South Africa’s premier online news sites – including the Naspers-owned News24, Independent-owned IOL, Johnnic-owned Sunday Times Online, and even the fiercely independent Mail&Guardian Online – often lead with identical stories. This was pointed out by one of online journalism’s many critics, Matthew Buckland, editor of the Mail&Guardian Online.
Online journalism has been suffering from a self-esteem crisis ever since the Internet bubble collapsed under the weight of its own hype. As more online publications closed down or cut back on staff and salaries, many senior journalists returned to print, TV or radio. The Net suddenly had less personality, less journalistic colour. Quality writing, while by no means extinct on the Net, became scarce. Independent outfits, those original thinkers, got swallowed whole by the subsidiaries of multinationals, and, how humiliating, by ‘dead-tree’ outfits (in other words, online media’s print counterparts).
“Unfortunately, the standards of online journalism are poor at the moment,” says Buckland. “And it is largely a result of the unfortunate financial circumstances online publishers find themselves in since the dotcom fallout. Budgets are squeezed and staff complements are not as big as they used to be, so online publishers are operating in incredibly difficult environments. The lack of budget has largely been a result of the medium’s inability to attract substantial advertising revenue. Online advertising in this country makes up less than half a percent of the advertising market, a figure which is also way behind international standards.”
Rachel Stewart, acting editor for SABCnews.com, also points to a number of potential pitfalls in online journalism, including more prevalent opportunities for plagiarism and copyright infringement. The ease with which corrections can be made online could mean that less attention is paid to the quality of a story and presentation at the outset, and, according to Stewart, lack of regulation also leaves space for unethical journalism.
A Question of Ethics
So much for the circulation of diverse ideas and original journalism, right? Not quite, says Buckland, who claims the industry is showing signs of progress. “I believe improved revenue streams will lead to an overall improvement in standards and quality. Remember, many web operations have downsized significantly and adjusted to the market realities, so there could be a few lean web operations poised for profitability in the future.”
In the same vein Alec Hogg, Moneyweb’s CEO, points out that since online’s slice of the total SA media pie currently stands at a mere 0.4 percent – compared with 6 to 8 percent in other major media-consuming countries – there is substantial potential for future growth.
For now, while Buckland insists that there is no shortage of talent in the industry, he says ‘there is no doubt that after the dot bomb crash the medium and industry suffered somewhat of a credibility crisis – which to some extent has informed these negative perceptions.”
Professor Guy Berger, Head of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University, believes the perceptions should be questioned. He argues that the standards and ethics in online journalism are on par with print or the other electronic mediums, and points out that online journalists are more accountable to their readers due to the ease of response.
“Serious audiences for online news are no less concerned about credibility than are print audiences. And given that so much online news is re-purposed from other platforms anyway, especially in this country, I doubt that much of a quality distinction is evident between good online and good print information,” says Berger.
A similar view is held by Ranka Jovanovic, editorial director at one of South Africa’s few financially successful independent websites, ITWeb. “Print or TV publicity may be perceived to be of higher value than online, but I don’t think this has anything to do with the standards, objectivity or ethics of online journalism. If anything, [the] online journalist’s work is under closer scrutiny in terms of originality, plagiarism, consistency, etc. as stories can be retrieved via search engines, and re-read and analysed at any time.”
Of course, the recent Jayson Blair scandal at The New York Times (NYT), which cost that paper some of its reputation and its two top editors, suggests that journalistic ethics reside with people and not distribution channels. Problems with copyright, fact checking and plagiarism are universal, no matter what the medium. (Ironically, some commentators argue that web loggers helped to force the two NYT editors’ resignations. Disgruntled NYT staffers apparently leaked numerous memos and emails to journalist Jim Romenesko, who posted it on his cult-journo site Medianews.org, keeping pressure up on NYT management until the story finally played itself out.)
“Good journalists discern compelling stories in events, cultivate and mobilise networks of sources, double check and triple check facts, develop reputations that can only be won by getting the story right week after week, year after year,” writes Howard Rheingold in Online Journalism Review. “The most famous pioneer in the earliest years of the democratisation of journalism, Matt Drudge, did not establish a sterling example of new media’s promise. Now that savvy and respected newspaper journalists like Dan Gillmor have become enthusiasts of what Gillmor calls ‘we journalism’, some of the necessary professionalism has begun to correct the imbalance of Drudge’s example.”
