The Online Future for the Commonwealth Press
by Guy Berger
Journalism & Media Studies, Rhodes University, South Africa.
Paper presented to Commonwealth Editors Forum, Rainbow Conference, Cape
Town, October 1996.
Introduction
Editors have too little vision, and too much operational control. That's
the conclusion of a major report to the World Association of Newspapers
(Fiej) by McKinsey and Company (1996). It is probably a conclusion with
which many editors will readily concur. But if ever there was a time to
pause from the daily grind and lift one's nose off the stone in order to
focus on the future, that time is now. Precisely because history is
stepping up its pace so rapidly, we need to back off and take stock of
what's happening. I hope in this paper to do exactly this, and to try
and make sense of where newspapers are headed in a time when two closely
related developments are impacting everywhere: globalisation on the one
hand, and new online media on the other.
Globalisation:
Everyone knows in general how interconnected the world has become. This
is not something entirely new: one can trace it back to the colonial era,
to the spread of the Gregorian calendar, postal services, time zoning,
the invention of the wireless and aeroplane, and to the beginnings of
international law. The period 1890- 1920 saw rapid moves towards making
the world in to a single place, if not a system. (Robertson, 1992:142/3).
Since then, the compression of the world has continued apace, and it is
worth denoting some of the ingredients in this:
Trade and the international division of labour
Finances and investments
Communications infrastructure, incl. satellites
Multiculturality and polyethnicity through emigration, refugees, migrant
labour, tourism.
Commonwealth editors will recognise this factor all too well.
Caricaturing the racism
and xenophobia that have sometimes ensued,
Geertz (1968:112), declares: "foreign- ness does not begin at the
water's edge ... the wogs begin long before Calais".
Number of international institutions and movements, including of course
the Commonwealth
Global problems of environment, civil rights, aids, nuclear capacities.
Sport
Within this of course is the development of a global media system,
spanning ownership, content, personnel, advertising, audiences.
What is worth noting is that this global picture is not reducible to the
sum of its parts: rather, it constitutes a system, in which tendencies to
homogenisation vie with heterogeneity, and the particular blends with the
universal. (Robertson: 1992:61). There are increasingly global norms
around business, governance, and the media. It is misleading in this
context to speak about international communications, which implies the
existence of mutually exclusive and relatively homogenous national states
as the unit of analysis. Instead, we need to recognise a situation of
global communications which is something both bigger and smaller than
nations. In all of this, individual identities are now more referenced to
cosmopolitan characteristics (for or against) than ever before. That is
you, me, your journalists, your readers - and even, in varying degrees,
your non-readers.
Globalisation has gone hand in hand with modernity: that new form of
existence which has, as Robertson (1992:76) puts it, been unleashing the
productive forces of sex from religious laws and rituals, and the economy
as market place with autonomy of other social arrangements. There may be
exceptions like the recent reaction in Afghanistan, but even the
fundamentalists there will eventually have to settle for a vision of the
world at best as some kind of global consociationalism amongst different
interacting societies, rather than closed communities.
As Robertson (ibid:161) points out: Nostalgia is not what it used to be:
it has been globalised, and is directed against globalisation.
Fundamentalism not simply anti-modern, it is a reaction to the modern,
and indeed a product of the modern, using modern media and mobilisation
methods very often.(ibid: 169-70) . Newspaper editors of course need to
be wary of dwelling too much in nostalgia, of slipping into a
fundamentalist reaction to the problems that the modern world is creating
for them.
It is a notable feature that in this age of modernity and globalisation,
social life becomes more mass media-centred than previously. As British
writer Graham Murdock says: "... the organisation of communications is
not only constituted by the general dynamics of modernity but is
constitutive of them, and ... comes to play an increasingly central role
in shaping both institutional and cultural formations and the textures of
everyday life." (1993: 522-3, italics in original).
What this means in global terms is that the spatial and temporal coordinates of our culture are increasingly media-dependent. Media
construct the temporal dimension, and provide a symbolic geography that
gives shape to the world. (Becker et al, 1996:7). Media, then, is more
important than ever before - but this is media in the broadest sense,
including not only the mass media but also clothing, architecture,
packaging etc. Where newspapers fit into this complex picture is a key
question I will return to later in this paper.
