The Internet Newsroom

Volume 2 summary: Online journalism has taken center stage in debates about the future of news. Instead of speculating, this volume offers rich empirical evidence about actual developments in online newsrooms. The authors use ethnographic methodologies to provide a vivid, close analysis of processes like newsroom integration, the transition of newspaper and radio journalists to digital multimedia production, the management of user-generated content, the coverage of electoral campaigns, the pressure of marketing logics, the relationship with bloggers or the redefinition of news genres. -- Publisher description.

Media has always played an intermediary role in the way that citizens receive and process news, but, with the speed of information transmission, the segmentation of news sources, and the rise of citizen journalism, issues of authority, audience, and even the definition of "news" have shifted and become blurred. News on the Internet synthesizes research on developing and current patterns of online news provision with the literature on traditional, offline media to create a conceptual map for understanding the way that public affairs and news are presented and consumed on the internet.

Your guide to the world of electronic factgathering.

African newsrooms are experiencing the disruptive impact of new digital technologies on the way they generate and disseminate news. Indeed, newsrooms are being forced to adapt in various ways and there are clear dimensions of localized creativity and adaptations by journalists to the digital revolution. In the same way, the influences of digitization, Internet, and social media are changing the informational needs of readers, including how they engage with news. These developments nonetheless remain on the margins of ‘mainstream’ journalism research – very few researchers have sought to qualitatively capture the implications of developments in digital technologies on the routine practices of African journalists, especially in their ‘natural habitat’, the newsroom. In this light, this edited volume interrogates the changing ecology of newsmaking in Africa in the context of rapid technological changes in newsrooms as well as in the wider social context of news production. It brings together six contributions drawn from five countries: Egypt, Mozambique, South Africa, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, to explore practices, challenges and professional normative dilemmas emerging with the adoption and appropriation of new technologies. While the studies point to dimensions of localised new technology appropriations as defined by the complex socio-political structures in which African journalists operate, they are not rigidly confined to Africa. They are expressly in dialogue with theoretical observations largely emerging from Western scholarship. In this sense, the book goes beyond simply mainstreaming African perspectives, it engages directly with dominant theoretical observations and offers a point of departure for developing what could loosely be branded as an African digital journalism epistemology. This book was originally published as a special issue of Digital Journalism.

A study of the development of nonprint publishing by American daily newspapers: how new media emerge by combining existing media structures and practices with new technical capabilities.

This multi-authored scholarly volume explores the divide between men and women in their consumption of news media, looking at how the sexes read and use news, historically and currently, how they use technology to access their news, and how today’s news pertains to and is used by women. The volume also addresses diversity issues among women’s use of news, considering racial, ethnic, international and feminist perspectives. The volume is intended to help readers understand adult news use behavior--a critical and timely issue considering the state of newspapers and television news in today’s multi-media news environment.

"If the promises of online news are to be fulfilled, books like this deserve the widest possible readership" Paul Bradshaw, University of Central England, UK In this exciting and timely book Stuart Allan provides a wide-ranging analysis of online news. He offers important insights into key debates concerning the ways in which journalism is evolving on the internet, devoting particular attention to the factors influencing its development. Using a diverse range of examples, he shows how the forms, practices and epistemologies of online news are gradually becoming conventionalized, and assesses the implications for journalism’s future. The rise of online news is examined with regard to the reporting of a series of major news events. Topics include coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing, the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, the September 11 attacks, election campaigns, and the war in Iraq. The emergence of blogging is traced with an eye to its impact on journalism as a profession. The participatory journalism of news sites such as Indymedia, OhmyNews, and Wikinews is explored, as is the citizen journalist reporting of the South Asian tsunami, London bombings and Hurricane Katrina. In each instance, the uses of new technologies – from digital cameras to mobile telephones and beyond – are shown to shape journalistic innovation, often in surprising ways. This book is essential reading for students, researchers and journalists.