21st Century Communication A Reference Handbook The Cha.docx

21st Century Communication: A Reference
Handbook
The Changing Nature of “News”
Contributors: Michele Weldon
Edited by: William F. Eadie
Book Title: 21st Century Communication: A Reference
Handbook
Chapter Title: "The Changing Nature of “News”"
Pub. Date: 2009
Access Date: January 22, 2019
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.
City: Thousand Oaks
Print ISBN: 9781412950305
Online ISBN: 9781412964005
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412964005.n65
Print pages: 592-599
© 2009 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please
note that the pagination of the online
version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
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The Changing Nature of “News”
What Are News Values?
“Man bites dog” is an old newsroom joke demonstrating what
kind of event would be considered universally
newsworthy to tell any audience, what would justifiably make it
to the printed front page or the opening mo-
ments in a television newscast. It is a story that has time-
honored news values, including timeliness, proximi-
ty, conflict, impact, and unusualness.
The story is timely as well as local, and the conflict arises from
the notion that a dog is no longer man's best
friend, which has broad implications and consequences. Of
course, it is unusual, and if the man biting the
canine turns out to be a celebrity, then the story has prominence
as well. And if the dog is famous (appears in
commercials, movies, or skateboards in aYouTube clip), well,
then we have an undeniably newsworthy story
with double the celebrity value.
But such simple definitions of news have become splintered and
confused in an increasingly chaotic and
crowded media landscape. How the local man-bites-dog story is
told in the 21st century depends on the au-
dience and the delivery mode—whether it is received as text,

digital, or broadcast, or all these combined.
The content of the story would not stop at the simplistic text
answers to the most fundamental and traditional
questions of who, what, where, when, why, and how in an
inverted-pyramid-style story of 250 words.
It would be an elective experience for the audience on many
platforms and in many shades of intensity driven
by personal interests.
Today, a consumer would go to the newspaper's Web site, see
the bulleted brief or a simple headline—per-
haps 15 words underlined and in blue, click on it, and watch a
video of the man being taken away by the
police, perhaps following a car chase resulting in a reality-TV-
ready arrest. The bitten dog's owners would be
interviewed on a separate audio podcast, with links to
information about the breed, how to report pet abuse,
plus a Flash-enhanced timeline of man-bites-dog incidents in
history, as well as a photo slideshow with audio
of comments from neighbors and coworkers on the “canine-
ivorous” man's recent behavior. A link would be
available for a longer text profile of the man who bit the dog,
accompanied by a visual graphic of a timeline,
explicitly defining the chronology demonstrating how exactly
the bite happened, and a separate graphic of the
anatomy of a man's head and mouth compared with a dog's. A
Man Bites Dog blog would be available for
readers to post their comments as well as their own video and
audio about related stories. Readers/viewers/
users would then vote online their preferences for segments of
the story they liked most, and pieces of the
story would likely become viral through blogging and social
network sites such as MySpace or Facebook, with
related photos posted on Flickr. This is a case study
demonstrating a model of information flow that is more

about less.
The newsworthiness of the story would be closely connected to
the voluntary behavior of the audience and
would shift according to the needs of that audience. The story
would then erupt into a user-driven multimedia
package with nearly infinite incarnations involving perhaps one
mobile journalist, several staffers and free-
lancers, citizen journalists, bloggers, and consumers providing
different informational pieces of the totally puz-
zling experience.
Timeliness, Proximity, Unusualness, Prominence, Impact,
Conflict, and Human Interest
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Copyright © 2009 by SAGE Publications, Inc
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21st Century Communication: A Reference Handbook
The definitions of news have altered because the playing field
for news has been disrupted, redefined, and
sculpted to court and suit a highly fickle audience. It is an
audience no longer defined principally by geogra-
phy but also by social demographics, age, education, ideology,
affiliations, behaviors, and specific media use.
They can create a self-motivated audience craving more
information about fewer topics or less information
about more topics. The 21st-century media landscape for news
offers the possibility for consumers to delve
into topics a mile wide and inch deep or an inch wide and 100

miles deep. They can be mobile and techno-
logically savvy consumers who no longer sit patiently for the
delivery of the newspaper on the front doorstep
to read the news or who lounge passively in their living room at
the appointed time of 5, 6, 10, or 11 p.m. to
watch the newscast delivered by two well-paid anchor readers.
These are often consumers who intend to participate in the
choice of news stories offered, the gathering of
news, public commentary on the news, and the ongoing news
choices made by editors and journalists. This
is a different approach to the news than we have seen in the
previous media age beginning in the mid-19th
century of top-down, elitist, editor-driven journalism. So
today's journalism requires a modernized toolbox of
news judgment factors. Yes, there is still an audience who waits
for the newspaper every morning to enjoy it
with a cup of coffee and then unwinds at night with a favorite
local newscast. But this is a shrinking audience.
The feared extinction of this audience and the necessity for
news producers to chase new audiences and
capture their attention is why news has changed.
In generations past, “readers needed news and had limited ways
to learn about current events,” Michael
Hirschorn wrote in the December 2007 edition of The Atlantic.
“Editors would tell us what to read and we
would read it. News didn't have to be interesting, because it was
important, and any self-styled citizen of the
world needed to know what was important” (p. 137).
In the 21st century, not only is the reader/user/participant
pressed for time and bombarded by more options
for information, but the walls between user and news provider
have become porous. In many instances, the
barricades have fallen completely away as citizen journalists

contribute to mainstream media and to their own
viable, vetted citizen journalism Web sites and popular blogs.
Since the debut of South Korea's OhmyNews
International in 2000 and, later on, domestic citizen journalist
hyperlocal sites such as http://Backfence.com,
http://Goskokie.com, http://NorthwestVoice.com, and hundreds
more, the formerly passive consumers now
want to be part of the journalistic process. They want to
participate in stories important specifically to them,
but they also require the option to consume stories offered by
the mainstream press that they could not other-
wise find on their own. The question of access in many
instances is still insurmountable for citizen journalists.
Though bloggers can get press credentials at a national political
convention, citizen journalists are still not
granted wide backstage access to the events, drawing rooms,
and offices of major newsmakers.
A tolerance for top-down “news you should know” that fits
rigidly into the old definitions of news as construed
by a finite group of journalists in a closed-door editorial
meeting has given way to a consumer push for a
breadth of stories told in a variety of ways. These stories can
forgo the traditional justifications of timeliness,
proximity, unusualness, prominence, impact, and conflict, as
long as they can be sheltered by the umbrella of
human interest.
And it is that humanistic element, the connecting anecdotal link,
the character portal leading the audience
into the story, that drives the news consumer's desire and
appetite for news. The overall dramatic shifts in
types of stories from text, digital, audio, and video outlets
toward a focusing on citizen sourcing and a casual
writing style reflect this cultural reverence for the personal
story and a revolutionized set of news definitions.

No longer will a story be relevant solely because it delivers
news such as “The mayor said Monday” edict.
The story must be told in a compelling way across a variety of
media, illuminating the stories of individuals
while personally connecting to the lives of the audience. It is no
longer one door the consumer enters that
opens onto the news but a series of doors, windows, hallways,
and obscured passages that the consumer
can choose from.
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http://backfence.com/
http://goskokie.com/
http://northwestvoice.com/
Just as the audience has become accustomed to changing cable
channels in a millisecond, they can instantly
click away from the news site and go somewhere else.
Logistically, a printed newspaper now is the last to
cross the finish line on news. If something is breaking news and
is hot, it has already been reported in a video
online, recounted on TV and radio, and blogged about on
countless sites. Digital media has stolen print's
thunder. So printed news reinforces and reinterprets the news
through a different lens, rather than breaking
the news first. The consumer already knows that there was a fire
in a department store from TV, radio, and
Web sites. Now they want to read the longer story of the

firefighter who saved the customer.
So many options compete for the news consumer's time that
delivering a relevant story across any and every
platform becomes a race to offer the most useful, engaging, and
informative content. Never has accurate and
keen reporting been as crucial or eloquent and insightful
multimedia storytelling been as important to cap-
turing the attention of the audience. As the traditional elements
of newsworthiness continue to contribute to
the decisions of what stories are played in print, online, and
digitally in broadcast and radio, additional forces
factor into news judgment.
News does not have to portray a rigid sense of timeliness; the
story can be current, ongoing, recent, upcom-
ing, or merely hypothetical. It can also be any item, individual,
phase, trend, or event that was previously
unknown to the audience. While the news may be commonplace
in one area of the community or the world,
it is “new” to this target news consumer. Timeliness has become
elastic. Just because an event happened
yesterday no longer deems it automatically newsworthy. The
notion of yesterday's news told today or today's
news delivered tomorrow has evaporated as news can be
communicated digitally in real time. Traditional
timeliness is an antiquated notion left over from an era when
citizens would not know of a news item unless it
appeared in the newspaper or on radio or television. Because of
text messaging, cell phone photography and
videography, as well as audio recording on portable digital
voice recorders, unfolding news events can often
be broadcast live by amateurs on their Web sites. Consider the
images and reactions from citizens following
any number of recent tragedies; these were urgent, immediate,
and raw visuals and commentary that were

unfiltered by professional journalists. The lesson of immediacy
that was learned in those unfortunate events
is that no one has to wait for the reporter to arrive before the
“news” is published, disseminated, and absorbed
by a wide audience.
Because of the universal accessibility to publishing, a news
story is no longer constrained by geographic
proximity. A global economy mandates a global information
network, so a story about a young girl in Kenya
struggling to succeed in school is as engaging and newsworthy
as a story about a young girl in Kenosha
struggling in school would be to local Wisconsin readers. At a
time when we are submerged in the infinite
and boundless flow of information online, and Facebook and
LinkedIn users swap personal stories across
all physical boundaries, it becomes less important to define
proximity limited by spatial closeness as a news
parameter. Human interest serves as the overarching, inclusive
bridge.
The irony here is that being unlimited by the shackles of
location in mainstream media, hyperlocal news has
built an enormous following in community journalism sites,
weekly publications, zoned newspaper editions,
newspaper Web sites, and blogs. Traditional media outlets such
as newspapers, magazines, and the local
television or radio station no longer have exclusive rights over
local news. A single community blogger can
succeed in informing a local audience of local city council votes
or even the latest scores in middle school
football. An audience can be built around a garden club, alumni
group, or local transportation issue, offering
news that would no doubt be ignored by the larger press.
“What does it mean to me?” is still a question the news

consumer wants answered in his or her media. While
the impact, importance, and consequence of a story for the
consumer can be subjective, it remains influential
as a factor in news judgment. But the interest quotient has
shifted from the flat response “Now I know” to
“What can I do about it now?” The news user in this current
21st-century iteration wants to take the informa-
tion from a simple story told and apply it elsewhere,
transforming facts into action, perhaps, and using this
story as a springboard for deeper examination, reflection, active
feedback, involvement, and possible advo-
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cacy.
For instance, at the end of the 20th century, a simple text story
of 10 or more inches in the metro section of
a newspaper reporting on a city council vote to increase
property taxes in a suburb or city would quote only
council members on their official comments during the meeting.
Now, however, that simple story evolves into
a multimedia package telling citizens what action they can take,
how to contact council members, and how to
have a home's value reassessed, providing profiles with photos
and audio of each council member and the
mayor, along with a podcast of the meeting, a video of citizen
reaction to the vote, an avenue for bloggers to

post suggestions, as well as photos of homeowners and their
homes affected by the property tax hike. Still,
the news of the tax increase may be the same, but the manner in
which the news is delivered is a thousand
times more complex, urgent, and democratic. The rationale for
that delivery has morphed into a more layered
and faceted portrayal of the news guided by the consumer's
needs. News gathering has become much more
complicated, enhanced, some say, by the technology of
multimedia tools, while others claim that the multime-
dia options have only burdened the consumer with unnecessary
bells and whistles that dilute the impact of
the message, distracting the consumer from the core news itself.
While unusualness still holds true as one undeniable factor in
defining the focus for news; the story must
be more than just odd, such as the man-bites-dog story. As the
media reaches far beyond the boundaries
of town, city, county, state, country, and continent, what is
unusual for one audience group is commonplace
for another culture, and not even a distant culture. What is
understood as an everyday occurrence in the far
western suburbs of Chicago may be unheard of within the city
limits. Is this a story that for the main audience
would be unknown or inaccessible without the journalist's
intervention? Is this a trend, event, or person so
little understood or examined broadly that an illuminating and
enterprising story informing the audience would
be edifying and useful to the consumer? Or is the consideration
of this as unusual merely a reflection of the
journalist's myopic view of the community and the broader
world? And would publishing this as news alienate
part of the audience and only underscore the notion of the
traditional ivory tower editors making decisions
disconnected from the broader consumer's interests? The
element of unusualness must be viewed through

the lens of diversity and inclusiveness, as news gatherers must
embrace a higher sensitivity to all groups
whether they are defined by age, race, gender, religion,
ideology, disability, geography, education, income, or
behavior. Because a news item is personally unfamiliar to the
journalist or editor, this does not grant it unusual
status. In the sweeping reach possible with 21st-century media,
a narrow view of newsworthiness may render
the news itself irrelevant.
An individual's celebrity or prominence can control decisions of
newsworthiness, but who is labeled a celebrity
in the transaction of news has changed. While webzines, blogs,
television entertainment news shows, and
gossip columns in the mainstream press have maintained an
obsession with the comings, goings, arrests,
births, deaths, and outrageous acts of a handful of Hollywood
and MTV royalty, the culture's celebration of
the amateur has invited a new brand of individual into the
spotlight. A college student can become globally
well-known for a clever YouTube clip, while a diligent inventor
can be vaulted into googledom for an ingenious
solution to a universal problem, such as a prescription bottle
that easily opens or a coffee mug that does not
spill. Just by inclusion in the story itself, the individual secures
his or her own celebrity and prominence. Be-
ing listed as a source in a reaction story run on a popular Web
site can turn the average Jane Doe into an
oft-quoted and sought after expert on even the most obscure
topic.
Conflict is a historically traditional sustained news value and is
a fundamental component of human nature.
A 2007 study in Newspaper Research Journal of Yahoo! News
found that both producers and users of news
ranked conflict as the news value occurring second most often

in more than 1,000 news stories, ranked only
behind impact. It appears that no matter how the news changes
in content, style, or sourcing, the drive to
understand conflict, whether it is political, social, professional,
interpersonal, or more general, influences de-
cisions to present news and information that contain these
dramatic human elements.
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Economic Factors Affecting the News
The first decade of the 21st century was tumultuous for the
traditional media. Newspaper closings, layoffs,
downsizing, revenue slides, breakups, and sell-offs of major
chains such as Knight Ridder and Tribune Com-
pany seemed to further erode a wounded industry scrambling for
identity, relevance, and profitability. Declin-
ing circulation among the majority of the country's news papers
had been in effect for more than 20 years,
and circulation was only stabilizing or gaining in a few markets.
The former editor of The Wall Street Journal,
Paul Steiger, reminisced on his 40 years as a journalist in a
Journal column in December 2007:
The cornucopia of national, international and business news,
sports and especially opinion available
free on the Web is rich beyond historical parallel. Anyone with

a fact, a comment, a snapshot or
a videoclip can self-publish and instantly compete with the
professionals…. What happens next?
Change, rapid and largely unpredictable. Nearly every company
in the industry needs major new
revenue, big cost reductions or a healthy dollop of each. (para.
8, 47)
As readers fell away from traditional print news, and
advertising revenues migrated online, with newspaper
Web sites accounting for nearly 34% of local online advertising
in 2007, news consumers also moved online,
but not exclusively. Consumers did not report reading only the
newspaper or only going online for news. Ac-
cording to the Project for Excellence in Journalism in the 2007
The State of the News Media report, about 92
million people around the country get their news online,
compared with about51million Americans who buy a
daily newspaper and 124 million who read the printed
newspaper. This number accounts perhaps for all those
copies left on tables in Starbucks and dental offices across the
country as some single copies of newspapers
have several readers. In 2007, 90 newspapers in this country
had a reach of 64% of adults in their commu-
nities each week. In spite of closings of papers such as the
Cincinnati Post and the threat of closing at the
Chicago Sun-Times, as well as layoffs and firings at the Los
Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and oth-
ers, there were more than 1,450 newspapers in the United States
as of 2006, some with healthy and slightly
increased circulations.
In a January 2008 opinion column in The Washington Post, the
writer David Simon, executive producer of the
HBO series The Wire, wrote,

