Persuasive Essay
lovlyl
campaign_contributions.pdf
CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS:
ONLINE NEWSPAPER COVERAGE
OF ELECTION 2000
By fane B. Singer
ThroughtheirWebsites,newspapersmay contribute topoUticalcampaign coverage in new ways. This survey of online editors of leading U.S. nezvspaper sites indicates that editors gave primary emphasis to the medium's ability to provide Election 2000 information faster and in more detail. Though options for enhancing political discourse were appreciated, both interactivity and multimedia presentations were less widely cited among key goals and perceived successes. These findings suggest that journalists are "normalizing" the Internet as a way to further traditional roles and goals.
Coverage of political campaigns, elections, and outcomes is a staple of American newspaper journalism. An underlying, generally unquestioned assumption is that one key job of the press is to help inform the electorate well enough to enable wise choices for self- government.' Indeed, the media claim special rights and privileges, from blanket First Amendment protection to special postal rates, based on their unique status as the "fourth branch" of government.^ Surveys of journalists' self-perceptions repeatedly unearth themes of public service and commitment to making democracy work, typically through disseminating and interpreting important information.-* Whether journalists actually do what they see themselves as doing and whether what they do actually enhances the democratic process always have been open to question. Nonetheless, the belief that their role is exemplified by their handling of political information has remained unshakeable, and political coverage is a component of the newspaper to which journalists have ascribed primary importance.""
Today's "newspaper" consists of both a traditional printproduct and an online counterpart, with at least 1,200 U.S. dailies offering Web si tes.'The easy availability of thousandsof political sites means citizens no longer need a traditional n\edia outlet to inform themselves about candidates and campaign issues.* At the same time, the Web gives print journalists anopportunity both toextendtheircover age of government— something they describe as a key benefit of online resources^—and to venture into new areas such as audio/video content or interactive forums. In short, newspaper journalists' self-perception as a cornerstone
jane B. Singer is an assistant professor in the School of journalism and Mass Communi- cation, University of Iowa.
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Online Political News and Its Providers
of democracy is now open to fresh interpretation. The Web offers both citizens and journalists new options related to information, discourse, and decision making.
Yet evidence from political science indicates that while the Internet affords an ability to expand dramatically participation in our political system, its actual effects seem quite muted. Simply put, cyberspace is becoming "normalized"—citizens are doing very much the same things online as they do "offline."* This exploratory study examines whether a similar normalization effect canbe seen in online adaptations of the journalistic role in the political process. It uses journalists' constructions of their own news-work activities to explore the options pursued by leading newspapers' online editors in covering the 2000 campaign and election.
Although precise figures vary, an estimated 178 million Americans now have online access,' and information seeking is a key component of their use;'" in fact, the Internet has been the only news medium other than radio to steadily gain regular users in recent years. Among younger audiences, a greater percentage regularly get news from the Internet than from printmedia." Americans apparently trust the online medium, as well. Fianagin and Metzger^^ found that while audience members rate newspapers as the most credible of media, they do not see the Internet as significantly less credible than other media forms.
By the 2000 election, the Web had become a key source of political news. A Pew Research Center study found nearly one in five Americans went online for election news in 2000. Among those already online, one- third got election news from the Internet, most citing convenience as the main attraction. Moreover, 43% of online political news users said online news affected their voting decisions. The most common sources for political information were sites of major news outlets, including newspapers.'-^
That said, however, many people get news online who already read the paper anyway. Scempel, Hargrove, and Bernt" found Internet users more likely than nonusers to read a newspaper regularly and to listen to radio news. A small-scale study in Austin, Texas, also found overlap between readers of print and online papers, particularly local ones.'^ Other researchers also have found the Web supplementing rather than replacing traditional news n\edia. While the Web may compete with television entertainment functions, its use as a source of news seems related positively to reading print newspapers.'^ More anecdotal trade press evidence supports the view that new media can "preserve and extend the best aspects of the print culture while augmenting it with their various technological advantages."''
This is a key implication for online newsrooms affiliated with print newspapers. Many people will come to the newspaper's site already familiar with what is in the print paper. They are more likely to go online to learn more about stories seen first in traditional media than to substitute Web use for those media." Online, then, they may be looking for additional or supplemental content such as breaking news.
