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New Media Journalism: An Overview
From: Columbia University
| By:
John V. Pavlik |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
The term "new media" has been hard to define, and the technologies that are changing the face of media have been even harder to track. In this overview, John Pavlik defines new media and puts his discussion of new technologies in a conceptual framework that makes it easy to understand how new media is changing modern journalism. |
 he term "new media" refers to those emerging communication tools that arise from the coming together, or convergence, of computing, telecommunications and traditional media. It is an ever-changing landscape, so those new media of today will be different tomorrow. In 2000, discussion of new media often focuses on the Internet, but the world of online communication is only part of the story. New media includes a wide range of technologies, from cameras that shoot 360-degree fields of view, to wearable computers, to remote-sensing satellite imaging and more. |
It is perhaps most useful to put new-media technology into a framework of five broad areas that sometimes overlap. These five areas are 1) tools for acquiring information; 2) storage technologies; 3) production technologies; 4) distribution or publishing technologies; and 5) technologies for access to or the display of information. These five areas sometimes overlap, but they are a useful framework for organizing a discussion of new media. |
Acquisition technology: tools for information gathering
The tools for news gathering are changing in dramatic ways. Although these changes have not come overnight, they are becoming widespread in journalism today. Among the most relevant technologies are a variety of software tools, especially Internet search tools such as Yahoo! and Excite, browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer, news databases (e.g., Lexis/Nexis), electronic mail (e.g., Eudora), virtual communities (e.g., chat rooms, listserves, Usenet newsgroups), telnet applications and file transfer protocols (ftp). |
Also important is a wide range of devices for gathering visual information. Digital still cameras now routinely provide megapixel resolution much closer to the resolution of 35 mm film. Cameras such as the Kodak DC290 Zoom Digital Camera offer 2.1 megapixel resolution for a price less than $1,000. Digital video (motion) cameras such as the Canon Elura capture broadcast-quality video for less than $2,000. |
Modern digital technology is also making possible a variety of new video formats. Among them are cameras that shoot 360-degree panoramic photos and panoramic motion video--in either near- or full-broadcast quality. In the case of one company, Cyclovision, the 360-degree imaging system involves nothing more complicated than attaching a parabolic mirror to the lens of off-the-shelf still or motion cameras and continuing to shoot. Also available are cameras such as one from MetaCreations that shoots images in 3D format. |
The end of the Cold War has also provided a powerful imaging resource for journalists, that of remote sensing satellite imagery (images taken by satellites in orbit some 400 miles above the earth). Although there are ongoing First Amendment battles between the civilian sector and the federal government (i.e., the Department of Defense) over what is called "shutter control," (i.e., the military controls when the satellite images are or are not available, such as during times of military conflict), remote sensing is already opening up important vistas for journalism. This is especially true for journalists interested in access to remote locations, or in obtaining large-scale views. |
Stories using remote sensing range from environmental stories of deforestation to the war in Bosnia. Other imaging tools include Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV) that can capture visual information from relatively low altitudes, and thermal-imaging cameras that can enable vision inside a smoke-filled burning building. Also emerging is an entirely new class of more experimental "sensors" that may transform news gathering. |
At Columbia University one professor has developed a robot that can travel the streets of Manhattan, scan buildings using a laser and then render the buildings in precise 3D format. Another Columbia collaboration has led to the development of a Mobile Journalist Workstation (MJW) with a built-in Global Positioning System receiver (GPS is a system developed by the US military to provide precise locational information for objects anywhere on earth; it uses a constellation of 24 satellites orbiting the earth to obtain location information) that can automatically encode each image or sound recorded with the precise longitude, latitude and altitude of where that image or sound was observed. One off-the-shelf camera, the Kodak Digital Science 420, comes similarly equipped with a GPS receiver. |
GPS encoding can be vitally important in establishing the exact location of the subject of an important news photograph, such as a mass grave in Kosovo. Linking such GPS-encoded imagery to Geographic Information System (GIS) data makes it even more powerful. Geo-referenced news and information will become one of the major developments in journalism in the next decade and beyond, especially as mobile, wireless news delivery develops. |
So-called Wireless Application Protocols (WAP) for the Internet are just beginning to emerge, but they promise to grow dramatically in the next decade. Delivering news and information (e.g., from text, audio and video news indexed to a specific location, to information about the nearest automatic teller machine, medical emergency room, or even block-by-block crime data geo-referenced via portable devices equipped with GPS and other locational devices). Geographic markup language (GML) for the Web will likely be a major part of Web-based news delivery, notes Dan Dubno, a producer and technologist for CBS News. |
