News on a Fast Bicycle

Reviewed by

Neil Nemeth

Purdue University Calumet

Michael B. Salwen, Bruce Garrison and Paul D. Driscoll.  (Eds.).  (2005). Online news and the public. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum: 2005. 322 pp. $39.95 paper (ISBN: 0-8058-4823-1).  

The editors of Online News and the Public, all faculty members in the School of Communication at the University of Miami, deserve credit for assembling a series of research projects about a difficult and evolving topic. Researching and writing about a rapidly evolving media form such as online news must similar to how the late Tonight Show host Steve Allen described the piano playing by jazz keyboard virtuoso Art Tatum in the mid 1950s as “looking at Da Vinci painting while riding by on a fast bicycle.” (Doerschuk, 2001). Here, the researchers found themselves frozen in time while attempting to assess a fast-evolving form of communication. Perhaps sensing the difficulty, the editors took an active role in the research, with one of the three assuming authorship or co-authorship in all but three of the book’s thirteen chapters. The approach extracted a price, however, in the book’s lack of a coherent context for the findings.  The editors attempted to address this challenge by dividing the text into three separate sections (overview, studies of online news audiences and content, and online news posters), but the lack of an effort to sort out the meaning of the thirteen studies limits the book’s impact.

The picture that emerges in Bruce Garrison’s overview suggests that online news, as practiced by the traditional news media, functions best for soft news about health and fitness issues and in spot news situations, and preferably those with a salacious or sensational angle in the latter case. Cited “gets” for online journalists include the claim of responsibility for the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh, the news of Monica Lewinsky’s sexual affair with President Clinton, the coverage of the “youth indiscretion” of U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois, and the saga of Elian Gonzales, the Cuban boy who was seized by U.S. authorities in 2000 and returned to his native country after being found floating on an inner tube in the ocean near Miami. (pp. 3-46) In summary, one author concedes that online news has yet to make a substantive contribution to what used to be called public service journalism. (pp. 70-72) The reason may lie in the fact that few of the newspaper web sites have more than a skeletal staff, which often leaves online editors resorting to recycling content from the print versions and wire services. A reader might wonder what scenario might make it possible for online news to become a major force in public service journalism and how likely it is to develop. The book does not offer such a scenario.  

Not surprisingly, the fast-paced evolution of online news leaves the law playing catch-up. Perhaps the most vexing question in online news is how deep legal liability should extend and how it should be resolved, especially if the content provider, the prospective plaintiff and computer server for the potentially libelous information happen to be located in different states. Author Driscoll laid out this challenge in a deft manner. In addition, one wonders about the degree to which the increasingly fuzzy definition of what constitutes journalism and journalists may erode the strong legal victories won by the traditional media in the past 40 years, virtually eliminating criminal libel and erecting strong constitutional barriers to successful civil libel suits by public people. Driscoll makes a reasonable argument that news organizations with fact-checking capabilities will be held to a higher standard in future libel litigation than organizations that do not purport to check the quality of their information. (pp. 81-117) In a related aspect, it’s ironic that online news providers–with their emphasis on an interactive relationship with the audience—do not seem comfortable with the prospect of reader criticism and evaluation of their work, and provide at best only spotty means for receiving this feedback. (p. 217) This finding reinforces my research about the initial effort by a news-oriented web site to employ an ombudsman: MSNBC.com. In 13 months on the job, the ombudsman struggled to get corrections posted and his work archived, and the position was abolished after the ombudsman retired and a change in the web site’s management. (Nemeth, 2003)

