(A brief note on form: Make sure you click all the links. Some of them are external and relevant, some are external and irrelevant, and some of them are internal and lead to short thought I had about various topics to do with this project and its subject.)
In my physical paper, I described traditional newspapers as
city-center grids and the Internet as either an autobahn or a demolition derby. In truth, it is some of both. The
Internet newspapers are not a complete free-for-all, but they do allow for
unscripted and unplanned routes and points of entry, whereas the traditional
paper does not. The traditional paper posits itself as the beginning and the
end—the map and the landscape itself, both starting point and destination—belying
an epistemological teleology over which they (that is, the newspapers) have
control, leaving little to no control to the readers. The Internet version, on
the other hand, cannot be the same teleologically-centered entity that its
paper-version cousin is. There are, perhaps, ways in which a news site could be
so poorly designed and restrictive to its users that it in many ways mimics
this rigid structure (though that could not preclude the possibility of
reader-created fora related to the site, thus changing its position in the triangle
of communication from speaker to referent), but generally speaking, the Internet
versions of newspapers are designed so that users can contribute, not to the
stories, but to the website (to the form of the thing) itself.
That is not to say that there are not similarities, of
course. Take the web version of The
Charlotte Observer: its front page is similar in design, though more
heavily crowded (and the title is not in the same gothic-newspaper font, but an
unassuming sans-serif in robin’s-egg blue and black, crammed together in all
one word, mimicking the address used to reach the site). The very top of the
page has links to contact the observer, subscribe, and, of course, “Advertise
with us.” The bar beneath this lists the various sections (News, Local,
Politics, Opinion) of the website, rather than individual folds of paper, and
below that is a photo accompanying the day’s (or the hour’s) main story, with a
small snippet of information about it. Other, smaller headlines accompany small
photos and smaller snippets for those stories. There are still ads, thought
they are all confined to the right side of the page in between such features as
a “top stories” box and a stock ticker. Many of the stories are the same,
though the website can, of course, update itself as needed throughout the day
if any new stories arise, where the traditional newspaper can do no such thing.
The primary similarities, as we can see, are with advertising (a given) and
content. The form, then, is only different in that it is adapting the same
rhetoric to a new medium. The Observer’s site still offers no recourse to
research primary sources (only internal links), or otherwise explain and support the “facts” given by
the newspaper.
Of course, the Observer is first and foremost a print
newspaper, its website relatively new. If we look at an online-only newspaper,
such as The Huffington Post, we will
find its layout considerably different. Its headline and section buttons are
similar, but the access to stories themselves are primarily through large
photos with a single line of text beneath them, many tagged with the word
“VIDEO” or “AUDIO” to let a reader know that the article contains different
media within it. Each article page is very different from an article on the Observer’s website. Look briefly at this article from The Huffington Post.
There are a dozen hyperlinks embedded throughout the article, leading both to
other articles within the website, and to external sources as well, not to mention the videos below the story itself which may be of related interest. This
particular online newspaper wants its readers to explore its sources (and their
sources are available, and so on), to read primary documents, as it were,
rather than simply taking the Huffingon Post’s word on a given
subject. The knowledges that this Internet newspaper create are supported with
outside documentation, and rely on user interest to further explore—Huffington Post wants its readers to
create their own sense of the many facets of a story (indeed, they actually
recognize that there are multiple
facets—the Observer, in either form,
does not link to outside content in the articles themselves).
The Internet in some ways is a restrictive medium, but only
in its connectedness. A web page is by definition connected to “the web” of
sites on servers around the world, and is more or less easily accessed via
search engines. The Internet, by its very nature, forces a connectivity between
resources which is unavailable in any other medium, and many websites go well
beyond the “forced” connectivity and create more connectivity of their own,
offering not only internal links to its own pages, but external links as well,
to their sources, and their sources’ sources, to related material (or not). Though
Charlotte Observer does not have
external links within its articles themselves (though the interconnectedness of
the Internet makes it far easier to explore, via Google or similar, other
viewpoints on matters raised in the Observer),
many online news agencies such as Slate,
MotherJones, and Huffington Post do. The difference is that these particular
websites are solely Internet
newspapers. They do not have paper cousins, but are formatted specifically for
the web. One of the ways that online newspapers (including both the Observer and other online-only news
sources) engender this connectedness is through the ability of readers to
comment on articles and reply to other users’ comments, and even have various
fora specifically devoted to user-created and user-submitted content ranging
from opinions on the latest sports news, to politics, etc. This gives users the
ability to speak back to the paper, and to one another. Debates are often
heated, as well, providing some light entertainment (and occasionally blind rage) if one’s workday is a bit on the slow side. This is an entirely new
concept for newspapers, but one that they seem to be embracing online. These
aid in the creation of knowledges that are not dependent upon received
knowledge specifically from papers. Users are free to explain their own
opinions or use data to explain how the article has incorrectly represented
something.
Lyotard
says that one is “always located at a post through which various kinds of
messages pass. No one … is ever entirely powerless over the messages that traverse
and position him at the post of sender, addressee, or referent” (15).
Traditional papers position readers as only
(excepting letters to the editor) addressees, while online papers allow the
shift from addressee to sender, and the shift of the newspaper itself from
sender to addressee or even referent.
It is this interaction and
re-positioning allowed by online newspapers that sets them apart from print
versions. The user interaction, both in original comments about or to the
paper, create additional knowledges which will in gaps or create new branches
from the original article, and subsequent comments do the same for the first
comment, etc. This allows for user-created and user-directed knowledges which
supplement or just as often contradict the knowledges put forth by the paper in
its official capacity. Though the inherent form of the Internet itself
underlies the postmodernity of the Observer’s
web version, it is the user created content which really allows for the
creation of different knowledges. Users themselves take different approaches to
this creation, of course: some favor the traditional newspaper method of simply
stating something and expecting it to be taken as a given, while others produce
links to their sources. If we return briefly to our traffic analogy, the Internet
itself is an autobahn, while the news
sites on the Internet are more like our Interstates: the regulations are fewer,
and vary from state to state (from site to site), and from these Interstates
one can either take an exit for the city-center grid, or a different exit to
the true freedom of the autobahn. Online
newspapers are still peddling their version of knowledge: they are still
didactic in their articles and use the authority given them by the history of
journalism. But they also allow for the creation of other knowledges, which is
simply not possible in traditional print media.
