Product Description

"If the promises of online news are to be fulfilled, books like this deserve the widest possible readership"
Paul Bradshaw, University of Central England, UK

In this exciting and timely book Stuart Allan provides a wide-ranging analysis of online news. He offers important insights into key debates concerning the ways in which journalism is evolving on the internet, devoting particular attention to the factors influencing its development. Using a diverse range of examples, he shows how the forms, practices and epistemologies of online news are gradually becoming conventionalized, and assesses the implications for journalism’s future.

The rise of online news is examined with regard to the reporting of a series of major news events. Topics include coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing, the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, the September 11 attacks, election campaigns, and the war in Iraq. The emergence of blogging is traced with an eye to its impact on journalism as a profession. The participatory journalism of news sites such as Indymedia, OhmyNews, and Wikinews is explored, as is the citizen journalist reporting of the South Asian tsunami, London bombings and Hurricane Katrina. In each instance, the uses of new technologies – from digital cameras to mobile telephones and beyond – are shown to shape journalistic innovation, often in surprising ways.

This book is essential reading for students, researchers and journalists.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #104089 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 216 pages

Customer Reviews

Required reading
In 2004 American technology journalist and publisher Dan Gillmor published We The Media, a book that described how journalism in the new media age was changing from a `lecture' to a `conversation'. It quickly became the bible of online journalism, while Gillmor was heralded as a guru on citizen journalism in particular.

With Online News Stuart Allan has produced a book of comparable importance, but from a much-needed British - or at least transatlantic - perspective.

The concept is straightforward: an overview of online journalism in its different forms, with a historical perspective focusing on key events. The execution is clear, critical, and thoroughly researched, and even much-repeated stories - such as the `Rathergate' or `Memogate' affair that led to Dan Rather's resignation - are illuminated with fresh detail.

Allan identifies two key `tipping points' in the development of online news: the tsunami in South East Asia and the importance that that gave to citizen journalism - and the speech by Rupert Murdoch which finally acknowledged the need for newspapers to embrace the web - or be buried by it.

From there he explores a number of other `tipping points': how September 11th "redefined" news when mainstream agencies crashed under excessive demand, and smaller sites took up the strain; how the Iraq war created a demand from readers for alternative voices from abroad; how participatory journalism is creating opportunities for news outside of commercial pressures; and how bloggers have become both news source and news watchdog.

What is laudable here is the rigour with which Allan approaches his subject matter, and his avoidance of the hype that characterises so much writing on online news. While the importance of blogs are acknowledged, for instance, the potential for descent into `mob rule mentality' is outlined - for instance, in the way in which rightwing bloggers targeted what they perceived as the `liberal' CBS and CNN. Likewise, while bloggers can be seen as `democratising' journalism, Allan points out that there is an emerging hierarchy of "celebrity bloggers" that dominate that conversation; and that "bloggers who actively resist pressures to conform - that is, who continues to strive to speak truth to power - will find it that much more difficult to reach a broad audience".

In his final chapter Allan notes the importance of Google News and its `computer editors' for the future of journalism and news distribution, while also identifying how "notions of `authority', `credibility' and `prestige' are in flux". The BBC is held up as an example of the genuinely empowering possibilities of new journalism technologies - particularly the organisation's moves to make both software and archive content available to users - but ultimately "too often the pressures of the marketplace being brought to bear on online news are working to narrow the spectrum of possible viewpoints to those which advertisers are inclined to support".

Summing up, Allan identifies a worrying trend in online news becoming "aligned with the `attractive wrapping' of commercial television", a trend which has most recently been reinforced by The Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Sun and Trinity Mirror all making moves towards producing online video. If the promises of online news are to be fulfilled books like this deserve the widest possible readership.

Great Refrence..
without this book ,i wouldnt be able to write my MA dissertation. it came in the perfect time and it really helped me. easy written but rich of information.i am glad i bought the book in the last minute!

Best yet...
This is a really accessible and thought-provoking read. Inevitably for its subject matter these texts can quickly become out of date but because it is so well-developed thematically and peppered with choice case studies I suspect that any updated editions will be equally well constructed. I've recommended it as a core text for Media students studying Journalism as I'm sure my students will get as much out of it as I did.