These two vehicles for delivering content to a newspaper’s readership deliver different messages to consumers. Even though the print edition may feature the same word-for-word article as the online edition, news consumers receive different messages based on the medium, as media ecology theorist Marshall McLuhan would explain.
The Message of Print Editions
Jane B. Singer, Johnston Press Chair in Digital Journalism at University of Central Lancashire, UK, researched online journalism and discovered that print editions inspired more trust from readers and are viewed as more professional, but since McLuhan classified print as a medium with low interactivity, it also falls under Maxwell McCombs’s agenda-setting vision of professional detachment. The medium of print journalism sends a message to the reader of detached professionalism.
Taking these three elements into consideration, the message constructed by print journalism and delivered to its readers is a top-down approach, with the newspaper establishing what is important without a great deal of input from the readers and sending a message of complementary communication based on an imbalance of power. In this case, the power resides with the print newspaper to determine the most important news and feed it down to the public, drawing a definitive professional barrier between itself and its readers, complete with the very clear message that the power belongs with the press to determine what is weighty enough to go into the pages of the news and be placed in the public forum.
Print newspapers, whether intentionally or accidentally, send a message of superiority and authority, implying to their readers that they are present to interpret the news for the public. Though print editions may not deliberately set the agenda, they exude a message of it being the journalist’s role to report the news and that the agenda set by their coverage is the by-product of their professional detachment and their duty to journalistic integrity.
The Message of Online Editions
Online journalism, on the other hand, presents a message that is poles apart from that of print journalism. As a medium of high media-consumer interactivity, readers are able to help set the agenda. Readers have greater opportunity to make their agenda known to journalists through online forums. While print editions suffer space restrictions on opinion pages, online editions allow readers to comment directly on articles, voicing their opinions with greater ease and often alerting journalists to alternative angles or news items.
As barriers continue to disintegrate and as journalists adopt a greater tendency to accept news tips from their readership, the public may have a stronger role in developing the agenda that appears in the online edition.
In addition, newspaper websites typically have a sidebar with the day’s most popular stories and the articles with the most hits, which gives the public more room to set the agenda for what material is displayed more notably on the site. In the newspaper, readers cannot take news from page five and place it on the front page simply because the page five material draws more reader interest.
In online editions, reader interest factors into what stories receive esteemed positions on the main page. The readers determine what is interesting and important, not the newspaper deciding what the readers should find most interesting and important. Agenda-setting has typically been a top-down approach, but with the consumer’s shift from print journalism to web journalism, the press and public are entering a more level playing field.
The Impact of Online’s Interactivity
Web journalism sends a message to readers of greater equality. This could partially account for why so many readers flock to websites instead of print editions. The ability to engage with the news and with other news consumers gives readers greater influence over the material covered in the press. In a democracy, citizens are raised to have a role and a voice. Online journalism gives them both of these elements in regards to framing the information that is made available to the masses.
The bottom line of the shift in readership is what the public wants. If the shift in public sways toward the desire for interactive journalism in which the individual consumer can participate in the newsgathering and reporting processes, web journalism is the more appealing choice. If a portion of the public prefers a more pristine, professional approach and desires a boundary between the newsgatherers and the general public, print journalism will thrive.
Depending on the message the public prefers, the medium through which the message is conveyed will change. In addition, depending on who the public wants gathering and disseminating their news, a shift will occur in which is the more popular medium.
Julie Stroebel - Julie Stroebel is a 2009 graduate of Eureka College in Eureka, IL, where she received her Bachelor of Arts in Print Journalism, with ...
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