Changing Culture and Workflow
Many US newsrooms are faced with the reality of not only developing print, but also online and broadcast news. Similarly, many South African newsrooms are now producing content for both online and print products. Presstime, the magazine of the Newspaper Association of America, recently reported on the three key precepts industry executives agree should be adopted to ensure successful cross-media publishing: cultivating an understanding of non-print media; a ‘content neutral’ system that can handle text, photos, audio and video; and an editorial system that focuses on production and news-gathering for any medium.
While dotcom-era buzzwords are no longer welcome in boardrooms, the Nasdaq nosedive has ironically made ‘convergence’ a current reality in many newsrooms, as stand-alone Web publishing operations are integrated into the larger newsroom.
“I think most stand-alone news websites have a tough time financially unless they are very niche. I think integrated newsrooms, with people principally dedicated to one medium – as most people are not jacks-of-all-trades – are the way to go, with—each story being treated in the medium/s which suit it best,” says the SABC’s Stewart. “But it will take a while for that to happen in SA newsrooms, as people are still entrenched in traditional media roles and ways of envisioning the media.”
At the Mail&Guardian the online department used to operate in a separate part of the building but now occupies the same newsroom. Although a separate editorial team runs the website, they are effectively working with their print colleagues. Buckland says: “Newsroom integration is encouraged at the Mail&Guardian, not just purely from a cost efficiency and resource sharing point of view, but to also ensure that the values and editorial positioning of the print publication and the online publication are consistent. A newspaper website must reflect the core values of the print product but must also succeed as a unique product.”
Sven Lunsche, managing editor for the Financial Mail, doesn’t believe that traditional media have to adopt a 24-hour news cycle to meet the challenge of the Internet. They do, however, need to be aware what news has appeared on the web already. Lunsche believes the web’s impact is still limited in this country because of low Internet penetration, which means that the majority of newspaper readers have not yet read the story.
Berger, meanwhile, feels a huge cultural change is necessary. “We have seen many instances in SA of convergence and integration unwinding and going into reverse, because of the difficulties of cultural change. Both Johnnic and Media24 have retreated from their earlier versions of being integrated multi-platform publishers,” says Berger. “Managing change is always tough, and this particular change is maybe tougher than most instances. It calls for very nuanced leadership who can recognise varying abilities amongst staffers and deploy them according to story requirements in the most effective way. We do not yet have such a cadre in this country: most news managers are uni-platform.”
Underpinning these difficulties are resource constraints, pressures on journalists to produce quantity at the expense of quality, and poor management. “Younger staffers are more flexible and more multi-skilled and will have an easier time in adapting to multi-platform publishing,” says Berger. “New media ventures can start off on a multiple platform footing, though it does not seem that ThisDay has had this vision. And again, it comes back to leadership.”
A Populist Medium
Douglas Rushkoff, a respected new media and social commentator, once told a colleague of mine that the Internet is as warm as the people using it. This was back in 1997, and he was commenting on what he described as the struggle for control of the Internet between the “populist/spiritual vs. elitist/wired business types”. It would seem that the wired business types won the day. If so, it would be in no small part because they co-opted many of those populist/spiritual types to join them in that rabbit hole called the IPO. Simply put, online media over-reached in its own zealous self-love.
The story does not end there, though. If ever there were a medium suited to the power of the individual, the Internet would certainly be it. It simply cannot be controlled. Those journalists who have always appreciated the way this medium connects them with their audience are creating their own websites, blogs, and mailing lists. Once their independence is declared, the size and loyalty of their audience is dictated by the quality of their writing.
Writing on the Net suddenly seems a little more diverse, a little more colourful, and a little more alive. The future democratisation of the media, described by some as peer-to-peer journalism, made possible by technology, lies in following the traditional principles of journalism.
Herman Manson is the editor and founder of mediatoolbox.co.za, the online
magazine covering media and business issues. His writing has appeared in
numerous magazines around the world. He is a member of the advisory board of
The Big Change and The Journal for Convergence.