Audio recording is also being transformed. Among the most important tools are digital audio tape (DAT), digital audio disk and 3D sound capture. These tools not only replicate all the capabilities of analog audio recording technology but add a variety of important capabilities such as time codes or annotation (i.e., the reporter can easily annotate sections of the audio recording during an interview, for example, to mark his or her questions). |
Storage
Today's journalist increasingly works in a variety of media formats, including text, audio, images, graphics and motion video. Working in these various formats requires increasingly massive amounts of digital storage. Where once a computer with 256 kilobits of storage was a lot (say, in 1982), today's personal computers come with more than 100 megabits (some upgradable to more than a gigabit) of random access memory and hard drives with many gigabits of storage. It will soon be standard for the typical journalist workstation to have terabit or even petabit storage capability, amounts necessary to handle some of the very large, high-resolution files being created. |
Fortunately, digital storage capability has grown exponentially in recent years, just as the cost of storage has fallen precipitously. It has fallen so dramatically that many online services, such as driveway.com, now provide up to 50 megabits of storage to any user--for free. Digital storage offers a variety of significant advantages over analog storage, including automatic indexing (i.e., labeling of content), random access for easy and fast retrieval of content stored anywhere in the file, and advanced search capabilities for audio and video. |
For example, it is now possible to search audio and video using not only keyword descriptions for that content but also using features of the content itself. This might include not only low-level features such as color, texture or shape, but also face or voice recognition or scene changes. Such capability can be especially useful to the journalist on deadline. A variety of news organizations are already employing these tools, including CNN, PBS and ABC News. Powerful portable storage devices such as the Iomega Jaz 2 GB drive are increasingly common. |
Production: editing and designing stories--by computer
In 1965, Gordon Moore, former chairman of Intel Corp., the world's largest manufacturer of computer chips, offered his now famous observation that the number of transistors that can be placed on a single microchip doubles every 18 months. |
Now known as Moore's Law, this trend has continued for more than 30 years and means that computers have doubled in processing speed every year and a half. The mainframe computer of the 1950s that used to fill an entire room has less processing power than a $2 calculator you can slip into your pocket today. Accordingly, journalists have migrated from minicomputers to desktop PCs to laptops to handheld devices like the Palm, which is, in effect, a fully functional computer. |
I'm writing this article on my Palm, in fact, which I've inserted into my Stowaway keyboard, a full-size keyboard that collapses like an accordion to fit into a pouch about the size of my Palm, which is itself about the size of a wallet. Once I've finished writing this article in the Palm "memo" pad, I'll simply "synchronize" with my office computer, perhaps even beam it to another device (a printer, for example), or e-mail it to the publishers of a magazine half a world away; in fact, I can e-mail it directly to them using a wireless modem attached to my Palm Vx. |
Using Visto.com, I can also synchronize my Palm (or other applications such as Microsoft Outlook Express) with not only my desktop but also with an automatically generated and secure website, where my calendar, address book and more can reside. Only I will have access, using a unique user name and password. In addition, I can use Visto to automatically build a "guest" website where my calendar can reside, with as much or as little information as I wish visible. And I can password-protect my guest site. Visitors to my site (in my case, especially my students) can review my schedule, see when I'm free (not often) and easily book an appointment via e-mail. |
Next-generation journalists will rely increasingly on wearable computer devices. These are likely to be devices no bigger than a pager today and will clip to your belt. You'll be able to enter data either by voice recognition or a handheld "keyboard." The futurist Ray Kurzweil, one of the pioneers of speech recognition, forecasts in his 1999 book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, that in less than 20 years computer processing power will far exceed that of humans, and will have been so miniaturized that microchips will be biologically inserted into people, giving them access to vast repositories of knowledge and internal computing power. Is this part of the future of journalism in the twenty-first century? It's not as far-fetched as it may seem. Microchip technology is already being designed for use as aids to the blind or hearing impaired, in some cases successfully restoring sight or hearing. |
Regardless, a variety of new processing and production tools are already available and widely used by journalists not only in central newsrooms but in the field. Off-the-shelf software lets people create websites even with no knowledge of hypertext markup language (HTML), and even more powerful variations of HTML, such as dynamic HTML (DHTML) or extensible markup language (XML), promise to greatly increase journalists' ability to create multilayered, dynamic and information-rich stories. |
Other important production tools include those for editing digital video. Expensive high-end professional hardware-based systems such as Avid are rapidly being replaced by simpler, far-less expensive software-based systems such as Adobe Premier Final Cut Pro that can run on standard desktop systems. Similar tools are available for editing digital still images and creating graphics, such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Experiments have also demonstrated the compatibility of image processing on a Palm. |