Globalisation is the dominant phenomenon of our time; that is not to say
it is universally or uniformly prevalent. A majority of the world's
population is only partially incorporated, and often on terms that are
controversial. In the communications sphere, there are the informationrich and information-poor; there are unevennesses in communications
flows; and there are cultural and other biases in the content of these
communications. (see Gerbner et al, 1993). A cursory inventory of the
spread of newspaper publishing and readership around the world bears out
this picture. That newspapers are less globalised than TV, however, does
not mean they are non-global. There is a universal character to their
role, contents, personnel, audience-relationship and so on - despite
their differences. That their reach is far less than universal does not
negate their global qualities, nor the fact that they operate in a
broader environment that is all the more global in very many other
respects.
As Ferguson points out, it is a myth that time and space have disappeared
and not only because the euphoria about a "wired" world overlooks the
question of differential access and marginalisation. In her view, "the
mobility of commerce, organizations, information and people does not make
time and space irrelevant, rather, it highlights the extent to which
these areas of experience have become more, not less, multilayered,
interrelated and complex. For the uprooted, the restless or the
peripatetic, the business of 'living life' (family, friends, work) in
three or four time zones requires new negotiating skills in a perceptual
world of spatial indeterminacy and temporal recalculation, a world of
'time without time' and 'space without space'." (1992:79)
In this way, the nature of social life, and of individuals, is changing
in ways that are more discontinuous with the past than probably any
earlier stage in history. This is the world which our newspapers have
inherited - indeed, helped to shape as well. It is also a world dealing
with not only globalisation and modernity, but in recent years with the
advent of digital media technologies and the wildfire spread of the
Internet from a negligible status into a major social factor in the past
three years. Where the Net will take us, no one yet knows. No one
predicted that the automobile would give rise to an entire way of life
structured around suburbia. One thing is for sure, it is a phenomenon
that is going to have a profound effect on the global condition.
Newspapers did not invent the Internet. In fact they were pursuing an
entirely different track looking at dedicated portable "news tablets",
and were relative latecomers to a medium and a world that was already
made. (Berger, 1995: 35) There is, therefore, some catching up and
adaptation to do: not only with modernity and globalisation, but with the
new online technologies as well.
The Internet, plus a variety of commercial and specialised online
information services, matches the nature of globalisation in its uneven
spread across the world. But its growth is exponential - not
surprisingly, given the potential for it to be accessible to every person
with access to a phone line (or cellular phone or satellite service), a
computer and a source of power. If most newspaper readers are, broadly, a
relative elite within society, most newspaper readers are also likely
candidates for joining the wired world in the next five years at least.
Print is not dead.
Yet, against the hype-mongers who see paper publications going the way of
the dodo, print still has a long future. It is true that circulations of
newspapers have fallen in first world countries: the UK down 18% - or
more than four million newspaper buyers less each day - since 1990
(Balding, 1996:3). But in developing countries, sales are booming.
Between 1991 and 1995, India recorded a 33.4% increase; Malaysia 24.4%
and Singapore 14.81. (ibid) And although advertising market share
continues to shrink in the majority of countries, ad revenues are still
continuing to increase almost everywhere - again especially in the
developing countries. (ibid:5). It is the case that these developing
countries are moving off a small base, but let us not ignore the fact
that India for instance, with almost 30 million sales a day in 1994,
stands third, behind Japan and the USA, in the world's top circulation
statistics.
These trends look set to continue for at least ten years, with newspapers
more than holding their own against competing media. Yet, for all the
advantages of portability and access provided by publications, there
looms one major problem: cost. If advertisers can reach audiences with
greater precision and at cheaper rates - an Internet-enabled prospect
unfolding at the top end of the market, even in developing countries print will have to begin recouping lost revenue from elsewhere. One
avenue is through raising sales price. Other avenues are to embark on
different income-generating projects, leveraging the existing business. I
do not think the problems will be finding would-be readers for newspaper
products: I believe the hitch will be in being able to provide them with
an accepted price when there is insufficient advertising to subsidise
this.
This is, of course, quite some time away. But take heed of a rather gross
parable about boiled frogs. Put the said amphibian in a pot of boiling
water, and it will leap out right away. Bring it slowly to the boil, and
the creature will boil to death. There is no need for newspaper editors
to be in this kind of hot water. And if they're shrewd, they'll put
energy into going online, even if there is no foreseeable threat to their
advertising or readership. The reason is that the Internet is, for now,
less a threat than, first and foremost, an immediate opportunity to
complement print publishing.