Isn't the news itself still valuable to anyone? In any format,
through any medium—isn't an under-
standing of the events of the day still a salable commodity? Or
were we kidding ourselves? Was a
newspaper a viable entity only so long as it had classifieds,
comics and the latest sports scores?
(para. 6)
The answer is no, a newspaper is more than that, and news is
more than ink on paper. But the notion of
what is considered the news of the day has changed. And how
the news is delivered previously molded the
content, but now content must be adaptable across delivery
modes. The reality is that news outlets can no
longer be considered in separate silos, as entities of printed
text, digital text on a laptop, video on a screen,
or audio from a car radio. Newspaper companies have succeeded
in presenting a multitude of online formats,
as radio stations also present slideshows, photo galleries, video,
and text on their Web sites. While the talk of
convergence journalism has been prevalent since the start of the
1990s, what is necessary in the first part of
this century is to view the news media industry as one in flux,
at the cusp of emergence journalism.
Few consumers exclusively read the newspaper or check news
online; there is crossover, there is a hybrid
consumer who gathers information from a variety of sources—
print newspaper, multiple online sources, news
magazines, niche magazines, radio, television—as if he or she is
building a dinner plate at a salad bar. One
would think that the consumer is not just heaping vanilla
pudding or green beans on his or her plate over and
over but, instead, sampling from many different sources and
delivery modes to build a well-rounded informa-
tion flow. A 2006 Pew Internet and American Life study

reported that 71% of broadband users in this country
got their news online daily and 43% of Americans get their
news from reading the physical newspaper. Addi-
tionally, the study showed that 32% of those surveyed reported
that they get their news online from the Web
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site of their local paper.
The nearly limitless offerings of news and information and the
many transformations of news outlets has suc-
ceeded in creating a monster of an audience—at once
demanding, disloyal, fleeting, and capricious—who
can easily be misunderstood. News companies and news
purveyors may have initiated their brands as a print
product but know that they must continue to offer an expanded
online presence, no longer limited to stories
“shoveled” onto the site after they have been printed. A print
news company's Web site will also offer au-
dio, video, photos, interaction, expanded graphics, as well as
value-added text in an effort to differentiate the
products and to make the experiences of reading a newspaper
and the news company's Web site distinctive
and separate.
For instance, a news Web site from a traditional newspaper
company such as The Washington Post or the

Chicago Tribune will daily offer photo slideshows related to
stories or existing on their own without print sup-
port, as well as opportunities for the news consumer to add
comments in a blog or contribute his or her own
media. The Tribune newspaper refers to online-only offerings,
and the Web site is not a reproduction of the
paper. For instance, on January 25, 2008, the Tribune Web site
listed no full stories but rather little text, more
than 50 headlines, photos that clicked onto videos, photo
galleries, and links to columnists, sections, and
options to “share your thoughts” and “post your photos.” Aside
from the headlines, only the lead news story
with the largest photo had text, and that was limited to about 20
words. What story could be read in toto was
completely the choice of the user and required action by the
user. Having a headlines-only home page also
suggests that the reader was already familiar with the stories,
needed no explanation, and was only clicking
for further enlightenment on a story he or she already was aware
existed. This is the practice of many news-
paper Web sites, from http://boston.com to
http://USAToday.com, which can offer sometimes more than
100
links to text and multimedia on the homepage.
Changes in Content, Style, and Sourcing
The end delivery mode or presentation of the news information
changes how the news is gathered, who gath-
ers it, and who is the intended consumer. Just as the definitions
of news have been reshaped, so have the
outlets for the news. No longer involved in a monogamous
relationship with print readers or a reliable part-
nership with broadcast viewers, news companies have been
forced to reinvent their presentation of news in
content, style, and sourcing. The physical news hole or space

available for news on paper has been literally
shrinking on many major newspapers in an effort to cut costs
without taking a more aggressive machete to
the newsroom payrolls. Smaller paper dimensions mean fewer
stories. Fewer stories may be the result of
shrinking newsrooms and restricted budgets. But the online
product is still limitless.
News providers then are struggling with brand identity through
content. If the content now is received primarily
as text on paper, how will the content change if it is received by
phone or on a screen on the back of a train
seat? Perhaps a recorded interview can be used as an audio
podcast and also referred to as quotes in a text
story, but repetition would make the story redundant, and new
content must be delivered in each platform.
If the journalist covering the story has been trained in
producing text only, how will the job of that journalist
change to accommodate the needs of the news consumer? How
will journalists be trained for new roles, or
will there be instant turnover to enlist a new staff with
multimedia skills and no history as news gatherers? If
news providers can make this transition to a cross-platform,
multidimensional gaggle of content fluid and easy
for consumers to understand and participate in, then the news
industry will have succeeded in reinventing
itself.
That reinvention will also have to include an adaptive,
modernized media business model, one not limited by
department store display ads and classified ads for used cars
and garage sales. Revenue has been rapidly
diminishing from traditional media online, and more inventive
models need to be established for content to be
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http://boston.com/
http://usatoday.com/
available for the consumer. “When people think of the ‘media
business model,’ they usually just think of ad-
vertising,” wrote Chris Anderson in January 2008 on his blog,
The Long Tail, named after his 2006 book, The
Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.
He added, “That's a big part of it, to be sure,
but as those of us in the media business know, it goes far
beyond that.” Anderson went on to describe the
possibilities for media revenue in cost-per-click ads, banner
ads, lead generation, subscriptions, subscriber
list sales, brand licensing, syndication, and many more.
But just as the advent of television was falsely heralded as the
death of radio and the airplane was feared
to signal the death of train travel, the Internet is not the single
cause predicting the extinction of print news.
It is a complement and supplement to it and vice versa. What is
changing is how consumers opt to receive
their news and the kind of news they elect to experience, and it
is these changes in information flow that are
forcing revenue models to be adjusted and redirected. The
market for online news offered by traditional print
companies is robust: On December 2007, The New York Times
reported more than 17 million unique visitors
to http://nytimes.com in 1 month, with USA TODAY reporting

close to 10 million unique visitors for the same
period.
Cultural Factors Affecting Content
Everyone knows and understands that the days of waiting for
the newspaper to arrive to see who won yester-
day's football game are long gone. Consumers already know the
news before it appears in the newspaper the
next day. Because of so many competing outlets of information,
the newspaper is no longer a time capsule
of the day before; it is a more general, personalized account of
what is happening now, happened recently,
or happened in the distant past, with a new twist. Unless it is an
enterprise story—and that is usually a fea-
ture—or an investigative reporting exclusive, the odds of the
news in the paper being firsttime news to readers
is slim. The audience already knows what happened because
they got it online, from radio, or from TV. So
people need a different approach to the same event. They need
humanistic stories. They need to deliver to
the audience a friendlier product that goes into more depth,
answers why, and emphasizes who. The what,
when, and where they likely already know. They want more
information about the who.
Journalism is not just the rough draft of history; rather, it
articulates how we expect and demand delivery of
information and what kind of information we seek. Journalism
has shifted to become an anecdotal companion
to history in the 21st century. As a culture, recently, we have
altered the priorities in news to revere personal
story over official commentary, which can represent a
democratization of news and an implied mistrust of offi-
cial sources. This change from paradigmatic knowledge to a
quest for narrative information controls the kind

of story and content. The content is predominantly more
narrative and emotional than factual and staccato re-
gurgitations of events in a “he said, they said,” format. The
notion that consumers of information prefer news
to be slower at times and more in-depth, personalized, and
humanistic than news told in factoids and bullets
tells a lot about how we allow ourselves to be informed as
citizens.
More news today than ever before revolves around an
individual's personal take on events. This is a reflection
of how contemporary culture sanctifies the roles of non-
celebrities in society. The flip side is also a cynicism
with regard to information offered from official sources. We
experience the signs of this reverence for the indi-
vidual voice throughout the culture. Product Web sites selling
everything from Botox injections to White Castle
hamburgers, Hanes underwear, diamond rings, and Volvos
solicit posts, video, photos, and text from users
about their own stories of interaction with the brand. Citibank
urges consumers in magazine ads to disclose
their own personal anecdotes: “Whatever your story is, your
Citi card can help you write it. What's your story?”
It is undeniable that real stories of real people saturate the
media landscape both editorially and noneditorially.
We're not seeing celebrity spokesmen so much anymore; we are
seeing real people tell their stories of car
insurance, home sales, makeup, and jeans. This is marketing by
anecdote and personal testimony, a move
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http://nytimes.com/
parallel to telling news stories by anecdote and unofficial
commentary. It can be a confluence of events that
contribute to this sanctifying of personal stories—the paranoia
that official sources spin or lie; the need to con-
nect with individuals and feel empathy and compassion for their
stories; the belief that reading about others'
lives will bring a deeper humanistic understanding or some
brand of redemption; and as a result of globaliza-
tion, a realization that stories of real people offer connection
and meaning to our own lives.
The plethora of reality TV shows accordingly reflects this
worship of the amateur. Whether it is a show about
wife swapping, nannies, or home makeovers, millions tune into
the dramas of average citizens relishing their
life details, anecdotes, and stories. The formerly voiceless are
given voice in a variety of formats for a growing,
responsive, and welcoming audience. The popularity of shows
such as National Public Radio's This American
Life or The Story demonstrates a cultural appetite for
democratic narrative and information shared through the
eyes of the individual. The rise in documentaries as film, shown
on television, and through podcast or online
on http://current.com also exemplifies a cultural need to
understand events through the voices of individuals.
News information has gone from a push-down to a pull-up
model.
Whether information and news are offered in print, online, or
through broadcast, you are more likely in the

21st century to experience news through the portal of a
character or an unofficial observer or participant than
you are to understand news information through the eyes and
ears of an expert or administrator with a title.
For example, a news story on a presidential campaign speech
will likely begin with an unrehearsed, sponta-
neous reaction from someone in the audience. With citizen
journalism and a higher degree of participation in
mainstream journalism from a previously passive audience, the
profession has evolved to tell in greater detail
the stories of the common man and woman, the person on the
street. When you read a story about changes
in city services, it will likely begin with an anecdote of a
resident who can't get his or her garbage picked up
on time. Consider a story about a local parade. A journalist,
blogger, or citizen journalist can report the news
by talking to everyone standing on the curb waving flags, the
spectators and the participants, getting their re-
action and focusing on their anecdotes. The end result will be a
decent reaction story. These kinds of sources
are necessary in stories because they add color, humanity, and
depth. So unofficial sources are a good thing,
but that does not mean that official sources are bad or
immaterial. To be accurately informed, the consumer
needs to know with authority how much the parade cost, how
many floats were in it, and how many people at-
tended. Unofficial commentary is valuable, but accuracy and
correct information still uphold solid journalism.
This is not information you can get from the Cub Scout leader
on the Snoopy float.
To qualify as fair journalism, the reporter needs to get the final,
authoritative word from the head of the parade
or a city official, so journalism needs both official and
unofficial sources in stories. The shift toward greater
prominence and use of unofficial sources should never be at the

expense of all official sources. Reliable
journalism needs a balance of both sources in its content.
Otherwise, journalism runs the risk of turning into
Chicken Little Journalism, or the musings of individuals
convinced that they know the truth (the sky did appear
to be falling even if it just was an apple falling from the tree)
but who are, in fact, spreading untruths and urban
myths.
Just as http://youtube.com changed the face of video, this kind
of “younews” is a concept that is changing
the tone and content of print journalism. What I call such
younews grants a higher significance to stories of
ordinary people. Studies from Northwestern University's
Readership Institute quantify the attitudes of con-
sumers who decide that they want to read stories about people,
not just concepts, facts, and interpretations
but stories about real people offering reactions to information
they want to know, which makes them smarter
and keeps them informed. Perhaps it is the fragmentation of
society and the breakdown of genuine in-per-
son communication that creates a craving for storytelling about
individuals and a need for community building
through narrative. If we can't talk to real people, at least we can
read the stories of real people.
Matters of Style
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http://current.com/
http://youtube.com/
The inclusiveness of this kind of citizen-friendly content breeds
a casual tone that has also influenced the
style of news writing. The immediate and off-the-cuff approach
of blogs has made journalistic style less stiff
and formulaic because readers have become accustomed to a
less formal top-down approach to their news.
While some blogs are merely outlets for rants and personal
attacks, or what can be called “blog-bys,” the con-
versational approach embraced on thousands of viable,
intelligent, and information-packed, insightful blogs
has forced mainstream media to oblige by making the writing
style in text, online, and through broadcast more
casual and less like “the spokesman said Thursday” kind of
news. Blogs are based on opinion and the in-
dividual stories of everyday citizens. Bloggers demand that
their voices be heard, and newspapers want to
be more inclusive of these unofficial voices. So news delivery
outlets mimic this voice, the immediacy and
accessibility conveyed through a more approachable and
understandable style.
Recent history also has played a role in the change of news
writing style. Much has been written about how
the events of 9/11 have changed journalism. But when viewed
with more distance and objectivity, it is easy to
see that perhaps the entire industry did not change its practices,
but instead a change in tone was manifested
in the reporting of more humanistic and emotional stories. The
terror that was born that day in New York and
Pennsylvania, and echoed throughout the world, contributed to
an alteration of the approach to daily journal-
ism. The raw reporting of the day's events allowed a more

