While Nora Paul raises some interesting points about what, in 1995, was expected of online news, the fact that they have not, perhaps been as expected, may not be such a bad thing. I think it is most likely in the ten years before her article was written, people's expectations of the medium have changed. For example the 'limitless newshole' notion could well be because readers do not want an unlimited amount of text to read. In this case the perceived 'failure' may not be such a bad thing after all.
Having said this however, I agree to a certain extent that online news isn't what we expected ten years ago but I feel the Internet has taken news to a level some mediums can't. As a way of physically 'reading' news, online brings with it the advantage of constant updates as days go on, an advantage it will always have over traditional print methods. This isn't really touched on but is important as people who read news online often do so in order to check the latest goings on.
A couple of commenter's brought up the issue of money and news organisations investing in specialist online reporters/editors. This could be a major factor as to why articles online have the tendency to be like their newspaper counterparts, with often the exact same edits. It could also be part of the reason why Paul claims the expected change in reporting styles hasn't happened. Personally, I think blogs (in which style is much different by the way) are important to online news but must be kept separate from the actual articles. It is essential that journalists keep the formal writing style unless expressing opinion.
All in all this is an informative piece, some points I agree with and others I don't. But generally it is interesting to look back at what people expected ten years ago and now to see what direction online news has actually gone in.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I wrote that little "ten years after" review a while ago and very much agree with some of your comments about some of the failures not actually being "failures." For example, the notion that online things can be non-linear (and there isn't much of that non-linear design in online storytelling) might have been seen as a failure of using the potential. But we did a study on navigation through slide shows and by far, even when presented with choices that would allow non-linear browsing of the materials in the slide show, people clicked through linearly. Habit? or just a more comfortable, logical way of engaging. Here is an article about the study: Navigating slide shows: What do people choose when every choice is possible?
Post a Comment