One thing that might have helped sort out these challenges might have been to offer a clearer definition of “online news.” By implication, the authors accept that newspaper web sites and online magazines such as Salon and Slate qualify as online news providers. But how about Matt Drudge and others who compile but add little additional information?  One author accepts that Drudge broke the story about President Clinton’s sexual liaison with Monica Lewinsky, while seeming to hold his nose at Drudge’s methods and what he found. (p. 63-65) In defining Drudge’s activities, it may help that the courts seemed willing to hold him civilly liable for alleged defamatory statements before the dispute was settled. (p. 97) Online bulletin boards and chat rooms have a role in online news as readers learn in the concluding chapters of the book, but do they constitute news itself? My view and the sense one draws from these chapters is that online bulletin boards and chat rooms represent a reconstituted “public square.” (pp. 279-302, 303-322). Online bulletin boards and chat rooms allow citizens their own say in a way that diminishes the power and impact of the mass media that began forming about 200 years ago when society got too large for individual participation in public debates. Yet journalism’s historic unwillingness to adopt clearly defined professional standards allows one to make the case that each individual, by the decision of what to view online, functions in ways similar to a journalist in the days of ink and paper. Whether the journalists possessing the skills and values of this era survive depends on the amount of time that people want to invest in gathering information. My guess is that some people will take the time and trouble to do these things, but the majority of people will continue seek and pay surrogates – journalists – to gather news for them. This state of affairs may constitute a strong case for a continuing agenda-setting function by traditional media, albeit diluted in cumulative power by the proliferation of mass information sources.  After all, people will still need to know what to talk about in online chat rooms and on bulletin boards.  

At present, online news is mostly another mode of distributing previously compiled information, and seems likely to remain so until it can be demonstrated that money can be made from the compilation of information exclusively for online distribution. The Wall Street Journal has shown that subscription services can work in a specialized market for online news, but the failure of online magazine Slate to make such a plan work for more generalized audiences has been more typical. (pp. 37-39, 59-61)  Such a proposition works against the economies of scale and the inertia of corporate journalism, which values the opposite: spinning media content into as many different forms and places as possible to increase revenue potential and reduce the cost of doing business. (Bibb, 1997) News, as has been demonstrated, is a perishable commodity that does not translate easily into the corporate environment in any event. (Bagdikian, 2004)

A significant portion of the content in Online News and the Public conveys the results of survey research, an important tool for scholars but also one with limitations. The book’s middle section presents findings from an ambitious national survey, but it also represents the weakest portion of the book. Readers learn the motivations and concerns of online news users, though many of the findings won’t surprise sophisticated observers: it’s easy to use, provides users greater control over managing the content, but represents a less reliable source of information than traditional media sources such as newspapers, television and radio. (p. 140) At present, online news serves a mostly supplementary role for people who get the majority of their news and information from these traditional sources. (pp. 72-73) Interestingly, the researchers argue that online news has the potential to hurt newspapers and radio the most; the former apparently because computers make it easier to scan online content than it is for the eye to do the same for print content and the latter because online news remains free of the rigid programming strictures found in radio. (pp. 244-253) Unfortunately, the book offers readers little or no speculation about what these findings mean or how news managers might use this information. In the same section, two chapters deal with the role of the media in creating and heightening the public’s fear of terrorism. (pp. 165-203) This is an important and timely subject, but one that seems largely beyond the scope of the book, given the slender role that online news appears to have in this phenomenon. Perhaps a case study of an online news organization or perhaps focus groups of online news users would have helped bring some detail and richness to the survey’s findings.

In provoking this discussion, the editors assembled some of the building blocks needed for further academic study of this important topic. Online News and the Public works best when it is read a chapter or two at a time; it will likely be read by those with interests in examining specific aspects of online news rather than making a broader assessment of its impact on modern society. Because the book reads like a collection journal articles, the editors missed an opportunity to give readers and scholars a clearer picture of what online news is now and – more importantly – what it might be in the future. 

References

Bagdikian, B. H. (2004, March). Print will survive. Editor & Publisher 137 (3): 70.

Bibb, P. (1997). Ted Turner: It ain’t as wasy as it looks. Boulder, CO: Johnson Printing.

Doerschuk, R. L. (2001). 88: The giants of jazz piano. San Francisco: Backbeat Books.

Nemeth, N. (2003). News ombudsmen in North America: Assessing an experiment in social responsibility. Westport, CT: Praeger.

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