The document discusses the impact of the internet on journalism. It notes that the internet has democratized media by allowing anyone to be a content creator and share information instantly. This has disrupted traditional media businesses and led to a decline in newspaper circulation. However, online traffic and readership of news content continues to grow. While the economics and business models of journalism are being challenged, the overall demand for news and information from the public remains high.

1. Journalism and the Internet
MAC129 MED102
robert.jewitt@sunderland.ac.uk
1

2. • “The internet is the new printing press. It’s the
mass medium that is changing how we read
and digest content”
• (Tom Anderson, IT Blogger)?!?!
2

3. 3

4. The end of “BIG MEDIA”
• “In the 20th Century making the news was
almost entirely the province of journalists…
The economics of publishing and
broadcasting created large, arrogant
institutions – call it Big Media…
• “Big media … treated the news as a lecture.
We told you what the news was….
Tomorrow’s news reporting and production
will be more of a conversation, or a
seminar…
• (Gillmor, 2004:xiii)
4

5. We the media?
• July 7th 2005
5
http://moblog.net/view/77571/

6. Helen Boaden, BBC director
of news
• Minutes after the bombings occurred in
London last Thursday, newsrooms around the
capital were being deluged with pictures and
video clips sent directly from the scene. The
long-predicted democratisation of the media
had become a reality, as ordinary members
of the public turned photographers and
reporters.
• Julia Day, July 11th 2005, 'We had 50 images within an hour’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/jul/11/mondaymedia
section.attackonlondon 6

7. We the media?
• “As cameras become just one more thing
we carry everyday, everyone’s becoming a
photographer (Gillmor, 2004:34)
7

8. Scale
• 2000: 200 million web users with over
800 million pages of content (Hall, 2001)
• 2008: 1.46 billion web users
• 2010: 1.97 billion web users
• 2012: 2.41 billion web users
• http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
8

9. The Internet
• ‘For all its global range and its millions of
users it refuses to fit neatly into the category
of mass media. For media producers and the
advertisers who underwrite them new
paradigms seeking junctions and
commonalities of geography, age, gender,
income, race and niche interests are
required. How do they deliver news to an
audience that is at once local and global?’
• (Jim Hall, 2001: 2)
9

10. History: news online
• 1994: TIME magazine used web to
communicate between journalists and
readers
• For overview see Stuart Allan, 2006.
10

11. Breaking News?
• Oklahoma City
bombing, April 19th
1995, was of major
importance
11

12. Content included:
• Maps of Oklahoma City
• The latest AP news feed
• Graphics of terrorist bombs
• Emotional eyewitness accounts of the
excavation
• Listings of survivors and hospital phone
numbers
• Newsgroups expressing ‘rage’
• Dedicated chat-rooms
• ISPs (AOL) offering aggregated news feeds
and wire services
12

13. AOL: Timothy ‘Mad Bomber’
McVeigh
• Sunday Mirror:
• HELLO, I’M THE MAD BOMBER
… BOOM!; SICK MESSAGE
FLASHED WORLDWIDE;
OKLAHOMA BOMB SUSPECT
LEAVES MESSAGE ON
INTERNET
• Later revealed as a fake
13

14. More ‘teething problems’
• 1996 July 17th
• TWA flight from New York
to Paris exploded
• Conspiracy theories
• November: former ABC
journalist, Pierre Salinger,
claimed to have evidence
proving US forces shot
down plane
14

15. Obvious advantages:
• Immediacy – updates can be added as and
when more info is available
• No limit to the amount of content
• Interactivity – capacity for questions to be
asked and for greater accountability
15

16. Alexa Stats (News)
Nov 2011 Nov 2012
1. Yahoo News 1. Yahoo News
2. CNN Interactive 2. CNN Interactive
3. The Huffington Post 3. The Huffington Post
4. New York Times 4. New York Times
5. BBC News 5. BBC News
6. Google News 6. The Weather Channel
7. The Weather Channel 7. Google News
8. Reddit 8. Reddit
9. My Yahoo 9. FoxNews.com
10. NBC News and MSNBC 10. The Guardian
News
16

17. Alexa Stats (Global)
2012
1. Yahoo News
2. CNN Interactive
3. The Huffington Post
4. New York Times
5. BBC News
6. The Weather Channel
7. Google News
8. Reddit
9. FoxNews.com
10. The Guardian
17