On a more experimental level, software tools for creating professional 3D images and graphics are now available. Once only possible on costly and complex high-end Silicon Graphics workstations, high-quality, consumer-friendly 3D imaging programs are available from companies, such as Metacreations, whose Canoma program has been used by CBS News and others to produce useful 3D views of a variety of objects, such as sculptures or historical objects in news features. Using MetaStream, these 3D objects can be easily streamed to a viewer accessing the website using a 28.8 modem. |
Tools for creating Web-based animations are also increasingly simple to create. They are effective in reporting a variety of news stories, especially when explaining scientific principles or other concepts that are difficult to explain but easy to show. Programs such as Java, Flash and others have been used by reporters at news organizations from CNN to the New York Times. Even mundane applications such as word processing and spreadsheets, extensively used in computer-assisted reporting (CAR), are being transformed. Today's state-of-the-art tools can maintain detailed records of every change made to a document, enabling reporters and editors to retrace the evolution of a document, a process sometimes useful in fact-checking. |
Distribution/networking: publishing <br>in an online environment
Perhaps no part of modern journalism has been more visibly transformed than how news is distributed or published. The rise of the Internet and its World Wide Web in the 1990s brought news online, on demand and onto a global stage as never before. With more than 5,000 newspapers, television and news operations, magazines and Internet-original news services, Internet journalism has become universally available for free to anyone with a computer and access to the Internet. |
Whereas Gutenberg's printing press provided the catalyst for mass literacy, the Internet has turned journalist A.J. Liebling's observation on its head: Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. Today, the Internet makes it possible for virtually anyone to own a digital printing press capable of reaching a worldwide audience. The cost of the cheapest Internet server has now fallen to less than a dollar, and with many Internet service providers offering free Internet service, it doesn't take a mathematician or an accountant to understand why millions of people around the world have created their own personal Web pages--many of them, such as cyber-gossip Matt Drudge, publishing under the guise of news. |
The Internet continues to evolve. Some of the most important recent developments have dramatic implications for journalists and journalism. The delivery of audio and video on demand, what is called "streaming" in Internet parlance, has made it possible for virtually anyone to launch his own radio or television station, with or without news. The growth of broadband (i.e., high-speed) telecommunications services via cable modems, digital subscriber lines, direct broadcast satellite and various terrestrial wireless technologies promises to bring even more change to journalism in the next decade and beyond. |
Dial-up modems with speeds as slow as 28.8 or 56 kbps are being rapidly replaced by 300 kbps services or even faster T1 or Ethernet services. These broadband services make delivering broadcast-quality video or audio on demand via the Internet increasingly common. Programs such as Real Media Player G2, Windows Media Player, Digital Bitcasting or Pixelon now deliver full-screen, 24-frames-per-second, VCR-quality-resolution video on demand to Internet users with a broadband connection. Technology for delivering high-quality audio is also available, and includes the WinAmp player, which can deliver CD-quality audio. An increasing number of traditional news and media organizations are beginning to see the possibilities presented by this technology.
Other network technologies are also transforming journalism. File transfer protocol (FTP) is used to move large files, such as images or video, easily across the Internet, and is extensively used by journalists today. Electronic mail, or e-mail, is used not just for communication but as a means of interviewing sources who may live thousands of miles away. |
Internet-savvy journalists prefer to have their e-mail reside on a "server" (the computer that routes incoming and outgoing data traffic) using a technical protocol called "imap," which keeps the mail on the server but permits the user to download his mail from any computer anywhere in the world, as long as it is equipped with a Web browser such as Netscape. Thus, a journalist on the road can still access his or her e-mail and remain in continuous communication with other reporters, editors, sources and the like. |
A variety of related tools are enabling journalists to create virtual newsrooms that they can access from any place at any time and yet have full access to all their work. For example, a Palm can be synchronized to either a desktop or a network, including the Internet, making it possible to have one's address book, schedule, e-mail and more all accessible from either the Palm or from any device with Internet access. Using Avantgo.com, synchronizing when connected to the Internet enables the Palm to download virtually any website, from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, for later reading. The Visor, which also runs the Palm operating system, has a growing number of plug-ins, ranging from GPS to MP3, enabling a wide range of additional functionality. |
Journalists increasingly participate in online discussion forums known as listserves and bulletin boards that typically deal with specialized topics of any and all types. Research by Middleberg and Ross (1999) indicates that reporters frequently find not only story ideas on such forums but also sources and leads. One popular online forum, egroups.com, not only hosts threaded discussions and listserves (where members receive via e-mail a copy of each message posted to the group) but automatically builds a searchable website of the entire history of the forum and permits members to upload files into an archive known as the "vault," and provides folders of relevant website links, or URLs. |
