactly the same at the beach or in the office.

It also means that new users will try to find the content in the most obvious place first – owning a URL that reflects the topic is a big bonus but not everything. Amazon.com’s popularity reminds us that a good branding strategy can overcome this problem – but a brand that doesn’t have credibility, reliabilty, usability and authority is in a lot of trouble. People type in a URL with a purpose in mind and will not return to one that doesn’t satisfy that purpose. Internet-browsing readers can’t be attracted by headlines on rival URLs while the reader waits for a bus.

Much of the post-Republican Convention analysis bemoaned the fact that, for all the hype surrounding the arrival of web media in huge numbers, nothing fundamentally new appeared apart from a few dodgy online polls. A lot of trivia was published about the convention and a lot more Republican faces were seen in places they had not appeared in before, but no scandals were uncovered, no Republicans were cornered on previously ignored issues. The political spin doctors still controlled proceedings nicely from their point of view. Diversity, the supposed panacea that online journalism would deliver, was a placebo.

In Australia, the news media, especially the commercial broadcasters, have reached a state of comfortable homeostasis by knowing what each is going to publish and not bothering to try to upset each other for fear of reprisal. Their reporters even help each other out on occasion by sharing video tape and swapping notes. Viewers have no choice but to accept the mediocrity. This "Clayton’s cartel" offers their audience a very poor service, and reflects a mindset devoid of real innovation and resistant to change. Viable Internet publishing will not tolerate such mediocrity – many barriers to a renegade rival publishing a scoop have been removed – competition, not just diversity, will force change.

The other, more fundamental, reason for the absence of proximity, impact and conflict is that the Internet has no geography, while some of the public’s interests do. The three missing news values relate to an audience with some common concept of ‘us’. Previously, each publication had a reasonably clearly defined ‘us’ to write for – a target demographic, geographic or prophylactic. However, most people have several ‘us’es with which they identify: Australian, Indigenous, parent, musician, football fan, Christian, Taswegian, youth, Star Trek fan, self-funded retiree, immigrant, etc. No single publication can possibly cater to them all, but the Web can.

For example, an Adelaide businesswoman reading the Washington Post website would be less interested in stories about local law changes than ruminations about Alan Greenspan raising an eyebrow in a press conference. That businesswoman is unlikely to have a local source with the credentials of the Washington Post from which to obtain information about Greenspan. Conversely, a teenager from Broken Hill isn’t likely to care whether a site devoted to Britney Spears is based in Mt Isa or San Francisco, as long as the site has all of the news about Britney. Britney would probably have to tour outback Australia before she would appear in a local newspaper.

This reflects a change in the meaning of community, as opposed to proximity. Conflict and impact can only occur if someone cares about a piece of information, and people have many reasons for caring – religion, nationality, sexual preference and profession are only some of them. The Internet has redefined these news values. A possible new typology is 'community' and 'gravity': community reflects the polarisation of interest in a topic, from unique to universal, and gravity reflects the strength of that polarisation from apathy to obsession.

This change extrapolates a realisation that Australian network broadcasters have tried to avoid for some time. It makes economic-rationalist sense for a network to broadcast the same news service everywhere, but Melbournites are not interested in Sydney-centric news and vice versa. Having the same news service (unlike broadcasting foreign sitcoms) in all capitals cities leaves viewers unsatisfied, and they turn to other sources, costing market share.

The Web, however, is not limited by the range of a broadcast tower, or even a satellite. Some news topics can be narrowcast from one source to the whole world, without syndication. Others are limited to affecting a geographical grouping. For this reason, the ICANN review of domain names needs to be broadened to consider the consequences of URLs for community definition as well as Internet regulation.

The upshot of these revelations will be an increase in discrete niche publications. The days of the general-interest news publication on the Web are limited. Why read about Boyzone’s Australian tour dates on news.com.au when you can get them from Boyzone’s website (complete with life-size posters and/or screensavers)? People who live in Darwin can take in the local, state, federal and international news, sport and entertainment news from separate sources that specialise in that type of news, synthesised into a package and delivered to their desktop, laptop, PDA, or whatever, at a time that suits them. The news sources will be chosen based on the veracity and authority of their reports.

This is not to support those who maintain that the Internet will replace newspapers, books and magazines. There are other reasons why they will endure. Nor is it to pretend that commercial interests will not acquire and integrate the multifarious publications under a single administrative hierarchy. This is simply to define a small piece of the territory on which the battle for commercial Internet viability will be fought at the journalistic level. The current level of competition can not persist, but the survivors will have certain common attributes and values.