HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM History of Online Journalism

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM History of Online Journalism 1

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1963 • Ted Nelson, Harvard sociology student • Formulates the concept of hypertext 2

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1965 • Nelson, now a sociology prof at Vassar College in upstate New York • Gives a lecture which is covered in the student newspaper. The first print reference of “hypertext” appears, Feb. 3, 1965 3

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1969 • ARPANET computer network created by the U. S. Defense Department • The forerunner of today’s Internet • Their goal: Design a computer network to withstand nuclear attack 4

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1969 • Decentralized system created under the basic assumption that parts of the network will fail • Building the network this way lays the foundation for the Internet as a medium that is controlled by no single entity • 1972: The organization in charge is now called DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) 5

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1971 At the same time, a parallel technology … • The BBC files for a patent on “Teledata, ” the first teletext system • Called a "Rolodex in the sky” 6

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1971 Teletext: • A loop of “pages” broadcast on TV • Not interactive • Service is limited to a few hundred available pages • Slow 7

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1974 The British Post Office’s Research Laboratory demonstrates “Viewdata” (later “Prestel”) the first Videotext service • It’s truly interactive, supporting two-way communication • You use your TV, hooked up to cable and a phone line • You make entries using a keyboard, dedicated terminal or computer • Menu-driven systems allow users to browse • Better graphics than teletext; even photo display. 8

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1974 Snapshot: Three competing technologies … Teletext • Not interactive • Slow • But all you need is a TV and a decoder box Videotext Computers • Interactive • You need cable TV and an expensive subscription • Very expensive • Poorly networked • Almost no one has one 9

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1975 • Canada begins development of Telidon, an advanced videotext system. Goes into operation in 1979 and is considered a world leader with advanced graphics technology 10

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1975 11

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1981 -82 First computer-based online dial-up services emerge Eg. : • Compuserve • The Source • Prodigy These are closed systems -- only subscribers have access 12

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1983 -1985 • 1983: Time Magazine names the computer “Machine of the Year” • 1984: Apple introduces the Macintosh computer. Cost: $2, 495 US with built-in B&W monitor. Within 75 days, 50, 000 are sold • 1985: Worldwide 22 nations are said to be involved in videotext and teletext 13

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1986 -1988 • 1986: Computers readily available in university computer labs, offices Computers becoming cheaper and more powerful; first personal printers appear; ($7, 000 US for an Apple Laser. Writer) • 1988: Internet Relay Chat (IRC, a forebearer to instant messaging) is developed by Finnish graduate student Jarkko Oikarinen DARPA makes the Internet public 14

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1990 • Hypertext Markup Language is invented by Tim Berners-Lee, an Englishman, and colleagues at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory 15

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1992 • July: Lynx, a non-graphical Web and Gopher (FTP) “browser” is released by the University of Kansas • November: There are 26 “reasonably reliable” servers exist on the World Wide Web, according to CERN 16

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1993 • August: Mosaic, first graphical Web browser for Windows, is released by the University of Illinois. It causes the web to grow at a 341, 634% annual rate of service traffic • Sept. 25: Compu. Serve, Prodigy and AOL have a combined 3. 9 million U. S. subscribers 17

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1993 • October: First journalism site on the Web is launched at the University of Florida. There now are about 200 web servers in the world • Dec. 8: First article about the web appears in the New York Times 18

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1994 • Jan. 19: The first newspaper to regularly publish on the Web, the Palo Alto Weekly in California, begins twiceweekly postings of its full content • April: The Yahoo “Internet index” is started by Stanford Ph. D candidates David Filo and Jerry Yang 19

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1994 • June: the first Canadian newspaper, the Halifax Daily News goes online 20

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1995 April 19: Oklahoma City Bombing The first major event in which people turn to the Internet for current information 21

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1995 • May: More than 150 news outlets in North America now have online editions • October: The Boston Globe launches Boston. com on the Web, a unique site bringing many local services together 22

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1997 • March 26: “Heaven’s Gate” Suicides The Internet becomes part of a major news story when members of the Heaven’s Gate cult create a website before committing suicide. Journalists point readers to their source material 23

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1997 • March: False reports emerge online that TWA Flight 800, which crashes off Long Island in 1996 was brought down by a U. S. navy missile • The power of the medium becomes apparent as readers pressure investigators to reveal the “truth” 24

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1997 • The Smoking Gun debuts -- it publishes entire court documents and other primary sources online 25

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1997 • The Dallas Morning News online edition gets an exclusive that Timothy Mc. Veigh has claimed responsibility for the Oklahoma City Bombing • First time a mainstream news organization breaks a major story on its website -- not in its newspaper 26

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1998 • Jan. 19 -- Early reports of U. S. President Clinton’s involvement with White House intern Monica Lewinsky demonstrate how a small independent news site can seize a national news agenda 27