18. Alexa Stats (Global)
Total News producers only
1. Yahoo News 1. CNN Interactive
2. CNN Interactive 2. The Huffington Post
3. The Huffington Post 3. New York Times
4. New York Times 4. BBC News
5. BBC News 5. FoxNews.com
6. The Weather Channel 6. The Guardian
7. Google News 7. The Times of India
8. Reddit 8. The Wall Street Journal
9. FoxNews.com Interactive Edition
10. The Guardian 9. Washington Post
10. NBC News
18

19. • 1997: UK = 4 million web users
• 1998: 8.17 million page impressions
• 2006: BBC one of the largest news-gathering
organizations in the world:
• 42 foreign bureaus
• 13 domestic news centres.
• annual budget of around £350 million
• expertise of over 2000 journalists
• 250 correspondents around the world
• online team composed of 40 journalists
• 2012: facing huge DQF cuts and crisis in
public trust (Newsnight affair) 19

20. 20

21. Key issues:
• Do newspapers have a future?
• Does paper have a role in the future of news?
• Will there be such a thing as ‘print journalism’ in a
decade’s time?
• Do the answers to these questions even matter as
long as there is something called journalism available
to the British public on some platform in a few years
time?
21

22. Newspaper circulation: 2000s

23. Tabloid/mid-market circulation: 2000s

24. Quality & specialist circulation: 2000s

25. The newspaper industry: business
trends in the last 2 decades
May 2007- % change on
Oct-07 Oct-06 % change Sep-07 October 2007 last year
The Sun 3,126,866 3,107,412 0.63 3,213,756 3,124,134 -1.64
Daily Mirror 1,525,477 1,600,452 -4.68 1,584,742 1,563,023 -4.56
Daily Star 771,197 770,834 0.05 803,726 798,024 -0.01
Daily Mail 2,353,807 2,350,730 0.13 2,365,499 2,342,613 -1.44
Daily Express 789,867 788,719 0.15 814,921 793,924 -3.99
Daily Telegraph 882,413 900,043 -1.96 890,973 889,491 -1.14
The Times 642,895 656,278 -2.04 654,482 640,682 -3.99
Financial Times 449,385 439,774 2.19 441,219 440,335 1.47
The Guardian 364,513 384,701 -5.25 367,546 364,275 -3.77
The Independent 240,134 257,427 -6.72 251,470 242,685 -4.61
June 2007-
November % change on
Nov-07 Nov-06 % change Oct-07 2007 last year
The Sun 3,078,388 3,072,828 0.18 3,126,866 3,129,071 -1.11
Daily Mirror 1,518,881 1,549,573 -1.98 1,525,477 1,577,401 -4.13
Daily Star 753,476 769,226 -2.05 771,197 794,034 -0.18
Daily Mail 2,327,507 2,295,101 1.41 2,353,807 2,347,381 -0.63
Daily Express 766,874 774,665 0 789,867 793,884 -2.72
Daily Telegraph 882,873 901,238 -2.04 882,413 887,747 -1.35
The Times 636,946 653,780 -2.57 642,895 640,682 -3.77
Financial Times 444,880 432,980 2.75 449,385 439,185 1.84
The Guardian 356,789 382,393 -6.7 364,513 361,993 -4.42
The Independent 233,423 253,737 -8.01 240,134 240,827 25
-5.14

26. Newspaper trends 2008
26

27. Newspaper trends 2010
27

28. Oct 2012 Monthly change % Yearly change %
The Sun 2,445,361 -2.29 -10.27
Daily Mirror 1,072,687 -1.47 -6.22
Daily Star 586,743 -2.26 -13.87
Daily Express 543,912 -1.2 -11.94
Daily Mail 1,884,815 -1.53 -6.17
Daily Telegraph 560,398 -4.06 -7.71
The Times 406,711 -0.25 -5.32
The Guardian 204,937 +0.33 -11.88
The Independent 81,245 -0.68 -54.09
i 282,995 +0.52 +53.47
Financial Times 287,895 +2.77 -16.45
28

29. Newspaper trends
• National newspapers have fallen by
more than 50% in the last two
decades (1988-2007), including the
Mirror and the Express.
• Some increases - Financial Times
(overseas sales)
• Total daily circulation of national
daily newspapers has dropped from
over 15 million to around 11.5
million, or 25% (McNair, 2007). 29

30. Ownership and control
• Concentration of ownership
• Impact on democracy?
• Rupert Murdoch:
• 1988 = 31% of UK paper market
• 2007 = 32.3%
• 140 of his publications around the
world supported the war in Iraq
30

31. Against all this…
• The Independent launches a sister
paper, i, in October 2010
• First UK paper launch since 1986
31

32. • Murdoch:
• ‘power is moving away from the old elite
in our industry – the editors, the chief
executives and, let’s face it, the
proprietors’
• (http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_285.html).
32

