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For better or for worse, the digital revolution is changing journalism.
In much the way refrigeration changed food production and consumption, digitization potentially changes everything about the manner in which we produce and consume news. All presumptions about its freshness and perishability vanish.
For most of the 20th century, the public had to follow unfolding news, catching it as it presented itself or losing it forever. Any viewer who wanted to see a local story after its broadcast was simply out of luck. Newspapers and magazine readers had a slightly better chance of finding recently published articles, but locating large quantities of older reporting was the province of scholars or pricey research firms. Now, digital databases, most available through the Internet, turn that pattern upside down. The public needn't pay attention all the time. Increasingly, it doesn't.
Convergence of information media on digital platforms means anyone can be a scholar or editor. Friends are becoming more reliable filters of information than established news brands. Technology allows for more news, produced and available at lightening speed, often at lower costs than before. And the process is accelerating still, facilitated by equipment upgrades of Y2K remediation and government-mandated conversion to high-definition television, most of it digital. Whether or not the public embraces HDTV, television stations have hardware in place.
Journalists worry. Will quality suffer? Will commerce contaminate hardwon integrity?
Actually, the end of the journalists' world is nowhere in sight. But as the digital revolution marches ahead, much about the ways we define, gather and produce news will have to change, too.
Quantity, Quality and Speed
Volumes of stories, delivered instantaneously, have changed America's information diet. News is now less a series of discreet "meals," a morning newspaper, a noon radio update, and an evening broadcast. Rather, it's a robust, all-day buffet, containing fast food, junk food, fine dining, and everything in between. The public can choose to partake of what it wants, when it wants, in any format, and consume as much or as little as it desires. This system challenges consumers to select a balanced fare...