Newspapers worldwide are not, of course, intending to end up as French
cuisine. The McKinsey and Company report cited at the outset tracked what
successful papers in the USA and Sweden are doing about it. Their
conclusion: papers should emulate these examples and implement internal
upgrading and external reorientation across editorial, advertising,
circulation and other areas.
The rising circulations of developing countries' papers probably reflect
rising literacy and urbanisation - but the increased sales are not
automatic, inevitable reflections of this. Many of these successes are
because the papers involved are doing exactly what McKinsey and Company
recommend. The success of The Hindu, for instance, in pushing its sales
by 100 000 over 15 months is attributed to investment in a bigger paper
and the introduction of special sections. (Prosser: 1996:57/8)
McKinsey and Company go on to identify, among the external growth areas
that successful newspapers are engaging, what it calls the "strategic
levers" of online services. There are, according to this consultancy
report, two distinct rationales for newspapers to move into online
services: one defensive, the other opportunistic. The defensive rationale
is to keep pace with anticipated reader and advertiser trends.
opportunistic rationale is to increase leverage of print ideas
(1996:116).
The
For a combination of rationales - including prestige and market profile
- Commonwealth newspapers have not stood still, even those whose existing
print readers are still largely far from having online access,
Divided into regional blocs, the following picture emerges:
Region:
Newspapers online
Africa:
23
Asia:
10
Caribbean 12
Pacific
16
Other:
Canada, UK 60
Malta
4
According to the statistics I have, the picture broken down looks as
follows:
Country
Newspapers/magazines online
Ghana
2
Kenya
2
South Africa
10
Tanzania
1
Uganda
2
Zambia
6
Zimbabwe
2 eminent
Botswana
3
Lesotho
1
Bangladesh 1
India
5
Pakistan
1
Sri Lanka 3
Belize
1
Dominican Rp
1
Granada
1
Jamaica
4
St Vinct
1
Trin & Tob 3
Australia 9
New Zealand 4
PNG
1
Tonga
1
West Samoa 1
Brunei
2
Malaysia
2
Singapore 4
Canada
30
Malta
4
UK
30
It appears then that 20 Commonwealth countries have no Web presence as
yet, although online publishing is bursting out at such a rate that this
information might easily be outdated by now. Those not yet online are:
Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Cyprus, the Gambia, Guyana, Kiribati,
Malawi, Maldives, Mauritius, Nauru, Nigeria, St Christopher and Nevis, St
Lucia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Swaziland, Tonga,
Tuvalu, Vanuatu.
As valuable as it is to look at this in terms of countries, it should not
obscure global considerations. There is for example the online
publication, India Journal, which has its content created in Bangalore in
south India, gets wired across to the USA where it is designed and edited
in New York, and then distributed via two hypermarkets in New Jersey
where many expatriate Bangaloreans are settled. (Hunt, 1995:8). Nor does
this picture reflect things like the experience of the London-based
Electronic Telegraph, where an entirely unexpected and rather large
constituency of readers was discovered upon analysis of his publication's
readership:"wired" Asians on the east coast of the USA with a passion
for cricket and a thirst for information which American media failed to
quench.
I do not know the existing general mix of opportunistic and defensive
rationales for Commonwealth media going online. But I would like to
single out and explore some that whether within the Commonwealth or
without, have not necessarily been elabortated upon in terms of their
full implications. Some will be of more relevance to some of your papers
than others. I believe though that I will touch on certain 'home truths'
that will highlight what you are already implicitly doing with your
printed products - and indeed could even do more of.
The information-guidance opportunity:
"Although we publish newspapers we do not consider ourselves newspaper
publishers. ... we are an information company which creates information
products to satisfy information needs." These are the words of Mexican
publisher Alexandro Junco (1995:1).
To get involved in online publishing by simply putting a version of the
paper edition onto the Internet is disparagingly described as
"shovelware". This is seen to be a blinkered use of a different medium
to produce exactly the same product, when the potential exists to offer
something with far greater flexibility, range, depth, and power. It's a
bit like early film which simply recorded dramatic plays with a
stationary camera before coming into its own as a medium. However, the
logic of Junco's statement is to go even further and say that simply
doing an electronic edition of a newspaper is "shovelbusiness". To get
involved in online ought to be to redefine the core business of
newspapering. Just as the railways discovered too late that they were in
the transport business, and motorised vehicles rendered them near
obsolete, so too do newspapers have to consider what business they're in.