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1998 • A media frenzy follows in both the online and traditional press 28

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 1998 • September: Starr Report A new relationship between politicians and the public – Starr bypasses the press and distributes a major political document online first Kenneth Starr 29

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2000 Mainstream news sites begin to involve their audience • Death of Pierre Trudeau: Thousands of Canadians tell their stories on news websites 30

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2001 • Sept. 11: Online news operations stumble … 31

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2001 … then recover … 32

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2003 Classified listings flee print. . . and take money with them 33

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2003 • Canada. com moves to paid subscription model • Breaking news is free • Other content requires $$ 34

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2003 • The dawn of citizen journalism • Blogging software makes web publishing easy and eliminates the need to know HTML • The “Baghdad Blogger” captivates the world 35

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2004 • Bloggers lead the way in forcing CBS to retract its story on George W. Bush’s military service 36

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2004 • Bloggers beat the mainstream media to tsunamiravaged South-East Asia … 37

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2004 … bringing home the reality of the event with amateur video 38

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2005 Mainstream media starts harnessing user -generated video 39

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2005 News sites rush to establish citizen communities 40

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2005 Major trend: “A growing number of news outlets are chasing relatively static or even shrinking audiences for news. One result of this is that most sectors of the news media are losing audience. The only sectors seeing general audience growth today are online, ethnic and alternative media. ” 41

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2006 Katrina Bloggers win protections in the U. S. … 42

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2006 … and acceptance in Canada 43

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2006 Participatory journalism advocate Dan Gillmor tries (and fails) to put his emerging philosophy into practice 44

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2006 Time Magazine Person of the Year 45

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2006 “More sites were becoming profitable … [but] rivals on the Web that offer classified listings or aggregate other people’s work -- but produce very little journalistic content of their own -- were continuing to steal revenues away. There still appears no clear path for transferring to this new medium all the wealth that has long financed journalism for the good of civil society. ” 46

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2007 Bloggers face greater legal scrutiny 47

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2007 Citizen media grows in importance 48

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2007 49

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2007 New attempts at models for citizen journalism 50

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HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2007 “Practicing journalism has become far more difficult and demands new vision. Journalism is becoming a smaller part of people’s information mix … “Journalists have reacted relatively slowly … There are signs that government, corporations and activists have reacted more quickly. Politicians, interest groups and corporate public relations people tell us they have bloggers now on secret retainer — and they are delighted with the results. ” 53

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2007 “The evidence is mounting that the news industry must become more aggressive about developing a new economic model. The signs are clearer that advertising works differently online than in older media. “Finding out about goods and services on the Web is an activity unto itself, like using the yellow pages, and less a byproduct of getting news, such as seeing a car ad during a newscast. The consequence is that advertisers may not need journalism as they once did, particularly online. ” 54

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2007 • September: Journalism sites move away from subscription-based news • Advertising is seen as the only workable funding model 55

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM 2008 “As a category, news Web sites appear to be falling behind financially. They are not growing in advertising revenue as quickly as other kinds of Internet destinations. And these figures do not include the most important revenue source, search, where news is a relatively small player. The questions of who will pay and how they will do it seem more pressing than ever. ” 56

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HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM What is the Internet? The Internet is a network of computers 59 59

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM What is the World Wide Web? • Created in 1990 when Englishman Tim Berners-Lee and colleagues at the European Center for Particle Physics developed a computer language that enabled users to navigate by clicking on underlined words called links. Tim Berners-Lee 60 60

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM What is the World Wide Web? • The language: Hypertext Markup Language. 61 61

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM What is the World Wide Web? • The Web is a place where people do things – buy airline tickets – search for recipes – read about disease – read and interact with the news – buy computers – listen to the radio – other things? 62 62

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM What makes the Web different? • Capacity – Nearly unlimited space, limited only by human decisions and high-capacity servers • Flexibility – words, pictures, audio, video, graphics • Immediacy – – Information as events unfold Sept. 11, tsunami, hurricanes Breadth, or expansion (several angles to the same topic) Depth (quality and depth of information about an individual story) • Permanence – Nothing need be lost • Interactivity – Immediate feedback channel – email links, forums, polls 63 63

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM Lessons learned • Online services must be personally useful – Popularity of email and search engines • Interactivity is a key element – weakness of traditional media, but not online journalism • Content must be free unless it is very specialized – – Wall Street Journal sells subscriptions Ebay makes commissions Second layer (page 2) to espn. com Adult sites make money • Real money is not in the technology but in the programming – Advertisers will pay money if the audience is there for the content 64 64

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM Summary • Roots of the WWW go back three decades • Like most inventions, the WWW was more like an evolution than an invention • Teletext Videotext BBS WWW • WWW gives journalists a new, unique and interactive way to tell the story. 65 65