A Web of news virtues: how the Internet redefines journalism

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.