This past summer I read Alan Rusbridger’s Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now. And I loved it. Rusbridger is a British journalist and former editor of The Guardian from 1995 – 2015, during the height of the digital revolution, so you can only imagine the things he’s experienced.
A good chunk of the book details how Rusbridger and his staff handled the breakthrough of the Internet, and how the addition of a website and digital platforms morphed into extensions of the traditional print paper. It was a complete must-read for me: the only kind of journalism I know is one that’s a mix of print and digital production (and also student-run). Learning about how the very beginning of digital news delivery came to be was totally fascinating.
Rusbridger’s main argument is that the Internet changed the processes of news delivery and consumption in a really profound and arguably permanent way. He talks a lot about the rise of the “comment section” under online “content” (written pieces from the paper) and how that changed the way journalists interacted with the public.
He writes, “The guy with the antenna could broadcast to billions, with no feedback loop. He could dominate. But on the internet every voice was going to be equal to every other voice.” With the Internet, readers were suddenly able to “post” opinions immediately after reading an article. Without the Internet, opinions might be formed by word of mouth or through Letter to the Editor / Op-Ed submissions, which could take several days to reach newsrooms. Just as journalists could suddenly publish content with the click of a button, readers could then respond with the same ease. I love this idea that suddenly, citizens were able to respond to the news. That simple change alone completely transformed the news industry.
Along the same lines, Rusbridger also notes that news slowly changed from something that was supplied to readers to something that readers could participate in; mobile phones, social media, and the ease of sharing information online created a world where the public was often breaking news before the newspaper. He writes, “After just four days it seemed blindingly obvious that the future of information would be mainly digital […] the future would be more interactive, more-image drive, more immediate […] we could be both a platform and a publisher.”
There’s another part that I love. Rusbridger writes that before the Internet, executive editors of papers would “consider the world as presented to him and make decisions about the relative importance of each story” during daily meetings to design the following day’s front page. Newspeople still do that, as “geometry and typography” are still “the NYT’s way of imposing a hierarchy of order on the otherwise random torrent of information.”
I do this at The Stute; every Thursday I look at the news for the week and decide what goes on the front page and where by drawing a plan on our office whiteboards. I choose which stories will be above the fold, and which will be promoted on our social media. It’s an incredible amount of power, and to be honest it does feel fun to be so in control of the front page of Stevens history. But it’s an interesting dynamic — to choose what goes on the front page is to be subjective and to make decisions that will be influenced by my biases no matter what, even though I try to be as objective as possible in choosing stories.
So if it isn’t already obvious I love this book. Many of the points Rusbridger makes are inspiring my senior thesis project and topic. I recommend it to everyone, not those just practicing “journalism” of some form. If you’re interested in communication, the interaction of the public with newsrooms, and how the Internet is changing information, pick it up.
The Stute Editorial is an Opinion column written by the current Editor in Chief of The Stute to address and explain editorial decision making, discuss news and media issues, and develop a sense of trust and transparency between readers and members of The Stute.
Be First to Comment