intimate tone, resulting in writing that was more
descriptive and infused with opinion and insight rather than
being strictly a rehashing of events through expo-
sition and colorless quotes. It was preferable to tell the stories
from the street, using the voices of the people
directly affected, speaking about emotion and heartfelt dismay,
mainly because the official sources had little
to no information. From that day continuing forward, media
outlets concentrated more often than previously
on description, observation, and direct reaction to the day's
events, telling the story in a more personal, hu-
manistic way.
The impact of The New York Times's bold “Portraits of Grief,”
brief, anecdotal profiles of the fallen of 9/11,
on how all news would be written in the future was enormous.
News could be informative as well as evoca-
tive. No longer was a mainstream media provider expected to be
unbiased and straightforward telling just the
facts, but rather, a eulogistic tone and reverence for the
individual was expected. And because consumers
became accustomed to reading the kinds of personal and
emotional stories from the weeks and months fol-
lowing 9/11, they did not want to go back to strict hard news.
Rather, they began to show a preference for
interpretive, descriptive, immediate, personal, and emotional
narrative stories as a vehicle for news. It would
be like expecting a theatrical audience once invited to view a
performance from the main floor of the auditori-
um before the orchestra pit to go back to the third balcony and
rely on opera glasses to absorb the action of
the play. Once consumers became accustomed to such softer
news deliveries of stories, it would be difficult
for them to regain an appetite for news briefs.
The narrative movement in journalism was not born as a result

of the events of 2001, but rather, the genre
of narrative became more emphasized in more newsrooms in the
21st century than in previous generations.
Narrative had been practiced by maverick writers, such as Joan
Didion, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson,
and Gay Talese, in the 1960s and 1970s under the genre “new
journalism.” However, the cultural reverence
for storytelling and what can be considered evangelism for
bringing the narrative form to daily journalism was
energized in the 21st century.
Narrative made the format of news more about craft and style
than the objective delivery of news. That is not
to say that the masters of the craft, from Tracy Kidder to Alex
Kotlowitz, Katherine Boo, and Anne Hull, were
not solid reporters making painstaking efforts to be accurate,
fair, balanced, and ethical in their stories. But the
methodology of narrative writers—applying the craft of fiction
writers to the coverage of news events—was
widespread and encouraged more often than other forms at the
start of the 21st century. It is a form of news
storytelling that is highly rewarded by editors and by prize
committees, with 73% of the news stories receiving
Pulitzer Prizes in 2005 told in the narrative form.
The most talented reporters and writers are granted time to
write enterprise stories and given the space to
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translate assignments into narrative masterpieces, which can be
the result of months of investigative report-
ing and meticulous writing. The problem is that not everyone is
good at writing narrative news and delivering
simple information in the narrative form. Not every news story
deserves a narrative approach, and not every
story should be 50 inches long. As Ken Fuson of the Des
Moines Register said, “Sometimes there is no uni-
versal truth. Sometimes it is just a parade.”
What is News Now and Going Forward?
Contemporary culture has succeeded in altering our perceptions
of newsworthiness, forcing us to redefine
what is news, away from the time-honored and perhaps outdated
news values of unusualness, timeliness,
proximity, impact, prominence, consequence, human interest,
and conflict.
Many cultural and economic influences have helped us create a
demand for information that is conveyed in a
different way or in a multitude of platforms, meeting a different
set of news value requirements. This is news
with an emphasis on individual and unofficial voices, relayed in
an intimate style of narrative that conveys
information as story, turning newspapers into storypapers and
stories into reinforcements of a media compa-
ny's brand. The author Doris Lessing said in her Nobel Prize
acceptance speech in 2007, “It is our stories that
will re-create us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed.”
Storytelling is such a powerful tool in our culture
and used in the mainstream of news in the 21st century that the
recounting of individual stories may serve
as a mechanism for readers' understanding of the immediate and

larger world of our culture today and for
generations to come.
Even with the changing definitions of news and news values, it
may well hold true that the man-bites-dog
story forever remains newsworthy, captivating us with the base
unusualness. And then what could be truly
worth waiting for is an exclusive interview with the dog.
MicheleWeldon Northwestern University
References and Further Readings
Anderson, C.(2006).The long tail: Why the future of business is
selling less of more. New York: Hyperion
Bird, S. E.(2003).The audience in everyday life: Living in a
media world. New York: Routledge
Boczkowski, P.(2005).Digitizing the news: Innovation in online
newspapers. Cambridge: MIT Press
Clark, R. P., & Scanlan, C.(2006).America's best newspaper
writing: A collection of ASNE prizewinners (2nd
ed.). New York: Bedford/St. Martin's
Curtain, P. A.Dougall, E.Mersey, R. D.Study compares Yahoo!
News story preferences. Newspaper Research
Journal28(4)22–35. (2007).
David, S.(2008, January 20).Does the news matter to anyone
anymore?. The Washington Post, p. B.1.
Downie, L., Jr., & Kaiser, R. G.(2002).The news about the
news: American journalism in peril. New York: Vin-
tage Books
Fenton, T.(2005).Bad news: The decline of reporting, the
business of news, and the danger to us all. New
York: Regan Books
Friedman, T. L.(2005).The world is flat: A brief history of the
twenty-first century. New York: Farrar, Straus &
Giroux
Gillmor, D.(2004).We the media: Grassroots journalism by the

people, for the people. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reil-
ly Media
Gladwell, M.(2005).Blink: The power of thinking without
thinking. New York: Little, Brown
Hamilton, J. T.(2004).All the news that's fit to sell. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press
Harrington, W.(1997).Intimate journalism: The art and craft of
reporting everyday life. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage
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Page 11 of 12
Hirschorn, M.The pleasure principle. The Atlantic
Monthly300(5)137–142. (2007, December).
Horrigan, J.(2006, March 22). For many home broadband users,
the Internet is a primary news source. Wash-
ington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved
December 18, 2008, from http://www.pewinter-
net.org/pdfs/PIP_News.and.Broadband.pdf
Kovach, B., & Rosenstiel, T.(2001).The elements of journalism:
What newspeople should know and the public
should expect. New York: Crown
Meyer, P.(2004).The vanishing newspaper: Saving journalism in
the information age. Columbia: University of
Missouri Press
Mnookin, S.(2004).Hard news: The scandals at The New York
Times and the future of American media. New
York: Random House

Overholser, G., & Jamieson, K. H. (Eds.). (2005).The press.
New York: Oxford University Press
Perseus Publishing (Eds.). (2002).We've got blog: How weblogs
are changing our culture. Cambridge, MA:
Perseus
Pink, D. H.(2005).A whole new mind: Why right-brainers will
rule the future. New York: Penguin
Project for Excellence in Journalism. (2007).News investment.
In The state of the news media 2007. Re-
trieved September 4, 2008, from
http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2007/narrative_cabletv_ne
wsinvest-
ment.asp?cat=5&media=6
Roberts, G., (Editor-in-Chief), & Kunkel, T., (General Ed.).
(2002).Breach of faith: A crisis of coverage in the
age of corporate newspapering. Fayetteville: University of
Arkansas Press
Schudson, M.(1995).The power of news. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press
Schudson, M.(2003).The sociology of news. New York: W. W.
Norton
Steiger, P. E.(2007, December 29). Read all about it: How
newspapers got into such a fix, and where they
go from here. The Wall Street Journal (Eastern Edition), p. A.1.
Retrieved December 18, 2008, from ABI/IN-
FORM Global database.
Weingarten, M.(2006).The gang that wouldn't write straight:
Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, and the new journalism
revolution. New York: Crown
Weldon, M.(2008).Everyman news: The changing American
front page. Columbia: University of Missouri
Press
Zelizer, B., & Allan, S.(2002).Journalism after September 11.
New York: Routledge
• news

• journalism
• news values
• web sites
• newspapers
• journalists
• consumers
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http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_News.and.Broadband.pdf
http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_News.and.Broadband.pdf
wsinvestment.asp?cat=5&media=6
wsinvestment.asp?cat=5&media=6
http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412964005.n6521st Century
Communication: A Reference HandbookThe Changing Nature of
“News”
Encyclopedia of Journalism
Printing
Contributors: Frank J. Romano
Book Title: Encyclopedia of Journalism

Chapter Title: "Printing"
Pub. Date: 2009
City: Thousand Oaks
Print ISBN: 9780761929574
Online ISBN: 9781412972048
Printing is the reproduction of text and images in quantity on
paper. Modern printing has become highly so-
phisticated and more digital in nature and has been transformed
from art to science. New digital printing
processes combine the use of advanced pre-media systems
(preparation of content for printing or publishing),
lasers, plates, presses, inks, papers, electronic controls, and

digital imaging and printing systems.
Origins
Printing from movable (or exchangeable) type appeared in
China and Korea in the eleventh century. The old-
est known printed rather than manuscript text was printed from
clay in Korea in 1397 A.D. In 1440, Johannes
Gutenberg of Mainz (Germany) introduced printing with ink on
paper to the Western world with his invention
of movable cast metal type mounted on a converted wine press.
Until Gutenberg's invention, all books in the
West were laboriously handwritten or copied by scribes.
Changes in press construction evolved slowly until
the first all-metal press was built in England by the Earl of
Stanhope early in the nineteenth century. Expanded
use of printing was spurred by the growth of book and
newspaper publishing and the need to produce more
copies of publications faster. During the Industrial Revolution
the job (or platen) press and the cylinder press
were developed. The first successful cylinder press, in which a
rotating cylinder was used to press the paper
against a flat type bed, was the steam-powered press built in
London by German inventor Frederick Koenig.
It was used for the Lon don Times in 1814 and was capable of
producing 1,100 sheets per hour. Cylinder
presses provided the speed for high-capacity magazine,
newspaper, and book printing.
Mechanized Printing
American Richard Hoe manufactured the first rotary press in
1846. The first such press was installed at the
Philadelphia Public Ledger. Early models produced 2,000
impressions per hour. The first web (roll-fed) press
was developed by American William Bullock in 1856. These

early web presses delivered 15,000 signatures
(multiple pages printed on one large sheet) per hour, printed on
both sides. A device for folding the papers as
they came from the press was added in 1875.
Letterpress printing (metal type) was replaced by offset
lithography in the 1960s.
Lithography
The basic principle of lithography—“stone writing”—is based
on the principle that oil-based ink and water do
not mix. It was discovered by Alois Senefelder of Munich about
1798. Working on a highly porous stone, he
sketched his design with a greasy substance that adhered to the
stone. He then wet the entire surface with
a mixture of gum arabic and water. It wet the blank or nonimage
areas, but the greasy image repelled the
ink. An ink made of soap, wax, oil, and lampblack was rolled on
the stone. This greasy substance coated the
image but not the moist blank area.
Senefelder called his invention “chemical printing.” Artists
used lithography to make reproductions of art-
work—drawings and paintings.
The first steam-driven press for lithography was invented in
France in 1850, and introduced in the United
States by Richard Hoe in 1868. Direct rotary impression for
lithography was introduced in the 1890s using
grained zinc and aluminum metal plates to which images were
hand transferred from stones using starch-
coated transfer sheets.
In 1906, the first “offset lithographic” rotary press began
printing sheets in Nutley, New Jersey, an invention

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of Ira Washington Rubel. offset lithography transfers the image
from the plate to a rubber blanket and then to
the paper.
Digital Imaging
The age of electronics and computers changed the way printed
products were created and produced. The
first printing production operation to be affected was
typesetting with the introduction of the Intertype Fotoset-
ter in 1949 and the Photon in 1954. offset lithography did not
need metal type and this accelerated the growth
of photo offset preparation. In 1950, the PDI Electronic Scanner
was introduced for color separations. To print
color photographs, they must be “separated” into cyan, magenta,
yellow, and black plates. Neither technology
advanced until the 1970s, when the video display terminal
(VDT) or television screen and computers were
combined to improve electronic typesetting, and Electronic Dot
Generation (EDG) and digital magnification
expanded electronic typesetting.
The digital revolution in typesetting began in 1985 with the
introduction of the plain paper typesetter and the
film imagesetter. In 1985 the imagesetter and Raster Image

Processor (RIP) fostered the development of de-
vice-independent prepress systems known as Desktop
Publishing that displaced the device-dependent Color
Electronic Prepress System and even tually replaced
conventional prepress systems.
Platemaking advances began with laser plate-making in 1975;
laser engraved cylinders for flexog-raphy
(printing from raised plastic plates) and engraving assists for
gravure (printing from cells etched into the plate)
in the 1980s; computer-to-film in the 1980s; to computer-to-
metal plates in 1991.
Each modern printing process has three main operations:
Prepress, Press, and Postpress. The first and last
steps are very similar for all printing processes. The prepress
step involves preparing text and graphics for
printing. Before the introduction of electronics and computers
in printing, most prepress operations were man-
ual using handset type and/or typesetting machines, process
cameras for making page films, film processing,
manual color correction, film assembly, and page and signature
layout (multiple pages on one plate). Digital
imaging technology has replaced all of these manual metal and
photomechanical operations; pages are now
created and assembled on computer screens using desktop
software.
Postpress or finishing is the operation for cutting, folding,
assembling, and binding sheets into final form—and
it is largely unchanged.
On the other hand, the press or printing step uses presses that
are different for each printing process. There
are two major classifications of printing processes: (1) plate,
pressure or impact processes such as offset lith-

ography, letterpress, flexography, gra vure, and screen printing;
and (2) plateless or dynamic processes such
as electrophotography, inkjet, ion, or electron charge
deposition, magnetography, thermal transfer printing,
thermal dye sublimation, and elec-trocoagulation. It is predicted
that newspapers will be printed using these
new printing processes.
Plate printing processes use mechanical printing presses to exert
the heavy pressure needed to transfer ink
to paper and are the processes used to support long-run (many
copies) magazines, news papers, books,
packaging, and other printed products.
Plateless printing systems are used for copying and digital
printing. They produce an image during each cycle
of the printing device. The image can be the same or can be
changed from cycle to cycle. This feature en-
ables digital printers to print vari able information such as
coding, addressing, and personalizing promotions
and documents. The printing speed, however, is slower than
plate processes, but there is no plate loading
and no drying time. Therefore they are used primarily for short
runs, on-demand, and/or variable information
printing.
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Ink-Based Printing Processes
All printing processes are concerned with
• Image or printing areas,
• Nonimage or nonprinting areas.
After the text and imagery have been prepared for reproduction
(the prepress step), each printing pro cess
has definitive means of separating the image from the nonimage
areas. Ink-based or conventional printing
has four types of printing processes:
1. Planographic—printing and nonprinting areas are on the same
plane surface and the dif-
ference between them is based on chemical properties—ink is
either accepted or reject-
ed. Examples are offset lithography, collotype, and screenless
printing.
2. Relief—the printing areas are on a raised surface and the
nonprinting areas are below
the surface. Examples are letterpress and flexography.
3. Intaglio—the nonprinting areas are on a plane surface and the
printing areas are etched
or engraved below the surface. Examples are gravure and steel-
die engraving.
4. Porous—the printing areas are on fine mesh screens through
which ink penetrates, and
the nonimage areas are a stencil over the screen to block the
flow of ink. Examples are
screen printing and stencil duplicating.
Planographic-Offset Lithography