40 ^ 5 CoMMUNICATtON
background stories, multimedia components, searchable databases, or opportunities to talk about a news story or event." In short, they may want what one online news expert calls "more functional, imaginative news," sites distinguished by a wealth of detail and, increasingly, interactive components.™
The new medium, therefore, could fit well with, and even extend, journalists' existing role—and their self-perception—as people who perform a public service through the transmission and interpretation of information. Preliminary work in online news work indicates that such a self-perception, which seems well-entrenched across time^' and across cultures,^ meshes seamlessly with the new medium. For example, BrilP^ found that people working in online newsrooms rate news judgment as among their most important skills, and Singer^* found that print journalists considering the effects of online delivery on their roles saw providing and interpreting high- quality information as crucial.
Indeed, the Web may make it possible to counter criticisms of traditional media coverage of campaigns and elections as superficial and focused on sensational, combative, or "horse-race" aspects of politics.-^ Key attributes of the medium make it suitable for addressing these concerns. To borrow from Millison,^' the Web allows online journalism to be "real-time" or immediate—ideal for breaking news;^' "shifted time," which Miilison suggests accommodates archiving but also allows unlimited background and reference materials to be made available, accessible at users' convenience; "multimedia," including text, graphics, audio, and at least limited video content; and "interactive" in ways ranging from e-mail to discussion forums to information- retrieval tools that give users greater control over information content and flow.^'
The interactive dimension, in particular, has generated consi- derable excitement among political communication theorists. Some envision the Web as a tool for creating or recreating the much-discussed but elusive "public sphere" seen by Dewey, Habermas, and others as vital to the proper functioning of democracy. The potential rise of an "electronic republic"^' forces the predominantly one-way flow of traditional mass n\edia such as newspapers to give way to a two-way flow enabling audience members to participate actively. It thus has the potential to alter the importance of traditional media in formation of political sensibilities. "At the very least," says one political researcher, "the Net appears likely to decrease the influence of established media organizations over formation of the political agenda."*
But such Internet-enabled populism has remained primarily in the realm of theory, not reality. Online users seem to enjoy quick unscientific polls, but participation in political chat groups holds far less interest,^' even though larger media sites have begun actively to promote such discussion following earlier reticence through much of the 1990s.̂ ^ Studies of the 1996 and 1998 elections showed that for their part, candidates not only have failed to encourage interaction with potential voters,'*' they tend actively to avoid it, fearing loss of message control and ability to "fudge" about specific proposals.^ They are more
apt to use the Web for enhanced self-promofion than enhanced accountability.^'
So instead of a move toward the politically and socially engaged cyber-communities envisioned in the medium's early years,* the Web has entered "an era of organized civil society and structured group pluralism with a relatively passive citizenry"^''—characteristics of U.S. society in general, with or without the new medium. When people use the medium for political purposes, they do so in the same way they use other mass media forms: to acquire information rather than to generate it. Moreover, their interest usually involves breaking news and their goal typically is a quick summary rather than in-depth analysis.'"
Recently, researchers have begun to acknowledge that while the medium does facilitate deliberation of political questions, the quality of discourse falls short of the expectations held out for a technologically revised public sphere." Enthusiasts for technologically induced political change often overlook the fact that online communication tends to be very similar to face-to-face or other mediated communication, even though messages can flow farther and faster, and with fewer intermediaries. Increasingly, political observers are coming to the conclusion that new political messages will resemble the old in many ways'*" —that users are incorporating the medium into existing political behavior patterns rather than using it to generate new ones.
The present study seeks to explore this "normalization" process, but in the context of journalists and their use of the medium to fulfill professional roles and goals. One goal of this study is to examine how online editors perceive options for both political information delivery and political interaction, and what use they are making of them. Are they folding the Web's attributes into their traditional roles— "normalizing" the medium from a journalistic perspective—or are they seeking to use it for new purposes and toward new goals?
To address this issue, this study was structured around the following research questions:
RQl: What did online editors see as their roles and goals in covering political campaigns and elections through newspaper-affiliated Web sites in 2000?
RQ2: What types of content did they identify as most deserving of pride in relation to those goals?
RQ3: What lessons from their experience in 2000 might they apply to future online political coverage?
Methodology This study uses a descriptive survey, one that documents and describes current conditions or attitudes.*' The researcher chose a purposive sampling method, appropriate in studies that seek cases that are especially inf ormative.''^ The goal was to gather information about their 2000 political campaign and election coverage from major papers' oniine editors in each of the fifty states. These newspapers form a
unique data set as the print media most likely to have name recog- nition for every voter in their state, serving as probable sources of state and national political content if users turn to an online newspaper for such content at all.
