Online Journalism History

HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM
History of
Online Journalism
1
1963
• Ted Nelson, Harvard

sociology student
• Formulates the
concept of hypertext
2
1965
• Nelson, now a sociology prof at Vassar College in upstate New

York
• Gives a lecture which is covered in the student newspaper. The

first print reference of “hypertext” appears, Feb. 3, 1965
3
1969
• ARPANET computer network created by the

U.S. Defense Department
• The forerunner of today’s Internet
• Their goal: Design a computer network to

withstand nuclear attack
4
1969
• Decentralized system created under the basic

assumption that parts of the network will fail
• Building the network this way lays the

foundation for the Internet as a medium that
is controlled by no single entity
• 1972: The organization in charge is now

called DARPA (Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency)
5
1971
At the same time, a
parallel technology …
• The BBC files for

a patent on
“Teledata,” the
first teletext
system
• Called a
"Rolodex in the
sky”
6
1971
Teletext:
• A loop of “pages”
broadcast on TV
• Not interactive
• Service is limited to a
few hundred available
pages
• Slow
7
1974
The British Post Office’s Research
Laboratory demonstrates
“Viewdata” (later “Prestel”) the first
Videotext service
• It’s truly interactive, supporting

two-way communication
• You use your TV, hooked up to
cable and a phone line
• You make entries using a keyboard,
dedicated terminal or computer
• Menu-driven systems allow users to
browse
• Better graphics than teletext; even
photo display.
8
1974
Snapshot: Three competing technologies …
Teletext Videotext Computers
• Not • Interactive • Interactive

interactive
• You need • Very
• Slow cable TV expensive
and an
expensive • Poorly
• But all you networked
need is a TV subscription
and a decoder • Almost no
box one has one
9
1975
• Canada begins
development of
Telidon, an
advanced
videotext system.
Goes into operation
in 1979 and is
considered a world
leader with
advanced graphics
technology
10
1975
11
1981-82
First computer-based
online dial-up services
emerge Eg.:
• Compuserve
• The Source
• Prodigy
These are closed

systems -- only
subscribers have
access
12
1983-1985
• 1983: Time Magazine names the

computer “Machine of the Year”
• 1984: Apple introduces the Macintosh

computer. Cost: $2,495 US with built-in
B&W monitor. Within 75 days, 50,000 are
sold
• 1985: Worldwide 22 nations are said to

be involved in videotext and teletext
13
1986-1988
• 1986: Computers readily available in university

computer labs, offices
Computers becoming cheaper and more powerful;

first personal printers appear; ($7,000 US for an
Apple LaserWriter)
• 1988: Internet Relay Chat (IRC, a forebearer to

instant messaging) is developed by Finnish
graduate student Jarkko Oikarinen
DARPA makes the Internet public
14
1990
• Hypertext Markup
Language is invented
by Tim Berners-Lee,
an Englishman, and
colleagues at CERN,
the European Particle
Physics Laboratory
15
1992
• July: Lynx, a non-graphical Web and Gopher

(FTP) “browser” is released by the University
of Kansas
• November: There are 26 “reasonably reliable”

servers exist on the World Wide Web,
according to CERN
16
1993
• August: Mosaic, first

graphical Web browser
for Windows, is released
by the University of
Illinois. It causes the
web to grow at a
341,634% annual rate
of service traffic
• Sept. 25: CompuServe, Prodigy and AOL have a

combined 3.9 million U.S. subscribers
17
1993
• October: First journalism site on the Web is

launched at the University of Florida. There
now are about 200 web servers in the world
• Dec. 8: First article about the web appears in

the New York Times
18
1994
• Jan. 19: The first newspaper
to regularly publish on the
Web, the Palo Alto Weekly in
California, begins twice-
weekly postings of its full
content
• April: The Yahoo “Internet

index” is started by Stanford
PhD candidates David Filo
and Jerry Yang
19
1994
• June:
the first
Canadian
newspaper,
the Halifax
Daily News
goes online
20
1995
April 19: Oklahoma
City Bombing
The first major event

in which people turn
to the Internet for
current information
21
1995
• May: More than 150
news outlets in North
America now have
online editions
• October: The Boston