Offset lithography uses thin aluminum metal or polyester plates
with the image and nonimage areas on the
same plane. There are two basic differences between offset
lithography and other processes: (1) it is based
on the fact that oil (ink) and water do not mix, and (2) it uses
the offset principle in which ink is transferred from
the plate to a rubber blanket on an intermediate cylinder, and
from the blanket to the paper on an impression
cylinder.
On a lithographic printing plate, the printing areas are ink-
receptive and water-repellent, and nonprinting areas
are water-receptive and ink-repellent. When the plate mounted
on the plate cylinder of the offset press is
rotated, it comes into contact with rollers wet by a water or
dampening solution and rollers wet by ink. The
dampening solution wets the nonprinting areas of the plate and
prevents the ink from wetting these areas.
The ink wets the image areas that immediately are transferred to
the blanket cylinder. The inked image is
transferred by pressure to the paper as the paper passes between
the blanket cylinder and the impression
cylinder.
“Offset” is not a process. Letterpress and gravure (and even
digital printing) can also be printed using the
offset principle. A main advantage of the offset principle is that
the resilient rubber blanket produces a clearer
impression on a very wide variety of paper surfaces and other
materials with both rough and smooth textures.
Also, it extends plate life and reduces press make ready (the
process of setting up the press for printing by
loading plates, paper, and ink).
Both sheetfed and web (roll-fed) presses are used. Sheetfed

lithog raphy is used for printing advertising col-
lateral, books, catalogs, greeting cards, posters, labels,
packaging, folding boxes, decals, coupons, trading
stamps, and art reproductions. Also many sheet fed presses can
perfect (print both sides of the paper, which
is also called duplexing) in one pass through the press. Web
offset prints on rolls of paper and is used for print-
ing business forms, daily and weekly newspapers, inserts,
advertising lit erature, long-run catalogs, books,
encyclopedias, and magazines.
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Relief-Letterpress
Letterpress is the method of printing Gutenberg invented in
1440 and has been used for job and commercial
printing. It is a relief method of printing that can print from cast
metal type, molded duplicate plates (still used
for some package printing), or photopolymer plates on which
the image or printing areas are raised above the
nonprinting areas. Viscous oil-base and ultraviolet (UV) inks
are used. The ink rollers come in contact with
the raised areas only, and the inked image is transferred directly
to the paper. Commercial letterpress has
declined in use because too much time was consumed in
makeready (building up of the press form so both
the light and heavy areas print with the correct impression).

Letterpress makeready is a manual process that
is very skill- and time-intensive and therefore very expensive. It
is one of the main reasons that the letterpress
has declined in use. It is still used for corrugated carton
printing, imprinting, and numbering. Four types of
presses were used: platen, flatbed cylinder, rotary, and belt.
Letterpress is making a comeback in specialty
printing using photopolymer plates and UV inks on narrow web
presses.
Relief-Flexography
Flexography is a form of rotary web relief printing like
letterpress but using flexible rubber or resilient pho-
topolymer relief plates, and fast-drying low-viscosity, solvent-
based, water-based, or UV-based inks fed from
an anilox inking system (rollers with many cells in them to
facilitate ink delivery). Most flexographic presses
are webfed in three basic approaches: stack, in-line, and central
impression cylinder presses. Almost any
material that can go through a web press can be printed by
flexography—decorated tissue, plastic bags,
pressure sensitive labels, corrugated board, and materials such
as foil, cellophane, polyethy lene, and other
plastic films. It is well suited for printing large areas of solid
color with high gloss and brilliance. The growth
of flexography parallels the expansion of the packaging
industry, especially flexible packages. Development
was based on the central impression cylinder press, laser-
engraved ceramic anilox ink metering sys tems,
laser-imaged photopolymer plates, and water-based and UV
inks.
Intaglio-Gravure
Gravure image areas consist of cells or wells etched or engraved

into a copper cylinder, while the unetched
surface of the cylinder represents the nonprinting areas. The
image cylinder rotates in a bath of ink. The ex-
cess is wiped off the surface by a flexible steel doctor blade.
The ink remaining in the thousands of recessed
cells forms the image by direct transfer to the paper as it passes
between the plate cylinder and the impres-
sion cylinder. Three types of processes are used for making
gravure printing cyl inders: (1) chem ical etching
produces cells of the same size or area with varying depths; (2)
elec tro mech anical en graving produces
cyl inders with cells that vary in area and depth; and (3) direct
digital laser etching pro duces cells of vary-
ing area and depth. Gravure printing produces excellent
reproductions of pictures, but slightly ragged type.
The high cylinder-making cost usually limits use to very long
runs. The use of halftone and film-less gravure
has reduced these costs and made gravure competitive in certain
shorter run markets. Gravure is used for
long runs of newspaper supplements, circulars, magazines,
catalogs, as well as special products such as
wall paper and packaging. Cylinders can be reused many times.
Many magazines and catalogs are hybrid
publications—part gravure and part lithography. The long-run
editorial sections are gravure and the short-run
geographic, demographic, and advertising sections are printed
with offset lithography. All pages are then as-
sembled in automated bindery systems.
Porous—Screen Printing
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Formerly known as silk screen, this method once employed a
porous screen of fine silk, nylon, dacron, or
stainless steel mounted on a frame. Many materials are now
used to make the stencil, which is produced,
manually, photomechanically, or electronically. Printing is on a
wide range of substrates under the screen by
applying ink with a thick consistency forced through the fine
mesh openings with a rubber squeegee. The pro-
duction rate, once limited by the drying time of the ink, has
been in creased by the development of automatic
presses, im proved dryers, and new UV inks. Most presses are
flatbed. Rotary screen presses speed up pro-
duction considerably because they allow continuous operation.
Screen printing usually can be recognized by
the thick layer of ink and is used for fabric, apparel (especially
T-shirts), signage, and specialty materials.
Lithography, letterpress, flexography, gravure, and screen
printing account for the majority of all reproduction
on paper and special substrates; however, digital printing
processes are making rapid inroads because of
their ability to more effectively handle very short runs and
variable information printing.
Digital Printing Processes
Copying and digital duplicating are also called reprography or
reprographics. For fewer than 100 copies, the
copier has been the fastest and most economical method of
reproduction—if only hard copy originals are
available. Above 100 copies, highspeed copiers and/or

duplicators are used, but these are now mostly digital
printers and can accept hard copy or digital files. Reprography
is used extensively by in-house printing de-
partments and quick printing shops. The only method for
making copies of documents before 1940 was the
photographic print called a photostat, that was time-consuming,
and expensive. In the 1950s the 3M Ther-
mo-Fax used heat to make copies. The Xerox 914 in the 1960s
was the first to introduce plain paper copying
using electrophotography (toner). Subsequently, a number of
photocopying systems were developed, such as
photo-based diffusion transfer processes that were popular in
Europe. Electrophotography (toner) has domi-
nated the copier market, but inkjet printing is making inroads.
Electrophotography, also called xerography or electrostatic
printing, is based on electrostatic transfer of toner
to and from a charged photocon-ductor surface. Copiers use
electrophotographic coatings such as selenium,
cadmium sulfide, zinc oxide, or organic photoconductors to
produce the images in the copier. The photocon-
ductor converts light energy (photons) into electrical energy
(electrons). These coatings are charged with a
corona discharge in the dark and lose the charge on standing or
when exposed to light, such as that reflected
from the white areas of an original or by a laser or other light
source. The image areas that remain charged
are developed with an oppositely charged dry powder or liquid
toner and are transferred from the electropho-
tographic surface onto plain paper using electrostatic attraction.
The electrophotographic coating is cleaned
and can be re-imaged many times. Color copiers use similar
principles but they have four or more colored
toners rather than one. The term digital press implies a higher
level of operating speed and capability for pro-
duction applications.

Copiers are no longer manufactured as such. The function of
copying a hard copy original is now performed
by multifunction printers (MFPs). These devices incorporate a
scanner, a digital printer, and a Digital Front
End (DFE) to accept files. They can scan, print, fax, and copy.
Fewer and fewer copies are made as more and
more files are sent to these devices for printing. MFPs may be
black-and-white (also called monochrome) or
full color. Printers theoretically produce originals, and copiers
produce copies—but the term copy is used in
both cases.
Duplicating
Before copiers and digital presses, copies of pages in quantities
from 50 to 5,000 were produced on offset
lithographic duplicators. There were offset presses in sizes up
to 12 by 18 inches (A3+). The offset duplica-
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tor was the mainstay of the printing industry and allowed many
entrepreneurs to start printing companies.
Copier/duplicators were once small offset presses with online
polyester plate-making. Over time they became
high-speed copiers that “photographed” paper originals, and
today they are digital printers. Stencil and spirit

duplicators are based on the mimeograph that was invented by
Thomas Edison and marketed by Albert Blake
Dick. They work by forcing ink through a porous stencil and
produce copies on plain paper. New versions of
these printers use digital files to image the stencils.
Digital Prepress
Prepress processes advanced from metal assembly to paste-ups
to film. New filmless digital imaging process-
es create page images directly on printing plates for
conventional printing, or directly on plateless presses
from computer files. These are called computer-to- or direct-to-
printing processes. The three types of filmless
digital printing processes are (1) computer-to-plate (CTP), (2)
computer-to-plate-on-press (DI for direct imag-
ing), and (3) computer-to-print (digital printing). All categories
use essentially the same prepress digital files
output from page composition software, page de scription
languages, and raster image processors (RIP) to
drive the lasers or imaging systems of the marking devices.
Digital Printing
Conventional printing uses plates that contain the text and
images to be reproduced in quantity on a mechan-
ical press that feeds inks to the plates and exerts heavy
pressures to transfer the inked images to paper or
other substrate. Digital printers apply copier and new digital
technology and use dynamic image carriers. Each
cycle of the printer transfers a fresh image to the substrate. It
can be the same or different than the previous
image. This feature makes it possible to print variable
information from print to print, which conventional print-
ing cannot do. It also allows electronic collation which
assembles all pages of a publication in order. Digital

printing is used for short-run, on-demand printing (print
immediately), but the speed for larger and longer-run
documents is slower than plate processes.
Digital printing began in 1970 with the introduction of inkjet
printing, followed by electrophotographic (EP)
laser printers in 1978; color electronic laser printers in 1993;
and many EP and inkjet color printing presses
introduced since 1995. Other digital printing technologies are
Magnetography, Thermal Transfer, Thermal
Transfer Dye Sublimation, and Inkjet printing.
Printing today is digital in some manner and all printing
technologies accept digital files. Static printing uses
an image carrier (plate or cylinder) that makes every impression
exactly the same. Digital printing refers to
any printing process that does not use a fixed-image image
carrier (a plate, for example). The process is
based on the regeneration of printed information for each and
every impression of a particular job. Toner, sol-
id ink, and inkjet (in all its forms) are considered digital
printing. DI printing (imaging plates on-press) or CTP
(imaging plates off-press) are digital in nature, but not digital
printing. Over time, offset lithographic plates will
be imaged on reusable image carriers on-press and the age of
“plateless” conventional printing will begin.
Computer-to-Print (EP) Systems
All purely digital printing systems accept digital files and thus
become computer-to-print digital printing sys-
tems. They may use electro photographic photoconductor,
inkjet, ion- or electron-charge deposition, magne-
tography, thermal transfer, and thermal dye sublimation
technologies, among others. They are called variable
data printing systems because each impression is regenerated

and can then include personalized information
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from a database. Each impression is an original. A copier makes
a second-generation copy.
A modern roll-fed printing press used in the production of
newspapers.
Source:http://iStockphotos.com/fotogaby.
Magnetography and electron deposition printing use special
magnetic toners to produce the printed images.
In these processes, there is less need for heat to fuse the toner,
and thus a wider array of papers may be
used, especially when litho is used for pre-printing.
Thermal transfer uses thermal print heads that melt spots of dry
thermoplastic ink on a donor ink ribbon and
transfer them to a receiver to produce color labels, logos, wiring
diagrams, bar codes, and other similar prod-
ucts. Thermal dye sublimation printers are like thermal transfer
printers except the inks on the donor ribbons
are replaced by heat-activated dyes. The thermal head converts
the dyes to gas spots that condense on the
receiver.