To take a step back from printing, is not to say that the newspaper as an
institution is not relevant. Rather it is to see how its core
characteristics can become ways to leverage a whole lot of existing
strengths against competitors old, new and even unidentified as yet.
Now, some, like Junco, would see themselves as fundamentally in the
information business. In this scenario, a newspaper, an online service,
even a fax service - these are all just so many ways to execute the
business. There is some value in stressing information. But British
internet commentator, Ray Hammond, believes if this means competing in
hard news, newspapers will die. In his view, if a newspaper deals in
tabloid style entertainment: it has a hope of surviving (Hunt, 1995:12).
On the contrary, as Birgir Magnus, Swedish chief of McKinsey and Company,
observes, for newspapers the entertainment business entails powerful
competition from television, magazines, CD-roms, video and online
services (ibid:9). There is indeed a strong lobby behind this position.
David Lawrence, publisher of the Miami Herald, declares: "newspapers
should not feel compelled to mimic TV's frequently superficial
theatrics", while Jorgen Ejbol, editor of Denmark's Morgenavisen JylandsPosten says: "If you repeat what is on television or in magazines, you
devalue what newspapers can do. Let them do what they do best. The solid
foundation of a newspaper is information; entertainment is only a small
part of it." (Rhodes Journalism Review, October 1996: 29-30)
Newspapers, then, are in the information, rather than the entertainment
business, and this is their strength. So far so good. Except, as Birgir
Magnus points out: information in the form of news is also available to
many people today through radio news services, dedicated TV like CNN,
fax, electronic clippings, CD-rom and teletext.
Newspapers do not have
sole custody of information supply, even if they believe this is what
they do best. Nonetheless, if information is their business, what are the
advantages of extending this business to online publishing? Several
major benefits stand out:
* Online delivery makes distance defunct: far flung potential audiennces
such as emigrants can be recruited to the reader ranks without the costs
and time of delivering paper products.
* Internet allows for personalised information delivery, converting "Le
Monde to Le Moi." (Magnus in Hunt, 1995:9). Newspapers can open a new and
powerful front against mass media competitors in information delivery by
using a sniper service rather than a blunderbuss in terms of targetting
readers.
* Online news publishing also means that newspapers can begin, as
recommended by one commentator (Samet, 1996:13), to differentiate their
information outlets - specialising the paper product for a market that is
different to that for the online market. Newspapers online can also begin
to leverage value out of all the information wasted in the conventional
print business: stories need not be cut to fit paper space; information
can be archived and sold again and again (Hunt, 1995:12)
This all sounds excellent, except for one thing. Newspapers do not have
an exclusive franchise on doing this on the Internet. To go on Internet
as another string to the bow against other media competitors is to find
these same players - plus entirely new competitors - also in this arena.
In fact, the most popular news service on line is said to be not any of
the 800 or so newspapers now on the net, but CNN. Far from keeping the
line against the merchants of images, newspapers have had their textbased territory invaded. Others like the mighty Microsoft are moving into
the online information business. It seems that newspapers can't ignore
the wired world: but nor are they guaranteed information hegemony there,
any more than they are losing it in the battle beyond.
Also online is a massive range of raw, unmediated information produced by
groups whose prime activity is not mass media publishing, but who with
online technology can now get into the business at minimal cost. Whereas
once newspapers were the public sources of government information (edited
and summarised), company statements (edited and summarised), pressure
group pitches (edited and summarised) - much of this information is
increasingly available online direct from source, and unabridged for
those wanting the detail. Information on the Internet is, in short, no
monopoly preserve for traditional mass media, let alone newspapers. (This
is not even to mention businesses, many of whom now steal from their
print-ad budgets to pay for their own online, direct, online publicity).
All in all, the Net is crowded with information suppliers, all potential
rivals to newspapers. Indeed, because of the global nature of the
cybermarket, even your own newspaper is now partially competing with
every other paper, and even your unique local information may not attract
far-flung readers with interests in more general, global matters on the
one hand, and their own localities on the other. Going online is to enter
a context that is a great leveller, and not even big brand print products
will necessarily transfer their status and appeal to the anarchic,
youthful, churning, promiscuous and wild world of the Web.
What then, does this mean for newspapers redefining themselves as
information companies and going into online publishing? Frankly, it means
refining this definition of the business, by drawing on other
characteristics that are currently part of the print newspaper business.
One of these is the narrative role of newspapers: the way in which they
turn data into meaning.