Globe launches
Boston.com on the
Web, a unique site
bringing many local
services together
22
1997
• March 26: “Heaven’s
Gate” Suicides
The Internet becomes

part of a major news
story when members
of the Heaven’s Gate
cult create a website
before committing
suicide. Journalists
point readers to their
source material
23
1997
• March: False reports emerge

online that TWA Flight 800,
which crashes off Long Island in
1996 was brought down by a
U.S. navy missile
• The power of the medium

becomes apparent as readers
pressure investigators to reveal
the “truth”
24
1997
• The Smoking
Gun debuts -- it
publishes entire
court
documents and
other primary
sources online
25
1997
• The Dallas Morning News
online edition gets an
exclusive that Timothy
McVeigh has claimed
responsibility for the
Oklahoma City Bombing
• First time a mainstream news

organization breaks a major
story on its website -- not in
its newspaper
26
1998
• Jan. 19 -- Early reports of
U.S. President Clinton’s
involvement with White
House intern Monica
Lewinsky demonstrate
how a small independent
news site can seize a
national news
agenda
27
1998
• A media frenzy
follows in both
the online and
traditional
press
28
1998
• September: Starr
Report
A new relationship
between politicians
and the public –
Starr bypasses the
press and
distributes a major
political document
online first
Kenneth Starr
29
2000
Mainstream news
sites begin to involve
their audience
• Death of Pierre Trudeau:

Thousands of Canadians
tell their stories on news
websites
30
2001
• Sept. 11:
Online news
operations
stumble …
31
2001
… then recover …
32
2003
Classified listings
flee print ... and
take money with
them
33
2003
• Canada.com
moves to paid
subscription
model
• Breaking news
is free
• Other content
requires $$
34
2003
• The dawn of
citizen
journalism
• Blogging
software makes
web publishing
easy and
eliminates the
need to know
HTML
• The “Baghdad Blogger” captivates the world
35
2004
• Bloggers
lead the
way in
forcing CBS
to retract
its story on
George W.
Bush’s
military
service
36
2004
• Bloggers
beat the
mainstream
media to
tsunami-
ravaged
South-East
Asia …
37
2004
… bringing
home the
reality of the
event with
amateur
video
38
2005
Mainstream
media starts
harnessing
user-generated
video
39
2005
News sites
rush to
establish
citizen
communities
40
2005
Major trend: “A growing number of news

outlets are chasing relatively static or even
shrinking audiences for news. One result of this
is that most sectors of the news media are losing
audience.
The only sectors seeing general audience

growth today are online, ethnic and
alternative media.”
41
2006
Bloggers win
Katrina protections in
the U.S. …
42
2006
… and
acceptance in
Canada
43
2006
Participatory
journalism advocate
Dan Gillmor tries
(and fails) to put his
emerging
philosophy into
practice
44
2006
Time
Magazine
Person
of the
Year
45
2006
“More sites were becoming profitable … [but] rivals

on the Web that offer classified listings or aggregate
other people’s work -- but produce very little
journalistic content of their own -- were continuing to
steal revenues away. There still appears no clear
path for transferring to this new medium all the
wealth that has long financed journalism for the
good of civil society.”
46
2007
Bloggers face
greater legal
scrutiny
47
2007
Citizen media grows in importance
48
2007
49
2007
New attempts at models for citizen journalism
50
2007
51
2007
52
2007
“Practicing journalism has become far more difficult and

demands new vision. Journalism is becoming a
smaller part of people’s information mix …
“Journalists have reacted relatively slowly … There are

signs that government, corporations and activists have
reacted more quickly. Politicians, interest groups and
corporate public relations people tell us they have
bloggers now on secret retainer — and they are
delighted with the results.”
53
2007
“The evidence is mounting that the news industry must

become more aggressive about developing a new
economic model. The signs are clearer that advertising
works differently online than in older media.
“Finding out about goods and services on the Web is an

activity unto itself, like using the yellow pages, and less
a byproduct of getting news, such as seeing a car ad
during a newscast. The consequence is that
advertisers may not need journalism as they once
did, particularly online.”
54
2007
• September:
Journalism sites
move away from
subscription-based
news
• Advertising is seen
as the only
workable funding
model
55
2008
“As a category, news Web sites appear to be falling

behind financially. They are not growing in advertising
revenue as quickly as other kinds of Internet
destinations. And these figures do not include the most
important revenue source, search, where news is a
relatively small player.
The questions of who will pay and how they will do it

seem more pressing than ever.”
56
2008
57
2008
58
What is the Internet?
The Internet is
a network of computers
59 59
What is the World Wide

