online news

How the online news industry is evolving

April 26, 1999 by JD Lasica

I was interviewed by PBS’s Online NewsHour in 1999 and received permission to republish our exchange on my site.

Online News Industry

The Internet news industry has undergone some major changes over the last five years.

To discuss these changes is JD Lasica, new media columnist for the American Journalism Review and the Online Journalism Review. In addition to writing about online ethics for the Industry Standard newsweekly, Mr. Lasica is also managing editor of BabyCenter, an online resource for new and expectant parents.

The following are Mr. Lasica’s answers to 5 questions asked by the Online NewsHour. [Read more…] about How the online news industry is evolving

Newsweek arrives on the Web

January 7, 1999 by JD Lasica

Editor and General Manager Michael Rogers discusses Newsweek’s online strategy

This column appeared in the January 1999 issue of The American Journalism Review.

Newsweek has joined the future. Newsweek.com arrived on the Web Oct. 4, 1998, and unlike the first wave of mainstream media news sites that reinvented themselves every five minutes, these folks don’t seem to have an identity crisis.

The streamlined site has a spare, minimalist look, featuring all the content of the print magazine alongside a handful of daily features and breaking news provided by others. With a 10-person editorial staff, the Web site has both a modest agenda and realistic goals.

In short, Newsweek.com doesn’t pretend to be all things to all Webheads. [Read more…] about Newsweek arrives on the Web

Marvin Kalb on journalism in the Internet age

February 2, 1998 by JD Lasica

The former CBS and NBC News correspondent decries the news media’s feeding frenzy over Clinton-Lewinsky — and the effect that Matt Drudge has had on news coverage

kalb

Marvin Kalb is director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He spoke by phone on Feb. 2, 1998, about 12 days after the White House sex scandal broke with a fury in the media.

How do you see the impact of the Internet and all the new forms of media on coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky story. [Read more…] about Marvin Kalb on journalism in the Internet age

Preserving old ethics in a new medium

December 7, 1997 by JD Lasica

To avert ethical problems in cyberspace, cling to traditional journalism values

This column appeared in the December 1997 issue of The American Journalism Review. I was interviewed on the topic of Internet news sources’ trustworthiness by Bloomberg Radio on April 4, 1998.

If ethics are rarely debated during the daily miracle of churning out a newspaper, the subject is rarer still in the whiz-bang, techno-toy-driven realm of new media.

While all the old ethical rules surely still apply in new media, the Internet also presents dilemmas that never existed in a print world: reporters lurking invisibly in chat rooms; ad links embedded into editorial copy; the posting of private tragedies in news archives until the end of time; tracking users’ habits and sharing that data with advertisers; putting the tools of publishing into the hands of little league coaches and others who aren’t trained journalists. [Read more…] about Preserving old ethics in a new medium

Ted Koppel: Will online news ‘bite us in the ass’?

May 8, 1997 by JD Lasica

The veteran ‘Nightline’ anchor has some words of warning for online reporters eager to reinvent the wheel of journalism

Immediacy has never been a strong suit of Web news among the mainstream media. But in the coming months, dozens of content providers — from giants like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to small-town weeklies and dailies — will team up with Netscape, Microsoft, PointCast and other push-news services to broadcast their own “channels” of breaking news right to a user’s desktop.

Ted Koppel

That promises to fundamentally reshape the online news landscape. What risks do these traditional print organizations face in moving toward a broadcast model of Net news? I posed the question to Ted Koppel, whose 1996 book “Nightline” dissects how television has reshaped news values in our lifetime. Koppel, who surfs the Web only infrequently, has some words of warning for online reporters eager to reinvent the wheel of journalism. This is his first interview on the subject of the Internet. [Read more…]

Net gain

November 1, 1996 by JD Lasica

It’s time for mainstream media to trade in their gatekeeper role for a reader-empowered brand of Interactive Journalism

This in-depth look at online journalism appeared as the cover story of the November 1996 issue of The American Journalism Review. It was considered groundbreaking for its day.

Introduction

Agreat many of the Internet’s 20-million-plus users consider Old Media’s practice of top-down, father-knows-best journalism to be clunky, obsolete and irrelevant to their lives. And, in an age when anyone with a computer and modem can be a virtual reporter, they’re right.

So does this mean that professional journalists — the middlemen in the news equation — are expendable in a wired world? Hardly. Many Net users want reporters, editors and news directors to bring their fact-checking skills and other timeless journalistic values — trustworthiness, accountability, balance, fairness — to this bright new medium.

But they also want Old Media to jettison the tired, stale baggage of traditional news culture. They want fewer, better filters and less spin on the news. They want journalism professionals to grasp what’s essential to their lives — something that seems to be missing from their daily newspapers and on the TV news. [Read more…] about Net gain

James Fallows: The Net will transform — not displace — mainstream media

May 7, 1996 by JD Lasica

The noted media critic and former editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report discusses the future of online journalism

Harvard-educated, a Rhodes Scholar, a former chief White House speech writer (for Jimmy Carter), former Washington editor of The Atlantic Monthly and former editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, James Fallows is one of the nation’s foremost press critics, on the strength of his 1996 book, “Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy.” He responded to questions on the state of the online media in an e-mail interview on May 7, 1996.

In an “On the Line” online interview earlier this year you said one advantage of the Internet is that it gives people “the ability to find ways around the bottlenecks and strangeholds of the mainstream media.” Can you expand on that? What are some of the ways in which it allows ordinary citizens and amateur journalists to get around those bottlenecks? [Read more…] about James Fallows: The Net will transform — not displace — mainstream media

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