Basically, the amount of information and entertainment online (and
offline) means that users may look to their community newspaper and its
team to help them navigate the net, to make sense of it and the data
available on it and elsewhere. Says Peter Cole, newspapers uniquely have
this particular quality: "The superhighway needs sherpas and guides. What
will always be required of journalists, no matter what the medium, are
qualities of scepticism, lack of credulity, inquiry, tenacity and refusal
to be diverted from the pursuit of truth. ... Love the Net if you must.
Use the Net if you must. Exploit the various new forms of distributing
information. But remember this, the most adept collectors of information,
the best organisers and electors of information, the best explainers of
information, the best analysers of information are print journalists.".
(Hunt, 1995:27.)
In this point of view, newspapers are not only in the information
business, but in the guidance (and even informal education) business.
Certainly, the Internet makes it easy for papers to play this role: with
hypertext, it is very easy to supply background to the news for those
looking to make sense of a scattered universe. And even where the
journalistic function of packaging and telling may be bypassed, there is
a role to act as an information broker: providing services for sorting
out and selecting from the daily avalanche of information, placing
hotlinks to further information. (Becker et al, 1996:11).
This, then, is a special twist to the informational opportunity,
highlighting how a newspaper on the net needs to go far beyond simply
putting its news online. Indeed, it may highlight a similar lesson for
print products.
The communications-community opportunity:
Another opportunistic rationale for strategising a newspaper's role in
cyberspace is not the information component of the business, but the
communication aspect. Basically, most newspaper content, whether online
or on print, is dead, inactive information. As noted by futurist, Paul
Saffo (Hunt, 1995:4-5), the web is full of captured, pinned-down
information, as if in an information-mausoleum. This is not without
value, but it is insufficient for the online medium. The Internet, he
points out, is now coming alive with Java software and Virtual Reality
Modelling Language - opening up the possibility, indeed the necessity, of
a three-dimensional newspace. As Net technology continues to explode,
newspapers on line increasingly will have the opportunity, indeed the
necessity, to compete with television and radio in visual and audio
terms. It will not be enough to defend text territory against these
media; offensive approaches will be necessary, and the distinction
between them will begin to
blurr at the centre.
This is a start, but not yet the fully-fledged communication business,
however. Saffo remarks that a reader accessing an online publication may
guess there are 200 other people reading (viewing?) the same, but you
only know they are there because server so slow. For him, the next
chapter in the Internet is interacting with them. Not connecting people
to information, but people to people in information-rich environments.
Newspapers have not put much into flexibility, personalisation and
interactivity: but young people, at least, will expect this when they
look at a newspaper on the Net. ( Hunt, 1995:33).
A number of newspapers are already headed in this direction, of expanding
from information services, into communication as well - by running
bulletin boards or newsgroups linked to their online service. For South
Africa's Mail & Guardian, this has proved a vibrant forum for discussion
by a small - but influential - sector of its readers. For the Electronic
Telegraph's Ben Rooney, it has meant two hours a day answering e-mail.
But he notes, it is good for his marketing because the readers tell him
exactly what they want (Hunt, 1995:5)
All this is great stuff in the Saffo perspective. Because, in effect, in
this view, newspapers are not so much in the information or communication
businesses, as ultimately in the community creation business.
This is a theme echoed across the board, particularly in industrialised
countries where, perhaps, global modernity means a dissolution of old
communities (of locality and interest) and a creation of new, fluid and
fluctuating associations that lack community relationships. Winning
papers, says Sheldon Lasda of US Gannett Rochester Newspapers, are those
who are reworking their relationship with readers, in a context where
these people have more and more choices and alternative relationships.
(Prosser, 1996:45) By attracting readers into its discussion group, the
Mail and Guardian entrenches its relationship with them through a
dynamic, interactive service. The paper, in other words, positions itself
as the metaphorical centre of a community. It can do this because online
newspapers are not just online, but communicative (Magnus, in Hunt,
1995). The technology itself enables newspapers to build relationships
within and between readers in ways that go beyond what unidirectional
print publishing can do. The reader, in this view, is an allrounded
human, with not only information needs, but communication needs that you
can also help satisfy. This is far from a relationship with a mere salesprice paying customer.
According to Young and Rubicam executive Michael Samet, if a newspaper is
a representation of its community, it should consider literally becoming
an internet and telcom service centre in its community. "Instead of
being 'newspaper-centric' on the Internet, the newspapers should be
'community-centric'." (1996:12) This has advertising spin-offs, he says,
because it can help advertisers get personal with their target markets.