33. Technology and Trends
• Dumbing down?
• Murdoch: ‘many of us have been
unaccountably complacent’ in the wake of the
digital revolution
• Citizen journalists?
• Salem Pax? Where_is_Raed?
• http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/
33

34. 34

35. Murdoch (2005):
• ‘There are of course inherent risks in this strategy --
chief among them maintaining our standards for
accuracy and reliability. Plainly, we can’t vouch for
the quality of people who aren’t regularly employed
by us – and bloggers could only add to the work done
by our reporters, not replace them. But they may still
serve a valuable purpose; broadening our coverage
of the news; giving us new and fresh perspectives to
issues; deepening our relationship to the
communities we serve, so long as our readers
understand the clear distinction between bloggers
and our journalists.’
35

36. • July 2006, Patrick
Barkham:
• ‘the first big British political
story to be driven by
bloggers’
• deputy-PM John Prescott’s
sex life
36

37. Bloggers and Aggregators
• Mike Drudge: The Drudge Report
• Since February 1995
• Republican supporter
• Faced a $30 million libel lawsuit
• January 13th 1998 he broke the story of
Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.
37

38. Mike Drudge:
• I’m a citizen first and a reporter second … The
people have a right to know, not the editors who think
they know better. You should let people know as
much as you know when you know’ (cited in AP, 1
February 1998)
38

39. The Future?
• Kim Fletcher (2005)
• ‘In all this talk about the end of papers, no
one suggests that people don't want news or
information or entertainment any more. On
the contrary, they seem to want more and
more of all three. That demand will be met by
an expansion rather than a retraction in
journalistic output.’
39

40. National newspaper website traffic October 2007
Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations
40

41. National newspaper website traffic September 2008
Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations
41

42. National newspaper website traffic October 2010
Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations
42

43. National newspaper website traffic October 201
Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations
Daily Monthly Monthly Yearly
browsers browsers change % change %
Mail Online 6,671,641 106,095,618 +4.48% +34.31%
Guardian 3,909,514 71,766,288 +9.84 n/a
Telegraph 2,887,948 56,919,647 +10.72% +25.62%
Sun Online 1,544,721 25,926,115 -2.07% +3.85%
Independent 825,861 17,900,904 9.78% +29.02%
Mirror Group 764,277 16,319,000 +3.67% +3.31%
Metro 276,478 6,971,225 -6.62% -14.74%
43

44. Funding issues…
•BBC and license fee
•Guardian owned by Scott Trust charity
44

45. Guardian editor Alan
Rusbridger (2007)
• ‘We've moved from being in competition with
a small pool of British broadsheets to being in
competition with just about everyone, but it's
true. We're no longer a once-a-day text
medium for a predominantly domestic
audience. Increasingly - around the clock - we
use a combination of media in telling stories,
and in commentary, to millions of users
around the globe’
45

46. Ex-Guardian editor, Peter
Preston (2007):
• The thought of a news collection and
distribution organisation without print or paper
raises the prospect of a quite different future
for journalists: one where few of the old skills
and few of the new convergences are
particularly relevant, one where a start-up
news gathering operation on the net would
train and hire web people, not converts from
print with ink on their hands.’
46

47. Sources
• Stuart Allan, 2006, Online News, Maidenhead: Open University Press.
• Patrick Barkham, September 22nd 2006, ‘Giving it all away’, The Guardian, available at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/sep/22/pressandpublishing.lifeandhealth
• Peter Cole, 2007, ‘The paradox of the pops’, The Guardian, available at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/aug/27/mondaymediasection.pressandpublishing
• Dan Gillmour, 2004, We The Media, Sebastopol, CA.: O'Reilly
• Kim Fletcher, December 19th 2005, ‘A bright picture for newspapers’, The Guardian, available at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/dec/19/mondaymediasection
• Jim Hall, 2001, Online journalism : a critical primer, London: Pluto Press
• Brian McNair, 2007, ‘The British Press, 1992-2007’ unpublished conference paper presented at Future of
Newspapers conference, Cardiff, September 2007.
• Rupert Murdoch, 2005 speech given at the American Society of Newspaper Editors, available at
http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_247.html
• Rupert Murdoch, 2006, speech given at the Annual Livery Lecture at the Worshipful Company of
Stationers and Newspaper Makers, available at http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_285.html
• Salem Pax, 2003-4 ‘Where is Raed?’ available at http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/
• BBC, Reuters & Media Centre, 2006, ‘Trust in the Media’, May, available at 47
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/02_05_06mediatrust.pdf