Inkjet systems use jets of ink droplets driven by digital signals
to print directly on paper or other substrates.
The first plateless digital printing system was an inkjet imager
introduced in 1970. Two types of inkjet systems
are in use:
• Continuous inkjet (CIJ)
• Drop-on-demand (DOD)
Continuous inkjets are used for direct mail and transactional
printing, digital color proofing, and variable infor-
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http://istockphotos.com/
mation on-press color printing systems at speeds up to 1,000
feet/minute.
Drop-on-demand inkjets are divided into Thermal, Piezo, and
Solid Ink/Phase Change digital printing sys-
tems.
Thermal inkjet uses heat and piezo inkjet uses pressure to create
droplets of ink.
Solid ink begins as a solid and is melted to produce drops.
Inkjet systems are rapidly gaining in use, especially
since new inks have been developed with light- and water-

fastness properties for printing on different sub-
strates. There are also large format web-fed and flatbed printing
systems used for producing displays, murals,
outdoor exhibits, posters, and paneled billboards. Water-based
(aqueous), solvent, and UV inks are used de-
pending on the printer type. Early water-based inkjet inks used
dyes; today many use pigments.
Press Configurations
Printing presses and digital printers are either sheetfed or roll-
fed (also web-fed and continuous feed).
Sheetfed presses are used for commercial printing where
lightweight and heavyweight paper stocks can be
easily changed. Roll-fed presses are used for printing longer
runs on lighter-weight stocks for magazine, cat-
alog, and newspaper publications.
Presses and printers are further categorized by the sheet size
(40-inch presses can print eight pages on one
side of the sheet at one time) and roll-fed presses use the width
of the roll and the cut-off in defining size.
Most publication roll-fed presses cut and fold the paper into
units called signatures that contain 4 to 64 pages.
Most packaging roll-fed presses are roll to roll.
The printed newspaper is facing many challenges—from
electronic readers and distribution to blogs and mo-
bile news access. As print circulation declines and page sizes
shrink, newspaper printing is projected to move
to digital printing (toner, inkjet, and other methods). These
devices do not use plates that print many copies
of the same content. Digital printers allow printing of
individualized newspapers with information aggregated
for one person. Journalism arose because of the printed
newspaper and today extends into television, radio,

and the web. But the printed newspaper will metamorphose from
a mass-produced publication to one that is
more personalized and the technology to produce it is at hand.
• ink
• printing
• printers
• digital imaging
• sublimation
• engraving
• reprography
Frank J. Romano
See also
• Automation
• Graphics
• Layout
• Magazine Design
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• Newspaper Design
• Type and Typography
Further Readings
Adams, J. Michael, and Penny AnnDolin. Printing Technology.
Albany, NY: Delmar, 2001.
Anderson, Reid. Exploring Digital PrePress. Florence, KY:
Cengage Learning, 2006.
Hird, Kenneth. Offset Lithographic Technology. Tinley Park,
IL: Goodheart Wilcox, 2000.
Kenly, Eric, and MarkBeach. Getting It Printed. Cincinnati, OH:
How Design Books, 2004.
Kipphan, Helmut. Handbook of Print Media. Berlin and New
York: Springer, 2001.
McCue, Claudia. Real World Print Production. Berkeley, CA:
Peachpit Press, 2006.
Romano, Frank J.Professional Prepress, Printing, and
Publishing. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall PTR,
1999.
Romano, Richard M., and Frank J.Romano. eds. The
Encyclopedia of Graphic Communications. Upper Sad-
dle River, NJ: GATF, Prentice Hall, 1998.
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http://origin-
sk.sagepub.com/reference/journalism/n389.xmlEncyclopedia of
JournalismPrinting

21st Century Communication: A Reference
Handbook
Broadcast Journalism
Contributors: Mark Leff
Edited by: William F. Eadie
Book Title: 21st Century Communication: A Reference
Handbook
Chapter Title: "Broadcast Journalism"
Pub. Date: 2009
City: Thousand Oaks
Print ISBN: 9781412950305
Online ISBN: 9781412964005

javascript:void(0);
Broadcast Journalism
One of me.
More than one of you.
I'm not in the room with you. And I'm trying to tell you
something you don't know. That's the essence of com-
munication. If there are a lot of you, we call it mass
communication.
If I'm talking and you're listening—or better, watching—all at
the same time and what connects us is a form of
electricity, that's broadcasting. If I'm telling or showing you
about something that just happened, that's broad-
cast news. If you're not all seeing it or hearing it at the same
time, you're getting it asynchronously. And if
I'm a broadcast journalist, that's probably not a word I'd want to
use, I'd want to use words and sounds and
pictures to tell you what I know, and to do it in less time than it
took me to learn it. Broadcast news is an effort
to give you a sense of the reality that the reporter and/or
videographer experienced. But it's a compressed
reality. If you don't have time to sit through, watch, or
experience an entire city council meeting, house fire,
election, stock market meltdown, revolution, or that cat being
rescued from a tree, radio and television news
can at least give you a sense of it in a very short time.

How well broadcast journalists do their jobs can be determined
in several ways. Stations and networks mea-
sure it by the number of people who tune in to hear or see the
broadcasts (and the commercial announce-
ments between the stories or segments). Some people listen to
or watch certain broadcasters because they
like the reporter/anchor's appearance or voice or way with
words. Some people watch because they find the
reporter easy to understand.
The best reporters just talk to you. And the idea of speaking the
news to people who are not in the same room
goes back even before the invention of radio.
In this chapter, we'll look at how broadcast news works, starting
with how broadcast news developed into a
particular form of journalism, then detailing the people and
technical requirements for a 21st-century broad-
cast news operation. We'll see how a news story is produced and
conclude by looking at what it takes to
become a broadcast journalist.
Some History
“Jo Reggelt”
No, that's not the world's first anchor. It's “good morning” in
Hungarian. Back in February 1893, you could
check into a hotel in Budapest, put on a pair of earphones
connected to a telephone line, and listen to men in
a downtown studio giving you the news of the day. Telefon
Hirmondó (Telephonic News Dispenser) was very
similar to the all-news radio stations you can hear today in some
big cities, with local news, European and
world news, business news, and sports news depending on what
time you listened.

An American company tried the same wired-news idea in
Newark, New Jersey, in 1911. Radio would not be-
come a mass medium for several more years. But by November
1920, people in Pittsburgh could tune in to
KDKA for live election returns and hear that Republican
Warren Harding had beaten Democrat James Cox
hours before they could read it in the morning papers.
Sometimes, just having the information makes people
want to listen.
Radio and newspapers competed for audience attention
throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Television wasn't
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introduced to the American public until 1939, and TV news had
to wait until after World War II. But the idea of
news with moving pictures had also been a reality since the late
1800s—except that you had to go to a movie
theater to see it.
Silent news films were first shown in France in 1895; Abner
McKinley's American newsreel company, Bio-
graph, filmed part of his brother William's presidential
campaign in 1896. Sound came along in the 1920s, and
by the 1930s, Fox Movietone, Paramount, Universal, Warner-
Pathe, and Hearst Metrotone were among the

equivalents of NBC, CBS, and ABC. Twice a week, they would
produce news-reels running for 8 minutes or
so for distribution to theaters, and they would compete fiercely
with each other and with the other news media
to bring audiences the first words and images of the news of the
day.
“Oh, the Humanity!”
Emotion is also a key factor in a good broadcast story. On a
stormy day in May 1937, the WGN Chicago
radio reporter Herb Morrison and his sound engineer Charlie
Nehlsen were sent to Lakehurst, New Jersey,
to record a radio feature story on the giant German dirigible
Hindenburg making its first transatlantic crossing
of 1937. Morrison was describing the slow, majestic docking of
the airship when fire suddenly erupted on the
hull. He tried to describe what he was seeing but simply ran out
of words as the emotional impact of watching
people die hit him. His recorded description (which was never
planned as a live broadcast) may be the first
case in American radio of a reporter “losing it” at the scene of a
violent event.
Newsreel cameras were also at the Hindenburg crash. But
nobody except the journalists and other people
on the scene saw it “live.” More than 70 years later, we're
surprised when we don't see something live. Im-
mediacy is another factor in determining what makes a good
broadcast story; it's one reason why radio and
television newscasts have so many field reporters interacting
with the anchors before or after their recorded
reports.
“This … is London.”

Presence is an important criterion for many broadcast stories—
having a reporter “on the scene” describing
or summarizing what is happening. Edward R. Murrow, who
built the CBS News team of radio reporters who
covered World War II, was a master of description that
conveyed both factual information and emotion. His
accounts of a German bombing raid on London or flying in an
Allied bomber over Germany, to cite two of his
most famous broadcasts, set the standard for what are still
called radio on-scene reports, or ROSRs (pro-
nounced RO-zers).
The January 1991 bombing of Baghdad as carried on CNN was
essentially a ROSR. CNN had installed a
special audio line to the hotel room where its correspondents
were staying, intending to use it just for com-
munication. But once the attack began, there was no way to get
live television pictures out. So, for several
hours, viewers in the United States and much of the world could
only hear the live description by John Holli-
man, Peter Arnett, and Bernard Shaw of what was going on.
Only later did video of the anti-aircraft fire and
explosions make it out of Iraq. By the time the U.S.-led
coalition was fighting the second Gulf War 12 years
later, American TV correspondents were broadcasting live
pictures from military vehicles racing across the
desert toward Baghdad.
Television and Television News Anytime
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Just as radio news challenged newspapers for audiences (and
advertisers) in the second quarter of the 20th
century, television news was a new competitor as the broadcast
networks grew after World War II. The first
newscasts were short broadcasts of theatrical newsreels; in
1949, NBC began the 15-minute Camel News
Caravan using newsfilm that its own cameramen had shot. The
three broadcast networks—ABC, CBS, and
NBC—eventually expanded their newscasts to 30 minutes; as of
mid-2008, PBS was the only broadcast net-
work doing an early-evening 60-minute news program, called
simply The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.
Radio news also expanded after World War II. In the 1960s, as
demand for news grew—especially in bigger
cities—some radio stations began offering nothing but news 24
hours a day. All-news radio sprang up in San
Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego/Tijuana, Chicago, New
York, Washington, D.C., and other cities, where it
remains a successful format. In 1975, NBC News tried a
national 24-hour radio network feed called the NBC
News and Information Service; it lasted only until 1977 and
never made money.
But in 1980, the cable TV entrepreneur Ted Turner decided to
try 24-hour news on television. CNN was born
in the basement of a little wooden house next to his WTBS
television studio in Atlanta and spent its infancy
in the basement of a remodeled country club not far away. The
growth of 24-hour cable and satellite news
networks such as CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News in the United
States, BBC World and Sky News in the Unit-

ed Kingdom, Al Jazeera in Qatar, and Euronews in France,
among others, extended the 24-hour news radio
concept into television—constantly updated information and
images on a schedule that the audience can re-
member.
At the international level, the 24-hour news services often have
national identities. CNN International is not
Voice of America television, but it is sometimes television with
an American voice. The U.S. government does
fund and run television services for viewers outside the United
States: Al-Hurra in Arabic and TV Martí in
Spanish. BBC's international television services reflect a British
worldview. China Central Television (CCTV)
International is news from an official Chinese perspective. Al
Jazeera's Arabic language service has been the
most successful of the various pan-Arabic news channels, and
its English language channel has a distinctly
Arab point of view.
And as the chapter “The Changing Nature of ‘News’” (67) has
pointed out, the nature of news is chang-
ing—now, some stories are available online faster and in more
depth than broadcast news can possibly pro-
vide. But from those first silent newsreel films more than a
century ago to the latest form of vodcast, some
things remain constant about telling stories with spoken words
and moving pictures.
The Big Picture: Getting it in and Getting it out
Television news is not a career choice for hermits. Even in the
smallest TV newsrooms, more than a dozen
people can be involved in turning an event in one place into a
report in front of a viewer's eyes and ears in an-
other place. They work in one of two broad areas: getting the

news from the source to the newsroom (known
as news gathering or news intake) and getting the news from the
newsroom to the viewer (known as news
production).
Here are some of the jobs involved. Depending on the size of
the news operation, one person may do more
than one of them.
The Camera Operator. Sometimes called a videographer or
photographer, this person captures the images
and sound of the event. Although some small consumer-type
video “camcorders” can take broadcast-quality
video, most professionals use much larger cameras that can cost
more than $50,000.
The Sound Technician. You've seen pictures of news crews
surrounding an interviewee where some people
are holding what looks like a fishing pole with a fuzzy gray
salami on the end near the person speaking. The
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“soundman's” job is to get the best possible audio by getting the
microphone close to the speaker, while the
videographer concentrates on getting the best possible image
and camera angle.

The Light Technician. Some television news crews have a third
person whose primary responsibility is getting
the right kind of light at the right angle on whatever the video-
grapher is shooting, whether it's a sit-down in-
terview or just something happening in a place that doesn't have
enough natural or artificial light.
The Reporter/Correspondent. The viewer sees and hears this
person deliver the report from the scene or later
from the studio/newsroom. He or she may gather all the
information on the scene, interview all the available
people, and write the script for a prepared report or make notes
to do a live report.
The Field Producer. In larger news operations—especially the
broadcast and cable networks—this person
may do everything the reporter does except actually go on the
air. Field producers often do interviews for
stories, often gather information for stories if the correspondent
is busy doing on-air reports, and are often the
people “in charge” of coverage at the story location. That
includes making all the logistical arrangements and
sometimes writing the story script with or for the
correspondent.
The “Truck Operator.” You have all seen pictures of TV news
vehicles with big dishes and/or antennas on
their roofs. Some are the size of minivans; others are as big as
delivery trucks and even semi-trailers. Before
the Internet added yet another distribution and transmission
medium, television news crews covering a story
“in the field” had two basic ways of transmitting their stories
back to the studio. If they were in the same city
as their newsroom, they could use microwave transmission to
broadcast from an antenna on the truck to a
receiving antenna or a series of antennas that would deliver

their pictures and sound to the station. If they
were in a different city, they would have to get the story back to
the station by satellite—using a different kind
of antenna that relays their pictures and sound to the station
through a receiver/transmitter “hovering” 22,000
miles above the earth. Both microwave transmission and
satellite transmission work on the principle of “line
of sight.” The transmitter has to be able to “see” the receiver—
either a microwave receiver that's usually on a
tower like a TV transmitter tower or the satellite in space.
Sometimes, in urban areas with lots of tall buildings,
it's impossible to see either one from a truck on the street. And
a satellite can “see” only about a third of the
earth's surface. So if a correspondent is transmitting a report
from China to the United States, it may have
to go through two satellites—up and down and up and down—
before it gets to the newsroom. Each of those
transmissions takes time—not much, but it adds up. That's why
if you watch an anchor in New York interview-
ing a correspondent in Beijing, there's a couple of seconds delay
between the time the anchor finishes asking
the first question and the time the correspondent hears that
question 12,000 miles away.
The Assignment Editor. Usually, the most frazzled-looking
person in the newsroom, the assignment editor is
in charge of all aspects of news gathering, both editorial and
logistical. As any good reporter does, the editor
(sometimes known simply as “the desk”) keeps in touch with
sources and contacts and keeps track of upcom-
ing events that are worth covering. The desk also dispatches and
coordinates crews in the field, using two-
way radios, telephones, and various forms of text messaging to
make sure that videog-raphers and reporters
and transmission trucks are where they need to be, which is
usually wherever the producers (see below) want

them. As a result, assignment editors often have to think ahead
in several different directions—kind of like
playing speed chess. Often, the desk will do research to pass on
to reporters in the field who are too busy
covering one aspect of a story to get all the information needed
for a complete report. Sometimes the desk
also handles the logistics for microwave and satellite
transmissions from the field to the studio, though many
stations and networks have a separate department for that.
The Producer. Just as the assignment editor is in charge of
getting the news into the newsroom, the producer
is in charge of the newscasts that get the news from the
newsroom to the viewers. Producers design the
broadcast using a rundown that lists each story/element of the
program; who the anchor or reporter is;
whether it's in the studio, newsroom, weather set, sports set or
whether it's a remote broadcast from a re-
porter; how long each segment is; what graphics are to go with
the story; and when to pause for commercial
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announcements. Producers make sure that there is a “flow”
between related stories and often write much of
the broadcast—especially the important “teases” designed to
keep the viewer from changing channels during
the commercial breaks. A producer may be responsible for one