To be in such a position is also, in Birgir Magnus's view, is to be able
to act as gateway to the Internet - and as such to develop a unique,
marketable space as well as an understanding of where users are going.
Like Internet guru Nicholas Negroponte (Hunt, 1995:6), he points to the
possibility of newspapers getting into transactional services through
their online activities. When readers can order books or book plane
tickets through their trusted community paper, newspaper publishers will
be able to take a cut.
This kind of role links the newspaper business outside of itself, and
indeed many commentators today are signalling the need for newspapers to
form partnerships with a range of other companies. Of course, high
amongst this is the ease of joint-publishing partnerships between
newspapers across nations, made possible by online technologies and the
growth of transnational information markets. Such an instance in South
Africa is the Mail and Guardian, a fusion of the local Weekly Mail and
the UK Guardian into an entirely new product with both a print and an
online version.
But there are more opportunities than only being a community-creator and
consolidator. Just as well, seeing that although newspapers may have an
accumulated historical advantage in this, they are by no means the only
actor creating communities online. The very technology itself has a
myriad of communities constituted by listservs and newsgroups where
millions of people talk to each other quite independently of mass media
institutions. The bulk of readerships of many countries' newspapers may
be nowhere close to being potential online communities, but one should
not underestimate the potential for the cosmopolitan, upper-end of
readerships to be drawn into online communities - and even developing
countries' editors need to consider what will make their papers' specific
online community the primary one for this group. In this respect, there
is, fortunately, something special that newspapers can bring to the
cybertable.
The guardianship opportunity:
Together, globalisation and the new media have had a profound impact on
what is closest to the hearts of editors, i.e. not only on newspapers
as media institutions, but on newspaper journalism - its ethic, form,
content, and method. Most important here is the ethic - the mission,
indeed the imperative of journalism - which is what signals the
guardianship opportunity.
Swedish researchers Peter Dahlgren and others (Becker et al, 1996)
observe that there has been a weakening in recent years of media's
traditional boundaries between politics and culture (high/pop),
advertising, PR, entertainment and journalism. They believe that the
classical paradigm of journalism is waning. The craft, at least in ideal
terms, has traditionally been seen as providing independent reports and
analyses of real events and processes, addressing a public that has the
same public culture. There has been a narrative of accuracy and
impartiality. (ibid:3-4) Now all this is less clear-cut.
TV is partly to blame for having destabilised the classic notion that
journalism provides as its main function, information, and particularly
rational information. Journalists have turned into experts and media
stars, and experts and media stars have become journalists - not least
the recent appointment of the UK's very own Sarah Ferguson. TV's
discourse, say the Swedish researchers, addresses spectators and
consumers rather than citizens, thereby even altering the political
relevance of journalism. (ibid:5-9)
The situation today then is one where the vast majority of media output
is not journalistic in nature, and the competition for attention to the
media must also be understood partly as one between journalism and nonjournalism. But it is also a situation that has led to a blurring of the
distinctions between journalism and non-journalism - to infotainment,
Larry King Live and Oprah Winfrey. (ibid:11).
Whether the Internet proves to be primarily an entertainment rather than
an informational medium remains to be seen. Either way, though, there is
one special area where newspaper journalists can strike a blow for
classic journalism online. There already are many pretenders to acting as
guides, gateways and community-creators on the Net, but few will venture
into the turf traditionally occupied by the press: viz, that of fourth
estate. Newspapers have always played roles greater than gleaners,
interpreters and disseminators of information. They have done something
more than create communities. They have represented these communities,
reflected the public interest in its manifest forms, by taking on the
role of trusted tribunes of the people and watchdogs on the powerful.
Certainly, pressure groups will use online technology to prosecute their
particular cause. But the beauty of newspapers is that they do not play a
sectarian role. The fourth estate will not be immune from scrutiny by the
fifth estate - the globally linked millions of people who make up the
Internet. But newspapers alone amongst other institutions, including
media institutions, undoubtedly bring a uniquely critical quality to bear
in the online world - and indeed also upon the online world. This is a
core journalistic ethic, and perhaps one providing greatest leverage in
both print and electronic arenas for newspapers. As globalisation,
blurring boundaries and the Internet publishing orgy dilute journalism,
so this role will become ever more significant. (Berger, 1995).
