| HEADLINES FROM OUR FIRST HOMEPAGE: |
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| Internet Journalism: Is it still what we want it to be? |
By Mathew Ingram
Ten years ago, I arrived at The Globe's offices in Toronto as one of a handful of staffers who had been hired for the new "live news" website at globeandmail.com. I started as the online business columnist, but later moved into writing more about technology and started the Globe's first blog (a term I kept having to explain). Meanwhile, the growing web team handled a never-ending flood of news, including bombshells such as the September 11 attacks in 2001, the outbreak of SARS in 2002, the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and too many others to mention.
Eventually, it became obvious to just about everyone at the newspaper that breaking news and multimedia were what the Internet was designed for, and the web team was dispersed throughout the newsroom as the entire organization tried to adapt to this new medium (something it and other papers are still trying to do).
In my inaugural column for the website, I wrote that the Internet was the best thing to happen to journalism since the typewriter. I still believe that today. It may get lost amid all the teeth-gnashing over the future of newspapers (and magazines, and books, and movies, and too many other things to name) but I firmly believe that when it comes to journalism and the media, the Internet is far more of a force for good than it is the opposite.
Thanks to the web — and social-media tools like blogs and Twitter and YouTube and dozens of others — we can hear firsthand about (and even see) the death of a protester in Iran, or a riot in Burma, before anyone has a chance to make it disappear. We can hear from survivors and observers in Haiti or China after an earthquake, and we can listen in on government hearings and courtroom battles that would once have gone unreported. If reporters want to (and more seem to want to every day, thankfully) they can let us see journalism taking place, and that can be very powerful.
Of course, doing this can also be embarrassing and awkward and contentious, and many would probably prefer that "the public" not see the sausage as it is being made. What if someone notices we made a mistake, and we are no longer seen as infallible? The reality is that no one thinks we're infallible to begin with, and we might as well admit it. For better or worse, journalism is also becoming something that everyone does (or can do), and we had better get used to that too. And a growing part of what journalism consists of is engaging with readers -- or "the people formerly known as the audience," to use Dan Gillmor and Jay Rosen's phrase.
People often ask me (although less so now) whether blogs or Twitter can be used for journalism, and my response is: Can the telephone be used for journalism? Can a pen and paper be used for journalism? Twitter and blogs and Facebook are just tools. They can be used for all kinds of things, some of which are journalism and some of which are not.
There has been a lot written over the past few years (and there will undoubtedly be more written still) about how the Internet is killing journalism and the media, but the vast majority of that is hyperbole. Yes, the digitization of virtually all content -- journalism included -- is changing the economics of the media business in sometimes painful ways. But journalism is alive and well, and if anything there is even more of it occurring all the time, thanks to new ventures such as Politico and ProPublica. It's just that no one has quite figured out how it will pay for itself.
