4
Reporting and News Gathering
Abstract: The traditional role of the journalist has been
eclipsed by bloggers and citizen journalists, if not entirely
eliminated. The chapter will use the traditional journalist’s job
versus the new media journalists’ job descriptions as a frame
for showing how the media environment is changing. Citizen
journalism, the decline of the newsroom, and the implications
for journalistic standards and practices are discussed.
Keywords: advertising; classified advertising; hyperlocal;
news cycle; newsroom
Rackaway, Chapman. Communicating Politics Online.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
doi: 10.1057/9781137437976.0006.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137437976.0006
C. Rackaway, Communicating Politics Online
© Chapman Rackaway 2014
Reporting and News Gathering
Online technology has disrupted not only the government’s ability to
regulate media, but the very job done by all participants in the American
media ecosystem. Owners, editors, producers, writers, and reporters
have all seen significant changes in the way they have gone about their
jobs during the past 20 years.
Ownership has more evolved than changed drastically, because owner-
ship was changing prior to the Internet’s development into a commonly
used medium. In 1996, Congress passed the Telecommunications Act
that allowed for single entities to own multiple media outlets in the
same market.1 Previously, one company was limited to a single network
affiliate or radio station and one newspaper. The Telecommunications
Act allowed those companies that had owned a single network affiliate
to own more. As a result, more and more outlets became owned by
an ever smaller group of conglomerates.2 The fledgling Fox broadcast
television network was the primary beneficiary of this move, as existing
NBC, ABC, or CBS affiliates could also own a local Fox network entity
and broadcast it at full strength. A brief boom in broadcast networks
followed, as United Paramount and Warner Brothers both launched
their own over-the-air efforts.3
The conglomerate media ownership system allowed more end-
consumer choices in broadcast networks, but also meant that corporate
control of media by a small group of entities restricted choice in a
broader sense. Online media would simply accelerate the changes that
were already underway, especially in the print medium.
Newspapers were stable during the 1990s, but perhaps no media entity
is under greater threat from the online shift than the oldest public news
medium in America. Most American communities, even small towns,
had multiple newspapers from their founding until the rise of the inde-
pendent press in the early 1900s. Most of the towns had multiple news-
papers because their local political party organizations sponsored or
owned those papers—in fact, that is why many local papers include the
name “Democrat” or “Republican” on their mastheads to this day. Local
newspapers continued even in a consolidated environment, and larger
communities usually had multiple daily newspapers into the 1990s. The
Internet would change that drastically.
In 1980, the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch put its print content online
using the dial-up service Compuserve.4 Eleven other Associated Press
affiliate newspapers joined them quickly afterward. A pivotal year in the
development of online news content sharing was 1994, when both the
DOI: 10.1057/9781137437976.0006
