Kevin G. Barnhurst

News Geography & Monopoly: the form of reports on US newspaper internet sites

US newspapers that publish electronic editions on the internet do not appear to reinvent themselves online. Instead the web versions reproduce the substance of their print editions in a way that relates similarly to readers. Reaching stories online can be a process involving multiple screen jumps and scrolls but only a few stories have added features, such as hyperlinks to additional information, images, or interactive resources. Newspaper stories online differ very little from those printed in the originating newspapers. The internet versions do not usually add to or change the text of the stories, and their presentation is visually meagre, especially compared with print, which has a richer typographical range and presents many more images. The results suggest that print publishers use their internet presence as a low-cost place holder that guards their US market position and erects a barrier to the entry of geographical competitors and ideological alternatives in the US news arena.

Politics in the fine meshes: young citizens, power and media

Surveys exposing an uninformed public, journalism emphasizing interpretations, and news focused on showmanship have combined to change public life. As young adults abandon news, what do they substitute to become informed citizens? Life history narratives offer some answers. Young citizens form their political identities within personal networks, responding first to fiction television in the family and with peers. Their stories take place in small jurisdictions — home, school, church — where through media they confront the state as a force empowered to risk life. Politics principally involves forming opinions. In that process, young adults refer to news among many other sources: pop songs, TV commercials, documentaries, personal discussions. Because they cannot escape the media surround, their sense of power corresponds not to democratic theory but to the ideas of Foucault and Nietzsche, where citizens use the media to design their own bodies as political outposts.

US newspaper types, the newsroom, and the division of labor, 1750–2000

This article develops our argument in The Form of News, which explored the development of the press as a repository of material and imagined relationships, by focusing on newswork and the emergence of the newsroom. Our aim is to sketch elements of a history of newswork within the broader context of a history of newspapers. After summarizing a series of newspaper types in US history, we locate the development of modern newsrooms and newswork within a period of industrialization and professionalization. We conclude by remarking on current developments in the space of newswork and speculating on future trends in a context of the convergence of different media.

THE FORM OF REPORTS ON US NEWSPAPER INTERNET SITES, AN UPDATE

A previous study found that US newspaper electronic editions did not appear to reinvent themselves. In 2001, the Web versions reproduced the substance of print editions so as to relate similarly to readers. A replication of the study shows that by 2005 the online editions were changing, especially in the form of news. For readers, the laborious process involved in using the Internet editions in 2001 had changed, but many clicks and scrolls had shifted from mapping the content to managing reading. Multiple screens for each story exposed readers to more ads. Some interactive elements became standard, such as reader-produced comments and links to archives. But individualized hyperlinks to resources from other agencies or providers were rare, keeping traffic inside the site. The Internet versions were still visually meager compared to print, which has more typographical range and many more graphics and pictures. The study results suggest that print publishers have moved only tentatively into the new technology, continuing a long history as slow adopters of innovation and new techniques for informing the public. Their primary drive has been to serve the needs for revenue, not to provide for the comfort and information of citizens.

Young citizens, American TV newscasts and the collective memory

Using a life history method and comparing results with earlier research on newspapers, we examine college students’ life experiences with television news, particularly those related to its role in citizenship. Results show differences in how television news is understood and used by gender, age, ethnicity. The research suggests a fundamental reevaluation of that role is necessary.

The New "Media Affect" and the Crisis of Representation for Political Communication

Political communication research in the United States, despite two decades of change in how the public receives information, follows theories that rely on definitions of citizenship from a century ago and on metaphors growing out of communication techniques and practices of five decades ago. A review of the state of news media, facing technical, labor, and economic crises, and the state of political science, illustrated through research methods, leads to a reexamination of communication at the intersection of media and politics. Political communication theory has come to rely on functional metaphors, economic background assumptions, an emphasis on method, and a legacy of structuralism. The crisis presents current theories with challenges for the representation of citizens and the press in democracy. Especially as young adults reject older forms of information, political communication can renew itself by deepening existing theory and shifting from old effects rationality to a new “media affect” sensibility.

The Problem of Modern Time in American Journalism 1

Abstract American life seems pressed for time, and journalists claim they must focus on the now because of competition and technology. Shorter news cycles affect the deadlines for producing live reports on television and constant updates online. Without time to investigate or edit, journalists say their work deteriorates, leaving the public uninformed. But our studies of newspaper, television, and internet news reveal that time in news coverage has been expanding into the past and the future for decades, reflecting news reporters’ professional and modernist claims to prioritize events in time. As temporal concepts transformed at the end of the twentieth century, journalists continued producing reports that reflect modern time regimes. The recent closings of mainstream newspapers, and the consequences journalists see for news quality and public policy, flow to some degree from their modernist sense of time that leaves them disconnected from the current time regime.

News form and the media environment: a network of represented relationships

US newspapers did not assume their modern form until well into the 20th century. Through the 1880s, all but the largest metropolitan dailies limited themselves to four pages in length and featured very little illustration. Until the 1920s, most dailies crowded dozens of items on their front pages, producing a Darwinian struggle for the citizen’s attention. By the 1960s, newspapers came to look fully modern, with all the cues of expert explanation incorporated into their appearance and organization, accommodating a citizenry with little time or inclination to read. Soon after that, the modern moment began to erode. For the most part, historians have ignored these changes in appearance, implicitly judging the form of news to be insignificant compared with the movement of information through the newspaper or the explicit engagement of news-workers in the political realm. This is a mistake. The form of news has as much to do with its work in the world as its content does. Changes in form signal deep changes in the role the newspaper has played in the civic life of the nation.

Design Trends in U.S. Front Pages, 1885–1985

The conventional wisdom suggests that technology and competition have revolutionized newspaper front pages in the past 20 years. This study took the long view, analyzing the visual form of three newspapers over a century. We found that front pages had in fact changed in much the way that the conventional wisdom predicted. But we also found that the change was gradual, that is, that the ideas behind the “design revolution” had been influencing front pages for over half a century. The direction of change was toward making the front page a more efficient map of the news for readers, implying that the sources of change were in design theory and news ideology rather than in economics or technology. The upshot of these changes has been greater uniformity among front pages.

Beyond Modernism Digital Design, Americanization and the Future of Newspaper Form

After reviewing the emergence of online newspapers, we offer observations based on historical and design analyses of major US sites, supplemented top-down by innovators in the Americas and Europe and bottom-up by sites serving one locality in Massachusetts. Despite losing typical print elements, the late modern designs emphasize text, with minimal multimedia content, especially on local sites. Instead of giving outlet to news handicraft, corporate and promotional models abound. The web flattens hierarchies, exposes content sources, and deforms journalistic authority by disarticulating the audience. Historical parallels include 19th-century flows of design innovation from advertising into news and of informational tasks from reporting into photojournalism. Newspapers can coexist with the internet while surrendering some tasks, such as archiving factual background, becoming instead more analytical advocates.