Utah State University

Online news scooping print media

October 30th, 2009 Posted in Opinion

By Brendon Butler

Ever notice that the Internet makes printed news seem out of date? I love traditional newspapers, but lately I’ve been opening the morning paper and thinking to myself, “This story sounds familiar, didn’t this happen last week?”

But it didn’t…it’s just that I read the story the previous day online. Internet news is compressing the most important news value: timeliness.

In general, 8 hours is about the soonest a traditional morning paper can get a breaking news story turned around. It takes that long to lay out the page, send it to a printer, bag it, tag it, and put it in a van so woozy schoolkids (and their long-suffering parent-chauffeurs) can drop it on your doorstep.

In the new social media-dominated networks, people find that they can not only spread the news faster than papers can print it, but they gain a sort of social capital by doing so.

It’s a scoop when you can be the first among your friends to post about Michael Jackson’s death 20 minutes before the rest of the world knows. That’s a difference of at least 7 hours and 40 minutes, and it’s a serious problem for newspapers as the Internet moves to be a ubiquitous force in American news culture.

So whither the printed newspaper? Many larger newspapers are toying with the idea of pay walls for their sites, asking readers to pay for their news. But some people say charging for news is a dead-end street. Not only is news free on Google and Yahoo’s aggregate Web sites, but if you consider monthly bills for Internet service from between $50 and $200 per household, it could be argued that people already pay for the privilege of accessing news online.

Zachary Seward, blogging for Harvard’s Niemann Foundation for Journalism, says the correct answer will likely be something he likens to a “pay fence,” where most news is available for free at a newspaper’s Web site, but a certain quantity of news that is obviously worth money is available for a fee.

Joe Zelink, also blogging for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, repeats what many people have already decided: newspapers are useful to the average news consumer because they report local news that national and larger papers don’t. To the extent that the small-town newspaper can engage its community, it will have a future.

This entails two major things for the new Internet world: community newspapers must report heavily on local issues, politics and lifestyle, and they must build lively interactive Web sites that seamlessly integrate with their printed editions.

If not, they will be exposed to competition from other local news sources including radio, television and online citizen journalism Web sites.

Here in Logan, The Herald Journal newspaper has a good jump on the effort to move online. Its Web site always generates commentary, and managing editor Charlie McCollum says his goal is to add more online content to the site, including video and photo galleries that can be promoted in the print edition.

Not only does the paper direct traffic to the Web site, but the site also informs users that their comments will be published in the paper’s weekly “Blogger’s Soapbox.” It’s a smart way to interact with the community and build the audiences of both the print and online editions.

But the HJ newspaper faces serious competition from local Web sites with low overhead. The radio station KVNU runs a Web site called Cache Valley Daily that employs only one full-time reporter, yet uses its radio news resources to capture breaking news. In the recent past, it has scooped the more venerable print newspaper with its quick online editions.

Other players in the online news game in Cache Valley include our own Hard News Cafe and the local citizen journalism Web site Smithfield Sun.

This is the type of competition playing out in different communities across America every day. Savvy local print newspapers must quickly get into the online battle to be the local community’s meeting place.

Tags: Online news, print, timeliness