or two newscasts each day; there's often an
executive producer in overall charge of a 2-hour morning
program or a 90-minute early-evening newscast.
The Assistant/Associate Producer (AP). In some newsrooms,
this person helps the producer by designing
over-the-shoulder and full-screen graphics that help anchors and
reporters tell stories visually. The AP often
coordinates all the visual elements in the newscast, making sure
that there is video for every story in the pro-
ducer's rundown. Like producers, APs also write some of the
newscast.
The Video Editor. Without video, a television newscast might as
well be on the radio. Editors work with the
material that videographers shoot locally and with nonlocal
material that may feed in from a bureau in another
city or from a network or news agency. Through the mid-1970s,
editors worked mostly with images shot on
16-mm film—cutting it into individual shots and assembling the
stories by gluing or taping the strips of film
together. Then came the shift to videotape, where editing
happened by dubbing (copying) shots and sounds
from the camera source tape to the tape that would be played
back on the air. Now, most television news
operations are moving to computer-based (nonlinear) editing,
using much more sophisticated versions of the
simple video-editing programs found on most personal
computers. Many of those newsroom computer video
systems also play the edited video back during the broadcasts.
The Writer. Many newsrooms have people who write stories that
the anchors will deliver on the air. Most
reporters write their own scripts (sometimes together with a
producer). Working from the producer's assign-
ments in the newscast rundown, writers look at video and

information (and sometimes gather information on
their own) and combine them into the most effective way for the
anchors to deliver the story to the audience.
The Director and Studio Production Crew. When a newscast is
on the air, the producer is in charge of the ed-
itorial (news) content, deciding whether to cut a report short or
eliminate some planned stories in order to get
“breaking news” into the program. The director—not a
journalist—is in charge of the control room and studio
crew that gets the broadcast on the air. He or she tells the
technical director (or switcher) which image to put
on the air: the studio camera pointed at an anchor, a recorded
report, or a series of graphics (still images)
that help tell a story; the technical director pushes the buttons
on a device that can look like an electronic
version of a five-keyboard church organ to make it all happen.
Studio camera operators point the cameras at
the people on the set, and a floor director relays time cues and
other information from the director. And there
is somebody running a device that electronically projects the
scripted words onto a mirror in front of the studio
camera lens so that the anchors can maintain eye contact with
the audience. The best-known brand of those
in the United States is TelePrompTer; in Britain, it's called
AutoCue, but the generic term is “prompter.” The
president of the United States uses them too when making major
scripted speeches in public, such as the
annual State of the Union speech to Congress. Look for what
appear to be clear glass rectangles on poles
several feet in front of the president on either side. The
audience sees the glass. The president sees the
words of the speech scrolling by.
The Anchors. No, we haven't forgotten them. Anchors are the
voice, face, and personality of a television

newscast (and of radio, too, without the faces). Their job is
usually to lead the viewer through the summary
of the day's events but can also involve hours of free-form
talking during “breaking” news—speaking calmly
to the viewers while the producer is snapping orders and
providing information through a small earphone.
Anchors often write many of the stories they deliver. But an
important part of their job is to deliver stories that
other people have written and to do it in such a way that they
appear to be just talking to the audience.
Don Hewitt, the producer who created 60 Minutes at CBS News,
coined the term anchorman to describe
Walter Cronkite's duties at the 1952 Democratic convention,
where he acted as a kind of host and central
reference point for the various correspondents covering
different parts of the event. Hewitt saw the position
as similar to the captain of a track team. Outside the United
States, people doing that job are often called
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presenters or news readers. But the greatest skill an anchor has
is the ability to deliver information without a
script. The term for that is ad lib, from the Latin ad libitum,
which can mean at one's pleasure or as much as
one likes.

Anchors may specialize in news, sports, or the weather. Many
weather anchors are trained and certified me-
teorologists who understand the science behind the forecasts
and may even do their own forecasting rather
than relying on the National Weather Service. They often design
their own maps and graphics—the visual
aids you see behind them on the screen. In reality, there is
nothing behind them in the studio except a green
wall. A technology called chromakey inserts the graphics
electronically; the weather anchors position them-
selves by watching small monitors on either side of the wall and
on the camera that show what the viewer
sees at home. Most weather anchors hold a device that looks
like a TV remote control. They are changing
their own graphics as they speak—watch closely as they
manipulate the controls.
TV News and Technology
In broadcast news, journalism and technology are inextricably
linked. As technology improves, journalists
have more tools to help them tell the story. But sometimes, the
tools drive the storytelling. Everybody who
watches television news has seen reporters standing in front of
something that relates to the story they're
telling. Often, it's part of a recorded report. As often as
possible, it happens live—the reporter precedes and
follows a recorded and edited report or continues to talk live as
recorded or live pictures of the event appear
on the screen.
As we have seen, it can take a lot of people behind the scenes to
end up with a reporter speaking live to
the viewers from somewhere outside the studio. And the fact
that a reporter can “go live” often adds to the
perceived importance of the event.

When CNN went on the air in June 1980, live transmissions of
things that were not scheduled events, such
as presidential news conferences or political conventions were
expensive, difficult, and rare. CNN promoted
itself as “the news channel.” Because of the emerging
technology, that meant trying to be the live channel
whenever possible—a characteristic that now applies to CNN,
its competitors, and television news operations
almost everywhere.
CNN's first day of broadcasting included live reports from Key
West, Florida, where thousands of Cubans had
been arriving by boat in a huge wave of legal emigration. The
correspondent Mike Boettcher later talked about
the problems of getting the satellite truck and its huge
transmission antenna ready in time for his broadcasts
and the technical problems of coordinating with producers in
the Atlanta headquarters—which were solved,
he recalled, by having someone on a pay phone hundreds of
yards away relaying instructions.
The Power of Technology: Two Examples
In May 1981, a Turkish gunman critically wounded Pope John
Paul II as the Pope was riding through St.
Peter's Square at the Vatican. The state-run Italian TV (RAI),
which had camera positions throughout the Vat-
ican, was covering what had been a routine event until the
shooting. Within minutes, RAI was transmitting live
and recorded pictures throughout Europe over the Eurovision
network that linked almost all of the continent's
national broadcasters and transmitting by satellite to news
organizations all over the world.
The author—then a producer/correspondent in CNN's Rome

bureau—quickly found himself on the air via
satellite through a jury-rigged system at the small RAI building
where the CNN bureau was located, while the
international assignment desk in Atlanta was frantically trying
to reach the bureau chief and camera crew,
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who were away from Rome covering another story, in order to
get them and other reporters back to Rome to
help deal with what had suddenly become a huge story.
The relatively new technology enabled the speedy trans-Atlantic
hookup, which meant that the author in
Rome was able to report live to the American audience—even
when there was nothing new to say because
the information was so sketchy. Technological improvements in
the decades since have made it easier to “go
live” from almost anywhere. But talking to anchors and the
audience when the reporter has little actual infor-
mation in a “breaking news” scenario remains, for many
journalists, one of the most difficult things to do.
Just a month after the papal shooting, a 6-year-old Italian boy
named Alfredo Rampi fell into a backyard well
near his house. The story attracted a lot of local attention,
because it had all the elements of human drama—a
little boy, a race against time. But it also had something new—

live coverage from RAI, which sent its new “live
trucks” to the well because it was in a village very close to
Rome.
The author included a short recorded clip of the rescue effort in
the daily 10-minute international news video
compilation assembled from a variety of international news
sources and sent by satellite to Atlanta, and
planned to file a telephone report after the transmission so that
editors at headquarters could combine the
pictures and narration into a story that would run in newscasts
for the next several hours.
But when CNN executives in Atlanta found out that a live
picture was available from Italian TV, they ordered a
new and very expensive one-hour satellite transmission from
Rome. The author, on the phone from the Italian
TV control room with Atlanta technicians, suddenly found
himself on the air and had to talk for nearly an hour
about what was going—getting information by listening to the
Italian TV reporters who were actually on the
scene describing it for their own audience.
The pictures themselves were not compelling—just a bunch of
people standing around a hole in the ground.
But the drama so captivated the Italian audience that the
president of Italy eventually went to the scene. CNN
was one of many news organizations to use the live pictures
from RAI during the 80-hour rescue drama; a
story that had begun as a local accident quickly became a
worldwide phenomenon.
At the time, Italians debated whether such coverage was a good
thing. That debate continues among journal-
ists and their audiences around the world more than a quarter-
century later. But there is no question that the

technology made the story what it was. Little Alfredo Rampi
died in that backyard well, and a nation mourned
him.
A week or so later, an almost identical incident happened in
another Italian village that was too far away from
a major city for Italian TV to send a live truck. It never became
more than a local story. But in October 1987,
18-month-old Jessica McClure fell into a well in Midland,
Texas. And what some critics called a “media circus”
began all over again. That story had a happier ending. But
whether it's live coverage of a dramatic rescue, a
war, or police chasing a car down a freeway, the debate
continues.
The Anatomy of a Story
Television—and television news—has much in common with
motion pictures. While the technology now exists
to allow just one person to gather information, shoot, edit, and
transmit a video report, the combination of
available budget and manpower (often involving union rules)
means that it very often takes more than one
person—sometimes dozens—to do the job.
In 1979, the author interviewed the African politician Robert
Mugabe, then leading one of the factions at-
tending a London conference on who would rule a postcolonial
Rhodesia (Mugabe would eventually become
president of Zimbabwe). To record an interview for excerpting
in a story on the conference for an American
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network, there were three of us, including a two-person crew
(one for camera, one for sound). To record the
same sort of 5-minute sit-down interview to run at the end of a
British documentary that night, the British net-
work had 11 people—because it was for the “current affairs”
department, not the evening news.
The growth of 24-hour news services on domestic cable and
international satellite has changed the news
gathering and production process. The need to “fill” 24 hours
with as much “new” information as possible
sometimes means that stories that once would have been
considered of limited local interest now have a new
prominence.
From North Platte, Nebraska—the smallest U.S. city that has
locally produced TV news—to New York City,
where at least eight stations and local cable services compete
for the local news audience, the process is
much the same.
News in any medium comes from a variety of sources.
Sometimes a reporter or producer will come up with
a story idea individually or at one of the daily story and
assignment meetings that go on in every newsroom.
Sometimes story ideas come from press releases. Sometimes
they come from listening to emergency ser-
vices dispatchers and crews talking to each other by radio. And
sometimes they come just by chance.

What If … ?
The scenario below has not happened—but it could. It's based
on circumstances and events that have hap-
pened, in one form or another.
Let's say a reporter and a videographer from a TV station in a
small Midwestern town are supposed to cover
an academic conference on international relations at the local
university. A news release from the university
alerted them to the meeting. It's about “conflict resolution” and
includes academics and minor government
officials from several countries. On their way to the university
in the morning, the reporter and the videogra-
pher are trying to figure out how to make an interesting story
out of a bunch of people in a big room. They
will interview some of the important players, get video of the
speeches and the audience, shoot a “stand-up”
report, and bring the videotape back to the station to edit a story
for the evening newscast.
The reporter knows that material from the event won't be
enough. So he asks for video from “the feed” to
incorporate into the story. The broadcast networks and cable
news services, including ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox,
and NBC, provide video feeds to their affiliated local stations
of national and international news that they ei-
ther generate themselves from their own bureaus or obtain from
international broadcasters such as the BBC
in Britain or CCTV in China or from international news
agencies such as Reuters TV and APTN, which main-
tain bureaus in many cities around the world. The assignment
desk or a producer records some video clips
from that day's feed of fighting in Iraq, refugees in Africa, and
a troop buildup on the border between two
Asian nations and keeps the recording and associated written

information for the reporter to use when it's
time to write and edit the story.
But before the crew gets to the event, the assignment editor
hears the highway patrol dispatcher sending
troopers, fire trucks, and ambulances to a crash on a four-lane
highway along the river that loops around the
town. He tells the conference crew to head there instead and
report back on what's going on.
It's bad. As the crew arrives, the highway patrol closes that road
and another major highway that intersects it.
Three cars are burning, and an overturned tanker truck is
leaking something into the river. The reporter and
the videographer leap into action, shooting video and
interviewing the police and witnesses. At least three
people are dead. This is a big local story.
The producer of the noon newscast wants a live report. That
means the assignment desk has to divert the
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microwave truck from another story and move it to the crash
while updating the station's Web site with what
he and the reporter are learning about the crash. It happens all
the time in local TV news.

When the truck with its antenna and portable editing system
arrives, the reporter and the videographer edit
the middle part of their story to transmit back to the station
before the newscast. The station's control room
will play back that part after the reporter introduces it live from
the crash site, unless the editing is finished so
close to the broadcast that the truck operator must roll it “live.”
Engineers and producers prefer to have it in
the control room ahead of time.
Because the crash has now closed two major highways through
that part of the state, two news helicopters
from stations in the state capital show up overhead just before
the noon newscast, shooting overhead video
of the crash scene to transmit back to their own noon news
programs. And one of the producers in the capital,
whose station is with the same network as the local station,
calls to ask the reporter to do another “live shot”
for his station, which will relay it to the capital using satellite
transmission.
Now, the local reporter has to do two reports—one for a local
audience, in which he can make specific local
landmark references for people who know the area as well as he
does and another for an audience 75 miles
away. People in the capital don't know or care that the crash is
near a spooky old former mental hospital on a
hill called The Ridges, so the reporter has to describe the scene
in broader terms, and focus on the regional
traffic disruption.
Just after the noon newscasts, there are more developments. The
county and state environmental protection
agencies have identified the substance from the truck that is
leaking into the river. It is threatening the fish in
the river and the water supply of three communities. The county

issues a “boil order” for thousands of water
customers. Now, a routine traffic accident has turned into a
major public health story. Radio stations, newspa-
pers, and their Web sites and the Associated Press news service
are all giving the story wider distribution.
The local station goes into “crisis mode.” The entire news
department is now working on live coverage of
the health threat. The local university (the one sponsoring the
international affairs conference) offers several
experts for interviews and analysis. Student journalists are
running around shooting video and interviewing
people for online, print, and broadcast coverage.
Now the local station's network news headquarters calls from
New York. Because of the environmental im-
pact, the network wants video of the crash, the river, the water
treatment plant, and anything else it can get
from the station along with a complete on-scene story to feed its
local affiliates while its own reporter, camera
crew, producer, and live transmission truck are on the way. So
once again, the local reporter has to prepare
a different kind of story—environmental, not traffic—for an
audience that only vaguely knows which state the
reporter is in and doesn't care about the victims or the traffic
mess.
Back at that international relations conference, there is concern
because the featured luncheon speaker—a
former graduate student who is now the deputy interior minister
of his oil-producing African nation—didn't
show up. Then, police release the names of the three people
killed in the crash. He is one of them. Now the
crash itself isn't just local news.
The phone rings in the local station's newsroom. It's the

