Product Description

In this study of how daily newspapers in America have developed electronic publishing ventures, Pablo Boczkowski shows that new media emerge not just in a burst of revolutionary technological change but by merging the structures and practices of existing media with newly available technical capabilities. His multi-disciplinary perspectives of science and technology, communication, and organization studies yield analytical insights into the material culture of online newsrooms, the production processes of new media products, and the relationships between offline and online dynamics. Boczkowski traces daily newspapers' early consumer-oriented non print publishing initiatives, from the now-forgotten videotex efforts of the 1980s to the rise of the World Wide Web in the mid 1990s. He then examines the formative years of news on the Web during the second half of the 1990s, when the content of online newspapers varied from simple reproduction of the print edition to new material with interactive and multimedia features. With this picture of the recent history of non print publishing as background, Boczkowski provides ethnographic, fly-on-the-wall accounts of three innovations in content creation: the Technology section of The New York Times on the Web; the Virtual Voyager project of the HoustonChronicle.com; and the Community Connection initiative of New Jersey Online. Boczkowski's analyses of these ventures reveal how innovation in online newspapers became an ongoing process in which different combinations of initial conditions and local contingencies led publishers along divergent paths of content creation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #548974 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 255 pages

Customer Reviews

An essential contribution to OJ literature
One of the best pieces of research into online journalism I've read (with possibly one of the dullest covers).

Boczkowski spent time in the online newsrooms of three newspapers: the New York Times technology section; the Houston Chronicle's Virtual Voyager project; and New Jersey Online's Community Connection inititative. Whether by design or accident, the sample conveniently crosses three different types of online journalism - the transferrence of print to online; experiments in multimedia storytelling; and user-generated content.

Rather than adopt a strictly journalistic theoretical framework, Boczkowski draws on media theory, technology theory, and organisational theory to produce an analysis that steers refreshingly clear of the technological determinism that normally characterises writing on online journalism (e.g. the "citizen journalism will make all journalists redundant" hype).

In conclusion, Boczkowksi questions the assertion of Gieber (1964) that news "is what newspapermen [sic] make it":

"the news in the online environment is what those contributing to its production make it [...] at least two transformations appear to distinguish the production of new-media news from the typical case of print and broadcast media: the news seems to be shaped by a greater and more varied groups of actors, and this places a premium on the practices that coordinate productive activities across these groups. This, in turn, seems to influence the content and form of online news in three ways. The news moves from being mostly journalist-centred, communicated as a monologue, and primarily local, to also being increasingly audience-centred, part of multiple conversations, and micro-local.

"[...] studies of print and broadcast newsrooms ... have tended to focus on the work of editors and reporters ... it is reasonable to speculate that at least four additional groups of players may be having a growing degree of agency in new-media news production. First [...] two newsrooms, the online one and its traditional media counterpart [...] Second, advertising and marketing personnel [...] Third, technical and design personnel [...] Fourth ... users appear to shape what is seen as newsworthy, who gets to communicate about it, and how it gets covered.

"...Becker (1982) coined the expression "art world" to refer to "all the people whose activities are necessary to the production of [works of art]" Much as art is not only the product of artists, news in the online environment ... may be what emerges from "news worlds"" (p183-184)

A welcome contribution to the literature, and one we should be building on.