From M/Cyclopedia of New Media
Immediacy
- "News is like bread – it is best served fresh, and quickly goes stale," (De Wolk, 2001: 51).
Immediacy is essential to the practice of journalism – the nature of news is that it is new. Online journalism provides the best arena for distributing news quickly.
When radio and television journalism were developed, their key feature over print journalism was their immediacy. The time it takes to produce and distribute a newspaper means print journalism can at best only forecast what is going to happen that day and report on what happened yesterday. Television and radio journalism broadcast earlier and provide the option of interrupting scheduling to announce a major story. However, they do not have the flexibility of online journalism.
- "For the person who wants an instant update, the difference between rolling news and online is like the difference between jumping on a passing bus or flagging down a taxi. The bus gets you there in the end, but you take in a lot of other scenery enroute" (Ward, 2002: 134)
Stovall suggests the qualities of online journalism offer an immediacy that traditional journalism outlets cannot match in four important ways
- Variety. Major breaking stories are multifaceted involving a large variety of people and events. To use the example of an election, broadcast is limited in its coverage. The station can only address one electorate at a time – even if the station provides a side bar or roll across the bottom of the screen viewers must wait until their electorate appears. In contrast, online journalism users can access up-to-date results for their electorate, their state or the country as they so desire. A good example is the system used by the ABC
- Expansion. The web has a capacity to hold and display information. When more information about the event becomes available the web site can simply add the information to that already known. This way, users who are not familiar with the previously available information can still access it. Limited by its finite amount of broadcasting time, radio and television journalism cannot fulfil the needs of all viewers.
- Quality. Live broadcasts of breaking news events have no buffer between their creation and their distribution. There is little opportunity to correct incorrect information. On the internet, the story can be immediately posted and if a mistake is later found a correction is easily made.
- Context. The limitations of television and radio to provide context are evident in the live coverage of many events. It is difficult to get a full picture until after the event has finished or the user accesses a newspaper to find out more. With the ability to summarise and update whilst adding information to various parts of the coverage the web can offer immediacy within context.
Despite the immediacy potential of online journalism, in reality it is not effectively utilised. There is tension within news organisations between holding or breaking stories online before their broadcast or print counterparts. Often, the print or broadcast counterpart wins out because it is accessed by more users.
Whilst immediacy is beneficial to online journalism it also creates some problems. The ease with which the web can be changed removes the checking mechanism employed in other forms of journalism and provides an incentive to treat information with less care.
Related Topics
- Digital Journalism
- Online Journalism: Accessing
- Online Journalism: Interactivity
- Online Journalism: Story Construction
- Convergence Within Journalism
Bibliography
De Wolk, R. (2001) INTRODUCTION TO ONLINE JOURNALISM: Publishing News and Information, USA: Allyn and Bacon. ISBN 0205286895
Gunter, B. (2003) News and the Net, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Publishers: New Jersey. ISBN 0805844996
Herbert, J. (2000) JOURNALISM IN THE DIGITAL AGE: Theory and Practice for Broadcast, Print and On-line Media Oxford: Focal Press. ISBN 0240515897
Kawamoto, K. (2003) Digital Journalism: Emerging Media and the Changing Horizons of Journalism UAS: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. ISBN 074252680
Stovall, J. G. (2004) Web Journalism: Practice and Promise of a New Medium USA: Pearson Education Inc. ISBN 0205353983
Ward, M. (2002) Journalism Online Oxford: Focal Press. ISBN 0240516109
Related Resources
Gemma Kinslow 19:51, 27 Aug 2004 (EST)
