Allie Barnes
2/18/2011
English 120
Research Paper
Destructive News: How the Internet is Destroying Journalism
In today’s fast-paced society, more and more people are turning to their computers, cellphones,
and Bluetooth devices for news updates. Especially with the explosion of social networking, such as
Facebook and Twitter, and the development of smartphones, such as Blackberries and the iPhone,
technology use is quickly becoming the primary way of receiving information. This new technological
dependence for information does have benefits- instant notifications of news and emails allows society
members to be aware of what is going on in the world in only a few seconds. As this instantaneous
spreading of information through the web becomes the norm, journalism is being forced to change on a
daily basis to keep up. Thus, through forcing journalism to morph at such a rapid pace, the internet has
had the greatest impact on journalistic writing styles.
With communication being an important part of any culture, the way in which information is
spread has to conform to the way people live. In the early 1900s, the dominate way that news traveled
on a daily basis was through newspapers. In 1900, 15 million newspapers were sold daily (Media). The
population of the United States during that time is estimated to be around 76 million (Demographia).
Clearly, with almost a fifth of the population (including children and immigrants) buying newspapers
every single day, it can be deduced that the average lifestyle in the early 1900s was conducive to
allotting time for reading newspaper articles.
Nowadays, daily newspaper reading is becoming more and more rare; individuals now turn to
the internet for news. There are thousands of news websites, based not only on individual news
companies such as The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, but also through popular internet
search engines such as Yahoo and Google. These news websites are more efficient than newspapers in
regards to quickly finding information. Searching a news site for key words or main interests is done
with a simple click of a button, and many people prefer this method to sifting through the physical pages
of a newspaper. This preference of internet news is obvious due to the steep decline of newspaper sales
over the last two decades.
According to the 2004 Annual Report on American Journalism, newspaper sales began to
plummet on a consistent basis in 1990 “Newspaper circulation is on the decline. The root problems go
back to the late 1940s, when the percentage of Americans reading newspapers began to drop. But for
years the U.S. population was growing so much that circulation kept rising and then, after 1970,
remained stable. That changed in 1990 when circulation began to decline in absolute numbers”
(Journalism). Around the same time as the newspaper sales were decreasing by huge volumes, the
internet was becoming increasingly popular. “In 1991, the first really friendly interface to the internet
was developed… The development in 1993 of the graphical browser Mosaic…. gave the [internet] its big
boost” (Howe).
Since the early 1990s when the internet craze began to take hold of America, newspapers have
not only lost the attention of many individuals, but they have also lost the attention of investors as well.
Clay Shirky, author of Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing, said, “[Weblogs] are such an
effective tool for distributing the written word that they make publishing a finically worthless activity”
(Shirky). Shirky is not alone in his feelings- many newspaper investors, who invest though buying ad
space and running advertisements, are feeling the same way.
In the 2010 Annual Report on American Journalism, reports state that newspaper ad revenue fell
26% for 2010 alone. The total loss of ad revenue since 2008 (a span of three years) is almost half; 41% to
be exact. The Annual Report of American Journalism estimates that since 2000 the newspaper industry
has lost over $1.6 billion (roughly 30%) of their reporting and editing capacity. Although the losses for
newspapers are extremely large, newspapers aren’t the only form of journalism that is suffering. In
2009, magazine advertising pages declined by 19% (The State). With numbers so large, it is clear that
newspaper and print journalism are trending downward with no possibility of a big return. The 2008
Annual Report on American Journalism said, “The Web in 2008 became a regular and even primary news
destination for more and more Americans” (Journalism).
While people are turning to the internet for their information needs, journalistic styles are
quickly morphing. The internet is forcing journalists to write short, more concise articles, unlike the
articles in print journalism which are characterized by including any and all information that is relevant
in a cohesive, journalistic manner. The internet is actually leading to the demise of articles; the news on
the internet is developing into fragmented strings of facts, rather than pieces of journalism.
The fragmented string of facts “journalistic style” is powered by the explosion of social
networking. Social sites such as Facebook and Twitter are defined by their instant update features which
where information is communicated to an entire network of people. Word of mouth has become word
of status, and thus many people find out news through their friend’s statuses. Hitwise, a media based
company that judges websites popularity based on how many views it gets in a set amount of time,
“announced that Facebook outpaced the popularity of U.S. Google News… [and] announced that Twitter
ranks No. 39 on a list of places people go for breaking news. Facebook is No. 3” (People). It is clear then
that the sentences that social networkers type into their status boxes has become one of the main ways
to spread information on a national and local level.
This news that quickly spreads though social networking sites and statuses can hardly be called
journalism. Many people don’t research information before they post about the information, which
creates a web of half-truths and kinda-news because the news that spreads in this way is held to no
standards. There are no standards of reporting only truth- posting on Facebook or Twitter doesn’t
require a fact check that is mandatory for print journalism. There are also no standards of correct
grammar/English use. English, the very basis of journalism, isn’t enforced and can’t be enforced through
the rights of freedom of speech and privacy laws. Therefore, the incorrect use of vocabulary, grammar,
and sentence structure on Facebook and Twitter goes against proper journalism. There are also no
standards for journalistic angles. Statuses are often lackluster and boring because they do not embody
the journalistic oomph that makes journalism so unique. Social networking and instant feeds are
chipping away the very art of journalism.