In passing, it can be noted that to have an online presence is also to
facilitate people around the online world helping to guard your freedom
to publish. When Zambia's Weekly Post became the first newspaper on the
Internet to be banned, and its editor Fred Mmembe jailed indefinitely at
the same time, copies of the offending edition were bounced around the
globe to mobilise support for their cause. Combined with other forms of
lobbying, Mmembe was subsequently released, though the edition remained
banned.
The journalistic opportunity:
Online technologies impact on newspapers beyond highlighting their
watchdog role. Thankfully, the journalistic imperative of guardianship
stays the same, but the form, content and methods of journalism in
Internet production change.
As regards form, the Netmedia conference at London's City University
recently suggested: "Journalists want to be freed from the need to fill
holes around advertisements, and they want to be creative with multimedia
and hypertext - but many readers just want fast facts without the fuss."
(http:netday.iworld.come/business/
NATW/960722natw.shtml) Nonetheless, the time will arrive where in all
likelihood, "we won't just be print journalists, or radio journalists, or
television journalists. We may well be digital, multimedia journalists."
(Fulter, 1993.31). Will the audio-visual potential on the Net come to
predominate over the purely textual, and what will this mean for
traditional wordsmiths? Will stories be written (produced?) to screenbite length, with other layers behind? What will be the designs, colours
and graphical qualities that succeed in online publishing? All this is
still in process, and it is too early to say. Some of the results may
trickle through to print versions in ways we do not yet know, in the same
kind of way that music video language, with simultaneously distracting
messages that compete for attention, has come into CNN television news.
It may be that the very multi-media functionality of online publishing
will reinforce the worth of words on a page in the print world. All this
remains to be created - by you and your audiences in particular. An
opportunity, if you seize it. A missed opportunity if you leave it to the
e-zines, the business websites and the other newsmedia online.
What will be different, has to be different, will be journalistic
content, as the year 2000 approaches and globalisation intensifies spurred on especially by online communication systems. If online
publishing pays, which of course is still the big question, could it
subsidise print? Could the money it saves on paper, printing and
distribution costs, lead to a greater percentage of budgets being
allocated to journalism as such - with better quality content as a
result? There's an opportunity, albeit long-term. Content anyway needs to
better reflect the escalating developments of our times. Newspapers,
whether online or on paper, need to acknowledge that their readers'
experiences, identities and media exposure are changing with
globalisation. Editors will need to take not a traditional newspapercentric point of view, but a reader-centred point of view: be pull-driven
in their editorial contents, not push driven. If young readers experience
global youth culture, newspapers will need to reflect this on their
pages, even at the expense of more traditional news values. A regular
column on web surfing means less space for other information, but it is
becoming as essential as the TV listings. Another opportunity.
Finally, journalistic methods will change under globalisation and online
technology. Journalists can now benefit from being able to join global
communities of journalistis in specialised discussion groups. This
interaction - on ethics, tips, techniques, etc. - is already impacting on
journalist competencies. Even more, however, journalists can be empowered
by having access to online information. In my view, in the medium-term at
least, it is more likely that cyberspace will prove more valuable for
the input, rather than the output, side of journalism - whether that
output is on paper or online. We often forget that journalists are also
consumers of information, and indeed to be a good producer of
information, a journalist needs to be a good consumer (Berger, 1996:40).
As Canadian journalist Tom Koch argues, the future of journalism,
especially in a global eruption of online publishing - may lie in finding
and explaining the causes and consequences of events. Very often, he
continues, journalists have been forced into sheer reportage of what
politicians and experts have to say, because they do not have the
knowledge or background to question it. With online information
resources, they can now shift the balance in their favour. An empowered
journalist is an empowered communicator. That is a real opportunity.
Conclusion:
Information, guidance, communications, community, guardianship.
Opportunities in journalism as a practice. These are the issues
highlighted in this paper. I trust they help to illuminate the road ahead
somewhat. To go online does not mean to shut down print by any means. It
means to identify and leverage the key characteristics of newspapers into
a world where the benefits are many and the cost is comparatively low. It
enables you to insert the local into the global, and to bring the global
back into the local. It is the right thing at the right time.
For members of the Commonwealth Press Union, reflecting a diverse array
of countries, your existing links through this body place you in a good
position to exploit both defensive and opportunistic rationales for
engaging more deeply with the complexities of globalisation, modernity
and the challenge of new technologies. I wish you luck in this key
venture.
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