[AEJMC Newspaper Division list] New name for Newspaper Division?

[Byung Lee]

Hello Colleagues,

My suggestion is to add "Interactive" to the 
division name, making the full name "Interactive 
News Division," "Interactive Newsmedia Division," 
or "Interactive Newspaper Division."

Adding "Interactive" would shift the focus of 
people's view of the Internet from just another 
news channel to something to take advantage of.

Newspapers can go beyond text and graphics to 
deliver multimedia in this exciting medium 
(multiple modes of information including audio 
and video).
Newspaper journalists can learn audio and video 
skills and catch up with television journalists 
eventually. However, the true rival lies not with 
television, but somewhere else. In South Korea, 
the rival is an interactive search portal site. 
In other places, a rival has not yet formed.

To prepare for future rivals, newspapers must 
effectively organize news and information by 
taking advantage of the Internet's strengths. 
(Though I'm not suggesting that newspapers give 
up the paper format.) A few of the advantages are 
listed below.

Interactivity. The real advantage of the Internet 
as a medium is its interactivity. Rather than 
just dumping information on users, newspapers 
should build an information structure so that 
users can easily and efficiently access 
information.

Different people have different levels of 
literacy, and websites should be able to be 
changed accordingly. Some people prefer simpler 
syntax while others prefer a more difficult text. 
Some people skip the text all together and just 
watch the videos. People need to have more 
control over these different variables and have 
different versions of the same story. Newspapers 
can accomplish this by putting the different 
versions in a database and allowing the reader to 
choose a combination of versions according to his 
or her preference.

Interaction. Newspapers allow interaction among 
journalists and readers. Readers themselves can 
be news sources as we move into a world of blogs 
and online journalism. Newspapers will morph from 
a channel of a few powerful news sources to a 
forum of ordinary people. Thanks to improvements 
in technology, it is easier to measure what 
ordinary people have on their mind and deliver it 
to policy makers and other users. Newspapers' 
survival or success lies not in just content 
quality, but also their relevance to the audience 
and their ability to bring people to their 
website as readers and contributors.

Users will read, bookmark, or tag a story, 
sending the story to their relatives or friends 
if it is particularly good. They could also write 
a response to the story. Newspapers should allow 
this "collective intelligence" to flow out of 
users to enhance their "excitement." At the same 
time, newspapers should take advantage of this 
intelligence to guide readers' attention to 
material relevant to them.

When I looked around the Internet, I found 
successful stories of Internet companies, Google, 
Myspace, Facebook, Amazon, etc. What do they have 
in common?

Google fetches information based on matched 
words. As semantics (meaning) will be attached to 
content through user-added labels, users can 
retrieve information more accurately. Amazon, the 
online superstore, gives the user suggestions for 
future purchases based on my previous buying 
pattern and comparison with others' purchase. 
Newspapers should do the same and give 
suggestions on what to read based on my previous 
views.

Facebook and Myspace are also good examples for 
change. In these two websites, users can meet 
with friends, send messages, and chat. Newspapers 
too should be an agora for people to meet and 
discuss.

Newspapers should not just be a place to get the 
news. By opening up the online sites to users, 
the newspapers could change the schematics of 
journalism. Newspapers would still be necessary 
to put out the news, but the readers could add 
their own opinions and others who were present at 
the scene could write their own accounts, leading 
to a more dynamic story. This would change 
newspapers forever.

The renamed division will be assigned more jobs. 
Privacy issues would need to be taken care of and 
how to train journalists under the new system 
should be discussed.

Change is necessary for newspapers to survive in 
this new information age. Without it, without 
users' attention to their site, newspapers will 
degenerate into a wholesale supplier for new 
media companies that will know how to organize 
information and will dictate newspapers what and 
how to produce information for them.

Byung Lee
Elon University

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============================¥
Byung Lee, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
School of Communications
Campus Box 2850
Elon University
Elon, N.C. 27244


phone: 336-278-5675
email: byunglee at gmail.com, byunglee at elon.edu
fax: 360-242-0739 (United States)
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