Malcolm Moran, a sports journalist, has described how the internet has affected sports writing.
In his article It’s A Brand-New Ballgame- For Sports Writers, Moran claims that sports writing especially
is now more fragmented information rather than actual sports articles. Instead of having in depth
information about the game and what has happened, the dominate way that information gets to the
masses now is via social networking which emphasizes the quickest way to get the largest quantity of
information out to the masses, rather than writing in article style as it has been in the past (Moran). This
represents not only a change in the standards of journalism, but a change in our brains. Because we are
constantly exposed to this kind of information spreading, the internet may be taking a more serious toll
on our ability to function.
With the internet’s high involvement in the daily life of the average American, it may be
affecting our ability to concentrate, to think independently, and it may be hindering our intelligence
level. Nicholas Carr, author of Is Google Making Us Stupid, details that with every major technological
leap that society has encountered, the human race has changed in such a way to where we can’t revert
back to the former way of life. In other words, we permanently change ourselves as new technology is
intergraded into our lives.
One of Carr’s arguments is that the internet makes everything too readily available and too easy
to access thus the individual is not forced to think as much or in the same manner as he did in the past.
For example, a few decades ago, to find the answer to anything from a research question to a grammar
question required looking through textbooks and reading articles in the library, and therefore learning
about the topic actually occurred. Today, instead of looking through and reading many articles about
why one thing is the way it is, an individual only has to type in search words in an internet database and
the answers are simply given to them. The individual is now not required to do any more thinking
beyond figuring out what to search words to use (Carr).
Carr also makes the argument that because of this style of finding answers, the retention rate of
information is a lot lower than it has been in the past. Information discovered this way, with a minimal
amount of engaging the mind, is not actually learned at all. Therefore, as time goes on and the internet
is becoming more and more the central learning source, we are slowing learning less and less (Carr).
Carr makes an excellent point; people today do indeed absently mindedly search the web for
information that they do not retain. Scanning though websites and browsing through online articles
creates a whole new dynamic on how information is processed through the brain. In a recent study, a
connection was found between heavy internet use and attention deficit and impulsivity (Chen). The
study gives evidence supporting that as internet use goes up, so does difficulty in concentrating for long
periods of time, and on concentrating on only one thing at a time. Heavy internet use, or internet
addiction, is something that is very prominent in today’s society. Connection to the internet is so
important to people that Smartphones were invented- phones that were able to connect to the internet
so that the access was constantly available- no matter where in the United States it was located. This
supports the internet addiction that Americans have and the decrease in concentration that goes along
with it.
The alteration of concentration abilities means that journalism has been forced to change so
that quality writing and readable material is still common and available. Journalism departments all over
the world have to rethink the way journalism is being taught, as techniques of fifteen years ago are not
applicable today. Even The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) has had to make
adjustments, with more and more emphasis being put on the multi-media section of The Journalism and
Mass Communication School. UNC-CH’s Journalism School is one of the best in the country, and the
school prides itself with having state-of-the-art facilities which enable the students to develop skills
which are applicable in today’s ever changing society. One of the newest projects that UNC-CH has done
to ensure that their journalism students are able to adapt to the internet based society is create a web
based journalism environment.
During the summer of 2010, UNC Chapel Hill began work on the Reese Felt’s Digital Newsroom.
The Reese Felt’s project is designed as a student run 24-hour based news site where students have the
opportunity to work with web design and formatting, web based journalism and multi-media projects,
such as weblogs, video blogs, etc. This exposure to the technologically dominate side of journalism gives
the students experience so that they are able to work in the fast paced, internet based society of today.
It is clear that journalism is being highly affected by the internet craze that has happened over
the past twenty years. Because of the internet, information spreading has been altered from being
predominately print article based to incomplete sentences. Journalism has been forced, and will
continue being forced, to change to keep up with the individuals behind the iPhones and Blackberries.
Bibliography
Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic. July/September 2008. Web. 14 Jan 2011.
Chen, Cheng-Sheng, Tang, Tze-Chun, Ko, Chih-Hung, Yen, Cheng-Fang, and Yen, Ju-Yu. “The Association
between Adult ADHD Symptoms and Internet Addiction among College Students: The Gender
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brought about the Internet and the Web.” 24 Mar 2010. Web. 22 Mar 2011.
“Media History Project”. Regents of the University of Minnesota. 30 Sept 2008. Web. 22 Mar 2011.
Moran, Malcolm. “It’s a Brand-New Ballgame- for Sports Reporters.” Nieman Reports. Winter 2010: 6062. Print.
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