executive producer of the national network in the
minister's English-speaking country. He has just seen the
minister's name online, and his network is about to
do a special report on the minister's death because he was about
to be named the opposition candidate in
that country's presidential election. He pleads for video and a
live report from the crash scene and arranges a
satellite transmission to get the material to Africa for a show
that begins within an hour. The station hires jour-
nalism students from the university to go through old yearbooks
and archived video from when the minister
was a student 15 years earlier to find something relevant to use
for the overseas report.
Now, the overworked original reporter and videogra-pher at the
crash scene have yet another story to pre-
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pare. For this one, the reporter must quickly learn how to
pronounce the minister's name (his first and last
names each have five syllables) and put together a story
focusing on the minister and the international con-
ference that they had never reached that morning because of the
accident.
So in this very possible scenario, within 6 hours of the accident,
the videographer's images of the crash scene

and the victims being put into ambulances are on the air in a
country thousands of miles away, and the re-
porter has had to prepare four different reports for four different
audiences on four different aspects of the
story.
That's television news in the 21st century.
What It Takes to Be a Broadcast Journalist
The “modern” television journalist is often doing much more
than reporters did in the early days of television
news—and doing it much faster. That puts a lot of pressure on
the people who do the reporting, because in
reporting (presenting) what they know to the audience, they
often don't have enough time to do the other kind
of reporting—gathering the information.
At the International Press Institute conference in Belgrade in
June 2008, the British journalist Misha Glenny,
who used to cover southeastern Europe for the BBC, talked
about changing times and changing pressures.
Glenny, a scholar's son whose first reporting job was for a
newspaper, suggested that the role of a foreign
correspondent had changed over the years—and not for the
better—because of pressure from employers.
He described the BBC's 1964–]1986 India correspondent Mark
Tully, who was born there, as “someone who
knew everything about India and everybody worth knowing in
the Indian elite.”
But he said it is rare now for reporters to know their countries—
that the pressures of multiple filing demands
from the BBC's domestic and international radio and television
services plus online create conditionsinwhich-
hesaid basic reporting—let alone investigative reporting—is

impossible.
Many journalism schools are training and educating their
students to try to meet the demands of the “con-
verged” newsrooms of the 21st century. The tools of the trade
are getting smaller, cheaper, and easier to use.
But using them to tell good stories well remains a challenge for
anybody who wants to work in broadcast jour-
nalism.
Your Turn?
We have seen how the techniques of broadcast journalism have
evolved over more than a century—from live
speech on the telephone to live and recorded speech on the radio
to silent and then sound theatrical news-
reels to live and recorded television to pictures and sound
online. Over the years, journalists have adapted
their storytelling techniques to take advantage of the new
technology and method of distribution. But, from
the KDKA announcer Leo Rosenberg, broadcasting the 1920
Harding-Cox presidential election returns, to the
hundreds of anchors and reporters and bloggers covering
presidential election night 2008, the aim has been
the same: Whatever the technology, get it to the audience
quickly—and be sure to get it right.
Broadcast journalism continues to evolve in the 21st century. If
you're interested in pursuing a career in it,
be sure to learn something about something other than broadcast
journalism. Expertise in economics, busi-
ness, politics, or international relations will help you tell better
stories. The education and training you get in
a broadcast journalism program will teach you how to tell
stories. The best journalism schools teach students
how to do everything—reporting, shooting, editing, anchoring,

crafting Web stories, producing, and assigning,
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because even at the big-city and network levels, there's a
growing demand for people who can do it all. They
used to be called “one-man bands.” Now some people use the
term backpack journalists.
Not everybody does everything equally well, but if you're
fortunate enough to be working as a reporter or
producer in a newsroom that has dedicated videographers and
video editors, you will do your own job better
because you know firsthand what they can and cannot do. And
whatever the medium, the job of a journalist
is ultimately to put clear, concise information into the
audience's heads—accurate information that educates,
enlightens, and, yes, sometimes entertains. Still interested?
MarkLeffOhio University
References and Further Readings
Bliss, E.(1991).Now the news: The story of broadcast
journalism. New York: Columbia University Press
Brown, R. J.(1998).Manipulating the ether: The power of
broadcast radio in thirties America. Jefferson, NC:
McFarland
CNN. (2000, May 18).Mike Boettcher, CNN national

correspondent, discusses his early years at CNN, includ-
ing stories about the first broadcast in 1980. Retrieved June 25,
2008, from http://www.cnn.com/chat/tran-
scripts/2000/5/18/boettcherindex.html
Foote, J. S. (Ed.). (1998).Live from the trenches: The changing
role of the television news correspondent.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press
Gábor, L., & Gíró-Szász, M.(1993).Telephonic news dispenser.
Budapest, Hungary: Hungarian Broadcasting
Company
Garay, R.(1992).Gordon McLendon: The maverick of radio.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press
Greenslade, R.(2008, June 17). IPI 2008: Glenny attacks BBC
for placing foreign correspondents under pres-
sure. Retrieved June 25, 2008, from
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/greenslade/2008/06/ipi_2008_glenny
_at-
tacks_bbc_fo.html
Hewitt, D.(2001).Tell me a story: Fifty years and 60 minutes in
television. New York: Public Affairs
History of the newsreel. (n.d.). Retrieved June 26, 2008, from
http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/filmnotes/news-
reel.html
Lipschultz, J. H., & Hilt, M. L.(2002).Crime and local
television news: Dramatic, breaking, and live from the
scene. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Schonfeld, R.(2001).Me and Ted against the world: The
unauthorized story of the founding of CNN. New York:
Cliff Street
Seib, P.(2001).Going live: Getting the news right in a real-time,
online world. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Little-
field
Wiener, R.(1992).Live from Baghdad: Gathering news at ground
zero. New York: Doubleday
• newsrooms

• news
• CNN
• broadcasting
• antennas
• television news
• trucks
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http://www.cnn.com/chat/transcripts/2000/5/18/boettcherindex.h
tml
http://www.cnn.com/chat/transcripts/2000/5/18/boettcherindex.h
tml
_attacks_bbc_fo.html
_attacks_bbc_fo.html
http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/filmnotes/newsreel.html
http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/filmnotes/newsreel.html
http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412964005.n7021st Century
Communication: A Reference HandbookBroadcast Journalism
Blogging
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INDUSTRY SNAPSHOT
According to the non-profit, non-partisan Pew Internet &
American Life Project (PIP), 32 million Americans read blogs

during the mid-2000s. Short for Web log, a blog is a one-to-
many, Web-based form of communication. It is similar in many
respects to a personal Web site, online journal, or diary that
readers can respond to, and often includes links to other places
on the World Wide Web. Effectively bringing together people
that otherwise would be separated by the boundaries of politics,
geography, and time, blogs are 24/7 soapboxes that people use
to express their opinions, complaints, and musings on any
conceivable topic—in chronological order.
Blogs have been called everything from personal broadcasting
systems to glorified electronic dictionaries. As Francine
Fialkoff wrote in the April 1, 2005 issue of Library Journal,
"While blogs can disseminate news from many sources, they
also can generate news and be news, too. They reflect
tremendous energy, often creating niches for and drawing
together likeminded readers. As with any written words,
however, in their immediacy, blogs can make mistakes."
ORGANIZATION AND STRUCTURE
In January 2005, Lee Rainie, director of the non-profit, non-
partisan Pew Internet & American Life Project (PIP), issued a
memo outlining the scope of blogging during the mid-2000s.
According to the memo, which provided the findings of two PIP
surveys conducted in November 2004, blog readership increased
58 percent in 2004. Among Internet users, 27 percent indicated
they were blog readers, up from 17 percent in February 2004.
This placed the number of American blog readers at 32 million.
In addition, 7 percent of U.S. adult Internet users (8 million
people) have created a blog or Web-based diary. Additionally,
12 percent (14 million people) have posted comments or other
material on another person's blog.
The Blogosphere
The online collective of blogs is commonly known as the
blogosphere. This virtual space has been referred to as a
modern-day Wild West, where authenticity and transparency are
highly prized. The blogosphere even has its own unique
terminology. For example, bloggers are people who post

information to blogs, while blogging is the actual act of
creating or posting to a blog. By contrast, blog readers are
people who read blogs but do not usually post information to
them.
The aforementioned Pew Internet & American Life Project
memo provided interesting information about bloggers, as well
as blog readers. According to the memo, Pew began surveying
Internet users about blog creation in 2002. While a mere 3
percent of users had created blogs in June of 2002, this number
increased to 5 percent in early 2004 and 7 percent in late 2004,
marking what some believe to be the beginning of a strong
growth trend. Pew indicated that 57 percent of bloggers are
male, and 48 percent are under age 30. Fully 70 percent have
broadband Internet connections, and 82 percent are considered
veteran Internet users who have been on line for six years or
more. In addition, 39 percent have college degrees and 42
percent have household incomes of more than $50,000.
Pew revealed that while blog readers, as a group, are more
"mainstream" than bloggers, there are similarities between
them. For example, blog readers tend to be males, young, well
educated, and experienced Internet users. In 2004 Pew indicated
that blog readership was increasing at an above average rate
among dialup users, people aged 30 to 49, minorities, and
women.
There are other key terms within the blogosphere. As writer Del
Jones explained in the May 9, 2005 issue of USA Today,
flaming is when bloggers "post indelicate responses and react
with incivility." In their joint 2005 report, Trust "MEdia" How
Real People are Finally Being Heard, public relations firm
Edelman and business intelligence solutions provider Intelliseek
defined several other blogging terms. Astroturfing refers to
phony grassroots efforts by agenda-driven organizations that
pay people (unknown to others) to say positive things about
their cause or organization. A burst or bursty happens when,
after being mentioned in a blog, a person, phrase, or issue is
suddenly catapulted into awareness for a brief moment. Finally,

comment spam refers to efforts by spammers to weave the same
types of unsolicited material that is circulated via e-mail into
blogs.
Within the blogosphere, blogs exist within every conceivable
category and niche. Because of their broad range, compiling an
exhaustive list of blog types is virtually impossible. Generally
speaking, blogs can be grouped within several broad categories.
In their 2005 report, Edelman and Intelliseek suggested a
taxonomy with the following categories: general consumer
blogs; focused consumer blogs; credentialed news blogs; A-list,
high-traffic blogs; corporate or B2B professional blogs; and
marketer-sponsored blogs.
One general note is that blogs can either be authored by one
individual or by a group. The latter, called groupblogs, involve
co-authors. Closely related to blogs are Wikis, which differ
from blogs in that anyone (not just the author or authors) is
allowed to edit content that has been posted.
General consumer blogs are written by common, everyday
people and cover the good and bad aspects of every conceivable
lifestyle and consumer issue. These types of blogs tend to be
highly personal, and many observers have criticized them for
being of little interest to anyone but the author and those within
his or her immediate family or social circles.
As their name suggests, focused consumer blogs also are written
by everyday people, but tend to zero in on a particular interest
area. The sheer scope of these focused blogs is enormous. For
example, the eatonweb portal lists 154 categories. Beyond
common categories like business, relationships, religion,
science, and sports, some of the more interesting categories
were archaeology, archivists, caravanning, fun, gadgets,
handwriting analysis, healing, homeland security, linguistics,
live role play, macrobiotics, peace, performance art, psychiatry,
surveillance, uprooted, weird/alternative, and zookeeping.
The eatonweb portal allows people to search for blogs in 47
different languages, including Arabic, Cambodian, Esperanto,
Farsi, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic, Latvian, Malay, Samoan,

Slovak, Taglish, Urdu, and Vietnamese. Users also can search
for blogs geographically by 166 different countries. These
ranged from Azerbaijan, Bahrain, East Timor, and Ecuador to
the Marshall Islands, Qatar, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe.
One hot topic of discussion during the mid-2000s was the future
of traditional journalism and news media in the wake of the
blogging revolution. This phenomenon is discussed in detail in
the Current Conditions section of this essay. However,
traditional media players have attempted to find a place in the
blogosphere through credentialed news blogs, in which
newspaper and magazine columnists use blogs as a publishing
medium. Examples of traditional media heavyweights that have
experimented with blogging include the New York Times and
the Washington Post. During the mid-2000s, one criticism of
this approach was that most credentialed blogs were still subject
to evaluation by a publication's editorial department. Some
critics argued that this removed or reduced the element of
authenticity found in blogs created by independent bloggers.
A-List, high-traffic blogs, according to the Edelman/Intelliseek
report, are produced by bloggers who have a meaningful
audience but no traditional media credentials. One example of
an A-list blog is the political blog Instapundit. Written by
Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee,
Instapundit claims to have more than 100,000 readers each day,
rivaling or exceeding the readership of many newspaper
columns.
Corporate or B2B professional blogs are written by business
professionals and may be intended for a company's internal use
or for outside industry professionals and customers. One
example of a leading company that uses both types of blogs is
IBM. In addition to producing a number of blogs for the public,
in 2005 IBM was piloting an internal blog system called
BlogCentral. The system allowed IBM employees to keep
personal blogs, and as of March 2005 included some 3,000
active blogs and 8,000 registered users.
In the March 28, 2005 issue of Info World, IBM researcher Dan