Poised to transform journalism even further is the beginning of digital broadcasting, both audio and video. Direct broadcast satellite has demonstrated the potential of digital broadcasting, and as other satellite systems for digital radio broadcasting and terrestrial digital broadcasting of video roll out over the next half-dozen years (according to the law under the direction of the Federal Communications Commission), these services will enable vastly personalized, on-demand news and entertainment services in audio and video, as well as multiplexing of signals to greatly expand the specialization and possibly the localization of news and information--not to mention marketing and e-commerce. |
One remarkable telecommunications technology, poised to transform not only how journalists work but also how most people live, is Internet telephony, or voice-over IP (Internet protocols; VoIP). It allows users to make voice calls to anyone anywhere in the US at no cost; there are companies that allow international calls, but for a fee. The local connection and ISP charges not withstanding, the Internet phone call is free; there are no long-distance charges. This has extraordinary implications for strapped newsroom budgets, and especially the budget of the fiscally challenged freelance reporter. There are also services that enable Internet-delivered voice mail and fax services either free or at low cost. Taken as a whole, all of these services represent a fundamental opportunity to reshape how journalists do their work as well as the way a newsroom is managed. These tools can be used to increase efficiency, reduce cost and increase productivity, perhaps even quality, in reporting by improving the communication in a news organization. |
Display, access, presentation
For journalism, function has often followed form. Julius Caesar's Acta Diurna in 54 CE was possible only because of the existence of parchment. The first daily newspapers, published in the 1600s, were possible only because of the invention of both paper and the printing press. Real-time news over great distance became possible only in the 1800s, with the invention of the electric telegraph. Broadcasting of audio and then motion-picture news reports developed only in the first half of the twentieth century, with the invention of radio and television. |
The Internet today is continuing to lead a reinvention of how news is accessed, displayed and presented to an increasingly global public. Through the World Wide Web, news can be presented not only in text, audio or video format but interactively as well. News is also being delivered to a variety of portable devices continuously connected through wireless communications to the Internet. Internet cellular telephones, pagers and other devices now provide everything from breaking news to stock alerts and sports scores. CNN is now experimenting with the delivery of video news to cellular telephone displays. |
Display, access and presentation technology is continuing to evolve. By the end of the next decade or two the media of news delivery may have as little in common with the media of today as modern media do with the town crier. Many Internet users today get much of their news delivered via a cathode-ray tube (CRT), the same basic technology as in a typical television set. But the flat panel display is already familiar to anyone with a laptop computer, a Palm or a cellular telephone. |
Already available in prototype form, something called "E-ink" promises to bring even more change to news display devices. E-ink, or electronic ink, is essentially a digital replacement for traditional printing paper. It is a computerized laminated paper product that can display information--only text in the year 2000, but in the future perhaps images and video as well--with the resolution of ink on paper and operates with a minimal electrical charge. Only, rather than throwing it away at the end of the day, E-ink is completely reusable. In many ways, it promises to be a viable electronic medium for the daily newspaper--and it is environmentally much friendlier than today's newspapers. |
Also being tested are a variety of wearable display devices, such as prescription eyewear that can also display video, text or other images. If this sounds far-fetched, check to see how many devices you or the person sitting next to you is already wearing--cellular telephone, pager, etc. |
Speech synthesis and recognition are also poised to transform journalism and society. AnaNova, a Max Headroom-like Internet personality in the UK, already delivers personalized news as a "virtual anchor." More seriously, speech synthesis tools are already widely used by the visually impaired to listen to computerized readings of virtually any news text. Increasingly sophisticated speech recognition tools are also being used by video indexing services such as Virage to automatically classify video news. |
When does "new media" become old?
New media is not a replacement for "old," or traditional, media. The technology allows journalists to refine--and in some cases reinvent--how journalism is practiced. The Internet and ready access to large databases give journalists vast stores of information from which to check facts. Wireless communication lets them report with more immediacy than ever before. New multimedia tools such as 360-degree video, 3D imaging techniques and programs such as Java give the news consumer more interactivity than they ever could have from reading a newspaper or watching TV. In short, it lets journalists do their jobs better. |
New media journalism changes with the technology that becomes available and thus will always evolve and remain "new." Right now there is no best way to tell a story using 360-degree images, for example. There are no models that must be adhered to, no masters of the technique. This is true about all the new technologies that have been mentioned and remain so for technologies yet to be developed. But the principles that make good journalism remain the same: thorough reporting, attention to detail, accuracy, stories that touch readers. |
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