Web?
• Created in 1990 when
Englishman Tim Berners-Lee
and colleagues at the
European Center for Particle
Physics developed a
computer language that
enabled users to navigate
Tim Berners-Lee
by clicking on underlined
words called links.
60 60

Web?
• The language:
Hypertext Markup Language.
61 61

Web?
• The Web is a place where people do
things
– buy airline tickets
– search for recipes
– read about disease
– read and interact with the news
– buy computers
– listen to the radio
– other things?
62 62
What makes the Web

different?
• Capacity
– Nearly unlimited space, limited only by human decisions
and high-capacity servers
• Flexibility
– words, pictures, audio, video, graphics
• Immediacy
– Information as events unfold
– Sept. 11, tsunami, hurricanes
– Breadth, or expansion (several angles to the same topic)
– Depth (quality and depth of information about an
individual story)
• Permanence
– Nothing need be lost
• Interactivity
– Immediate feedback channel
– email links, forums, polls
63 63
Lessons learned
• Online services must be personally useful
– Popularity of email and search engines
• Interactivity is a key element
– weakness of traditional media, but not online
journalism
• Content must be free unless it is very
specialized
– Wall Street Journal sells subscriptions
– Ebay makes commissions
– Second layer (page 2) to espn.com
– Adult sites make money
• Real money is not in the technology but in the
programming
– Advertisers will pay money if the audience is there for
the content
64 64
Summary
• Roots of the WWW go back three

decades
• Like most inventions, the WWW was
more like an evolution than an invention
• Teletext  Videotext  BBS  WWW
• WWW gives journalists a new, unique
and interactive way to tell the story.
65 65

Online Journalism History

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HISTORY OF ONLINE JOURNALISM

• Ted Nelson, Harvard

• Nelson, now a sociology prof at Vassar College in upstate New

• Gives a lecture which is covered in the student newspaper. The

• ARPANET computer network created by the

• The forerunner of today’s Internet

• Their goal: Design a computer network to

• Decentralized system created under the basic

• Building the network this way lays the

• 1972: The organization in charge is now

• The BBC files for

• It’s truly interactive, supporting

Teletext Videotext Computers

• Not • Interactive • Interactive

These are closed

• 1983: Time Magazine names the

• 1984: Apple introduces the Macintosh

• 1985: Worldwide 22 nations are said to

• 1986: Computers readily available in university

Computers becoming cheaper and more powerful;

• 1988: Internet Relay Chat (IRC, a forebearer to

DARPA makes the Internet public

• July: Lynx, a non-graphical Web and Gopher

• November: There are 26 “reasonably reliable”

• August: Mosaic, first

• Sept. 25: CompuServe, Prodigy and AOL have a

• October: First journalism site on the Web is

• Dec. 8: First article about the web appears in

• April: The Yahoo “Internet

The first major event

• October: The Boston

The Internet becomes

• March: False reports emerge

• The power of the medium

• First time a mainstream news

• Death of Pierre Trudeau:

• The “Baghdad Blogger” captivates the world

Major trend: “A growing number of news

The only sectors seeing general audience

“More sites were becoming profitable … [but] rivals

“Practicing journalism has become far more difficult and

“Journalists have reacted relatively slowly … There are

“The evidence is mounting that the news industry must

“Finding out about goods and services on the Web is an

“As a category, news Web sites appear to be falling

The questions of who will pay and how they will do it

What is the Internet?

What is the World Wide

What is the World Wide

What is the World Wide

What makes the Web

• Roots of the WWW go back three

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