Gruen explained, "Because BlogCentral is searchable and
because you can easily see the latest postings across
BlogCentral as a whole, it can help you discover colleagues
throughout the company with interests similar to your own.
We've seen people using blogs to diary their daily experiences
using a new technology or building a new kind of system,
monitored by others as a sort of real-time virtual
apprenticeship, which lets them observe events as they unfold
and see the issues that arise and how they are addressed."
While many companies allow their employees to publish public
blogs, observers have noted that Fortune 1,000 chairmen and
CEOs have not adopted the practice. Some CEOs have cited
legal reasons for not writing blogs. For example, some worry
that their comments could be interpreted as forward-looking
statements by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or
that their remarks could endanger the company in some other
way. However, a number of high-ranking executives have
written blogs, including General Motors Vice Chairman of
Product Development Bob Lutz; Sun Microsystems Chief
Operating Officer Jonathan Schwartz; and Boeing Commercial
Airplanes Vice President Randy Beseler.
Finally, marketer-sponsored blogs, also known as adverblogs,
are used for purposes of marketing or advertising. These may be
developed by a company or by its marketing/PR agency. During
the mid-2000s, marketing and PR agencies were adding blog
services to their service portfolios, and in some cases were
opening specialty practices to help companies take advantage of
this emerging media niche. While Nike's Art of Speed is one
example of a successful adverblog, many other attempts to use
this approach have failed to resonate with consumers.
On a related note, companies often place ads on other blogs via
online agencies such as BlogAds or Google Ads, which allow
them to buy ads on all blogs within a certain category. While
click-through rates on each individual blog may be small, their
collective power is significant. The key, according to industry
observers, is that marketers are able to effectively target

messages to high-quality prospects that may be harder to reach
through other channels. Random House, Paramount Pictures,
Turner Broadcasting, Penguin Books, and The Wall Street
Journal are a few examples of companies that have advertised
on blogs.
During the mid-2000s some analysts argued that businesses
could not afford to ignore blogs as an advertising channel
because the potential for advertising revenue was too great.
However, others were skeptical about the power of blogs to
generate significant money for advertisers. Instead, they
indicated that blogs held more power as public relations tools,
which companies could use when launching new products or
services, or as a means of obtaining consulting work.
Using blogs to track and manage corporate and brand
reputations was one key strategy that some companies,
including Volkswagen, were employing during the mid-2000s.
Companies quickly recognized the wealth of honest feedback
that existed within blogs regarding products, brands, and
organizations. In order to harvest this valuable market
intelligence and employ effective brand and reputation
management strategies, marketers turned to firms like
Intelliseek, Factiva, Techdirt, and BlogPulse. In addition to
serving as a feedback mechanism, blogs also are a channel
companies can use to address rumors and concerns being
circulated by customers.
BACKGROUND AND DEVELOPMENT
According to a March 14, 2005 article by Daniel Conover,
which appeared in The Post and Courier, the origin of blogs can
be traced back to the mid-1990s when the World Wide Web first
became available to the public. "Web logs arose from a
combination of personal Web page technologies and popular
'digital community' applications such as Usenets and comment
threads," he explained. "While now-defunct sites such as
GeoCities offered free Web pages to noncommercial users in the
mid-1990s, Web developers saw a market for an easier-to-use
personal Web site, something designed for immediate

communication."
One of the blogging world's pioneers is software millionaire
Dave Winer, who started blogging in 1996 and created The
Scripting News Web log on April 1 of the following year. There
seems to be disagreement concerning who actually coined the
term blog. According to several sources, Internet writer Jorn
Barger coined the term Web log in late 1997. However, other
sources give credit to blogger Andrew Sullivan, who described
blogging as "democratic journalism" in a 2002 Wired article,
according to the Washington Times.
By 1999 several hundred Web logs had been created, and users
simply began referring to the sites as blogs. The first blogging
creation software tools and hosting services came onto the scene
that year, including Xanga, LiveJournal, and BlogSpot. These
three services remained the leading blog services during the
mid-2000s, with each claiming to have between 6.6 million and
8.2 million accounts. Blogger, a service that eventually was
acquired by search engine heavyweight Google, also was
established in 1999 and has been credited as a catalyst for
blogging's popularity because it allowed users with no
knowledge of computer programming language to post their
commentary online.
Blogs continued to grow steadily during the early 2000s, and by
mid-2001 there were an estimated 100,000 in existence. World
events led to a subsequent explosion in blog growth, including
the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United
States and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Bloggers also
began to have an impact on the political realm. For example,
they drew attention to commentary by former Senator Trent Lott
in 2002 that preceded his resignation as Senate Majority Leader.
Leading political blogs received an estimated 75,000 daily hits
by the end of 2003. That year, the Oxford English Dictionary
added blog-related terms.
Blogging exploded in popularity in 2004, largely because of the
U.S. presidential race. Bloggers proved they were an important
force when they successfully competed with mainstream media

in covering major political developments. Celebrities like
Barbara Streisand began writing blogs, and so-called "blog
stars" made television appearances.
CURRENT CONDITIONS
One hot topic of discussion during the mid-2000s was the future
of traditional journalism and news media in the wake of the
blogging revolution. In a nutshell, the traditional media
establishment found itself competing with common people who
shared uncensored news as it happened from points throughout
the world. This phenomenon has been called distributed
journalism, citizen journalism, as well as reality media, grass-
roots media, and new media. In addition to competing with so-
called distributed journalism, traditional media coverage itself
has been subject to discussion and criticism among bloggers,
adding a new element to the media world and increasing levels
of accountability.
The relationship of blogging to traditional media coverage can
be illustrated by several key examples. For example, the
tsunami that wreaked havoc on Southeast Asia on December 26,
2004 was documented by bloggers, who, in addition to
providing photos, video, and news of the disaster, also shared
casualty and missing person lists and provided links to
government agencies and disaster/relief organizations. During
the 2004 presidential race, several political bloggers were given
highly prized press credentials and allowed to report from the
Republican and Democratic national conventions along with
traditional media heavyweights. In addition, Howard Dean
leveraged his Blog For America site as a successful fund-raising
and volunteer recruitment tool.
"Rather-Gate," also referred to as "Memogate," is another
example of the impact that bloggers have on traditional media.
When CBS News' Dan Rather claimed to have memos proving
President George W. Bush compromised the terms of his
military service during the Vietnam War, bloggers proved the
documents were forged. Following the controversial September
8, 2004 Sixty Minutes II story, this led to the termination of

several CBS staff members, an apology from Rather, and an
internal review at CBS.
Blogs also were playing a unique role in America's military
presence in Iraq. Unlike any other war in history, Web-
connected soldiers were documenting and sharing stories,
opinions, photos, and more with the world in near real time
through military blogs. Also called milblogs, there were
approximately 50 military blogs in mid-2004, according to the
May 12, 2005 issue of USA Today. By mid-2005 this number
had increased to 200, and observers anticipated that some 1,000
milblogs would be in existence by the year's end. One factor
behind the growth of milblogs is concern among soldiers that
traditional media do not tell the entire story of what is
happening; milblogs give soldiers the power to share good news
with the world.
Most soldier-authored milblogs are written anonymously, either
on personal laptops or at Internet cafes the military has
established at larger bases in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some
soldiers have been reprimanded or demoted for potentially
jeopardizing operational security, and some commanders have
ordered soldiers to have their blogs reviewed before posting,
but this is not believed to be a widespread problem. While
milblogs have historical value, some historians have noted that
their content is likely to be less personal and revealing than
what would be included in letters home or regular journals.
Heading into the second half of the 2000s, the blogosphere was
poised to experience strong growth. This was evident by the
number of people who were still unaware of its existence. For
example, the aforementioned Pew Internet & American Life
Project memo indicated that blogs were still relatively unknown
during the mid-2000s. In the memo, Pew explained that 62
percent of all Internet users surveyed did not understand what
the term "blog" means.
INDUSTRY LEADERS
By the mid-2000s many leading technology firms had entered
the blogosphere. For example, Microsoft's MSN Spaces allows

people to create customizable blogs that users can post to via a
regular computer or from a mobile device. Search engines such
as Google also have a stake in the game. In February of 2003,
Google purchased San Francisco-based Pyra Labs, an early
developer of blogging technology that was founded by three
friends in 1999. The company's Blogger service was acquired as
part of the deal, and became part of Google's growing lineup of
user options. Despite the role these companies play, other firms
such as Six Apart Ltd. and Intelliseek are more exclusively
focused on the blogosphere.
Six Apart Ltd.
Established in 2002 by Ben Trott and Mena G. Trott, Six Apart
Ltd. is a true blogging pioneer. The company is a leading blog
software and services provider. Its offerings include the massive
LiveJournal online community, which is focused on personal
journals, as well as the easy-to-use TypePad personal Web
logging service. In addition, its Movable Type publishing
platform, which was introduced in 2001, is used at the
enterprise level by businesses. One interesting technology that
Six Apart offered was TypeKey, which it described as "a free,
open, comment registration system giving weblog authors
greater control for managing posted comments and preventing
comment spam. TypeKey helps ensure that people who comment
on a site have a verified identity, keeping weblog content and
conversations on track." In mid-2005 Six Apart was headed by
Chairman and CEO Barak Berkowitz. Founder Mena Trott
served as president, while her husband Ben Trott served as chief
technology officer. The privately held company had 75
employees at its offices in San Francisco, Portland, Tokyo, and
Paris.
Intelliseek
Founded in May 1997 by Executive Chairman Mahendra Vora
and Chief Technology Officer Sundar Kadayam, Cincinnati,
Ohio-based Intelliseek "creates technologies and platforms that
turn word-of-mouth behavior and online consumer-generated
media into timely market research for brands, companies,

marketers, researchers, and businesses." Since its establishment,
Intelliseek has grown through new technology developments,
which have led to offerings such as its Enterprise Discovery
Suite, as well as BrandPulse and BrandPulse Direct. In mid-
2004 the company introduced its free BlogPulse Web site,
which is used to track, search, and analyze millions of blog
postings every day. Acquisitions also have played a role in
Intelliseek's growth. One example is the company's October
2001 merger with PlanetFeedback.com, which allowed it to
offer consumer intelligence and feedback tools to brand
managers and corporate customers. Intelliseek made Inc.
magazine's list of the 500 fastest-growing U.S. private firms in
October of 2004. At the same time, Mike Nazzaro, who had
been serving as Intelliseek's president and chief operating
officer, was named CEO.
RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY
One emerging distribution technology in the blogosphere is
Really Simple Syndication (RSS). Blog readers use software
known as newsreaders, feed readers, or aggregators that
combine content feeds from multiple blogs (to which readers
subscribe) onto one Web page. This allows blogs to syndicate
their content, and eliminates the need for readers to visit the
individual blogs they are interested in. Most newsreader
applications, including NewsGator and loglines, are available
for free and will run inside of a Web browser window.
In its January 28, 2005 issue, The Financial Times noted,
"Today's simple readers still perform only rudimentary tasks—
for instance, the software might highlight all the new
information that has been posted to a site since it was last
checked. Tomorrow's more sophisticated software may be able
to draw on user preferences to find and filter information from
the web. For online publishers, this is already becoming of more
than academic interest."
In addition to aggregating news and blog feeds, aggregators are
beginning to be used as brand management tools, in that some
companies are using them to scan blogs for references to their

companies, brands, or products.
According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project (PIP),
only five percent of Internet users used RSS aggregators or
XML readers in early 2005. These experienced Internet users
were considered early adopters of a technology that many
expected to grow.
During the mid-2000s, the majority of blogs were text-heavy.
However, they were quickly becoming multimedia in nature as
bloggers posted photos, audio clips, and video clips to their
blogs. The emergence of podcasting, in which people download
content to portable media players on a subscription basis, led to
the emergence of audio blogs. In a similar vein, video blogs or
"vlogs" were another emerging blog form in the mid-2000s,
although opinions of observers were mixed on their growth
potential.
FURTHER READING
Bajak, Frank, and Darrell Proctor. "Blog of War Changing
Media Establishment." Rocky Mountain News, 28 March 2005.
Bazeley, Michael. "Audioblog.com Lets Bloggers Include
Sound, Video Files." San Jose Mercury News, 9 February 2005.
"Blog Blather: Blasting Off into the Blogosphere." PR News, 13
April 2005.
"Blog Readership Shoots Up 58% in 2004. 6 Million Americans
Get News and Information Fed to Them Through RSS
Aggregators but 62% of Online Americans Do Not Know What a
Blog Is." Washington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life
Project, January 2005. Available from
http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_blogging_data.pdf .
"Bloggers Provide Vital Component to Mainstream Media."
Asia Africa Intelligence Wire, 22 February 2005.
Conover, Daniel. "Blogging Comes of Age." The Post and
Courier (Charleston, SC), 14 March 2005.
"Corporate Overview." San Francisco: Six Apart Ltd. 23 May
2005. Available from http://www.sixapart.com.
Delio, Michelle. "The Enterprise Blogosphere." Info World, 28
March 2005.

Fialkoff, Francine. "The Power of Blogs." Library Journal, 1
April 2005.
Foremski, Tom. "Blogging Technology Opens Doors for
Enterprises." The Financial Times, 23 February 2005.
"Intelliseek History." Cincinnati, OH: Intelliseek Inc. 22 May
2005. Available from http://www.intelliseek.com/history.asp .
Jesdanun, Anick. "Are Your Workers Blogging about the
Company? Firings Prompt Some Employers to Redefine
Appropriate Online Behavior. Meanwhile, Others See Value in
Engaging Potential Customers Through Personal Web Journals."
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 13 March 2005.
Jones, Del. "CEOs Refuse to Get Tangled Up in Messy Blogs."
USA Today, 9 May 2005. Available from
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2005-
05-09-blog-cover_x.htm .
Memmott, Mark. "Historians Hope to Preserve Candid Glimpses
of War." USA Today, 12 May 2005.
——. "'Milbloggers' are Typing their Place in History." USA
Today, 12 May 2005.
Othman, Kamal A. "Blogging Activities on the Rise." Asia
Africa Intelligence Wire, 17 January 2005.
Rigby, Rhymer. "Niche Appeal of the Blogging Business." The
Financial Times, 4 January 2005.
Schacter, Ken. "Blogs Hold Opportunity for Business." St.
Charles County Business Record (MO), 3 January 2005.
"The Blogging Geyser: Blogs Blast from 31.6 Million to Reach
53.4 Million by Year End." Business Wire, 12 April 2005.
"The Story of Blogger in 273 Words." Mountain View, CA:
Google Inc. 23 May 2004. Available from
http://www.blogger.com/about .
Trust "MEdia" How Real People are Finally Being Heard.
Cincinnati, OH: Intelliseek Inc. and Edelman, Spring 2005.
Available from
http://www.edelman.com/image/insights/content/ISwp_TrustME
dia_FINAL.pdf .
Waters, Richard. "Simple Steps to a Revolution in Information."

The Financial Times, 28 January 2005.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Blogging." Encyclopedia of Emerging Industries, 5th ed., Gale,
2007. Gale Virtual Reference Library,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CX2869800017/GVRL?u=u
md_umuc&sid=GVRL&xid=0ac9d730. Accessed 22 Jan. 2019
Another News Outlet Is Using Robots To Write Stories
By Catherine Taibi
·
·
·
·
The Associated Press has just added itself to the list of news
organizations that will begin using robots to write stories.
By July, the AP hopes to introduce an automation technology
that will allow it to publish more breaking business stories and
a larger number of earnings reports. Using the technology, the
news outlet said, it will be able to go from producing 300
stories to as many as 4,400 stories in “roughly the same time
that it took our reporters.”
The new technology will not lead to job cuts, the AP stressed.
In fact, the news service said it will be “doubling down on the
journalism” around the robot-produced reports.
“This is about using technology to free journalists to do more
journalism and less data processing, not about eliminating
jobs,” the AP said. “Most of the staff has been receptive to the
effort and involved for the past few months of discussion.”
The AP also noted that it has been using automation for much of
its sports agate for years. The difference, however, is that the
earnings reports will be crafted into actual stories rather than
just data feeds.
Robots have become more and more prevalent in the news
industry, and their perfect speech and record-breaking speeds

are catching people’s attention. Japan recently introduced the
world’s first news anchor robot — a robot that can “read the
news without stumbling once.”
In March, the Los Angeles Times experimented with robot
journalism when it broke the news about an earthquake in the
area. The story was published in just about three minutes using
a specific algorithm, making it the first news outlet to report on
the event.
(h/t: Poynter)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/30/ap-robots-business-
stories-associated-press_n_5543205.html?ir=Technology

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