The Web site of the A u d i t Bureau of Circulations (www.accessabc.com) was used to determine which papers to include; this site provides original data on newspaper circulation. Print circulation figures, rather than online usage data, were used because it is likely to be familiarity with the newspaper itself that leads users to seek it out online as a source of political information. Based on these ABC figures, the researcher selected the biggest paper in each state for inclusion. In addition, any other papers with a daily circulation over 250,000—the largest category used by the Newspaper Association of America—were included; again, such major "metros" typically enjoy name recognition throughout their states and often circulate statewide.
For some states, only the state's largest paper qualified for inclusion. In other states, multiple newspapers qualified; California, for example, has six papers with circulation over 250,000. Altogether, eighty newspapers were included, ranging in circulation size from 33,000 (the largest in its sparsely populated state) to well over 1 million.
The newspapers' Web sites were accessed to determine the nan\e and contact information of an appropriate editorial staffer with responsibility for the site's political news content. A list of e-n-iail addresses was compiled, with generic e-mail addresses (such as [email protected]) used only if the online newspaper did not make individual addresses available.
An e-mail survey was used, with an introductory e-mail letter sent the week before the 7 November election, followed by the survey itself, sent electronically to the same editors on 9 and 10 November 2000. It consisted of ten questions, some with multiple parts. Most questions concerned overall campaign coverage, with a few related specifically to Election Night. Question construction was informed by earlier studies of online newspaper coverage of the 2000 Iowa caucus, which served as a pre-test for the present study.
Because this was an exploratory study, both closed-ended and open-ended questions were used. The closed-ended questions sought concrete data relating to such items as the presence or absence of political discussion forums. The open-ended ones sought richer interpretive feedback from editors to address directly the research questions involving their goals for the sites, content areas they were most proud of, and lessons for future campaign coverage. This combination of question types offers the ability to understand not just what was included on these Web sites but why. The study was not intended to produce generalizable results, because sites were chosen for inclusion based on specific criteria described above.
Although it took as many as five e-mailings over four months and, in some cases, multiple follow-up phone calls, a total of 57 online editors eventually completed the survey, for a resjxmse rate of just over 71%. The mean response rate for e-mail surveys hovers just above
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30%.* Responses were received from papers in forty-one of the fifty states.
Because the data from the closed-ended questions were nominal (or, on questions related to staff size, ordinal) and because the respondent pool was relatively small, descriptive statistics were most relevant. With the open-ended questions, the goal was to identify major themes in editors' conceptualizations of their content decisions and online journalistic roles. To help with this assessment, a short summary of the editor's comments on each question was created. This allowed quick and convenient identification of major concepts. The summaries were used to categorize responses and as a reference to the actual text from the editors, which fleshed out nuances in those responses.
FtndtngS -j-jjg number of major newspapers offering sections of their sites dedicated specifically to election coverage increased dramatically from 1996 to 2000. Thirteen included in this study (22.8%) did not even have a Web site in 1996, according to their current editors. Of those online in 1996,27 offered an election section that year; another 4 editors did not know whether an election section had been available. In 2000, not only were all the newspapers included in this study online (offering either stand-alone sites or community / portal sites typically co-produced with other information providers), but 53 of the 57 (93%) devoted a separate section of their site to election coverage. Thus, about twice as many leading newspapers offered separate online election sections in 2000 as in 1996.
Goals related to informing the public dominated what editors of those online election sections wanted to accomplish in 2000, as well as what they were most proud of having accomplished after the campaign was over and what they hope to do in 2004. While the goals and the ways in which they are being implemented suggest that journalists see the Web as supporting their traditional roles, they also are identifying ways to take advantage of the medium's unique attributes in fulfilling those roles.
RQl: Election 2000 Goals. Editors asked to describe their primary goal for online coverage of the 2000 election offered varied and often multi-faceted responses. However, their ideas fall into rough categories. Two types of closely related, information-oriented goals—providing information and bolstering the newspaper's a n d / o r Web site's reputation, primarily through that information service—were mentioned by a majority. A different goal—creating or strengthening the democratic community, notably by stimulating public discussion of political issues— was cited less frequently.
The Web is an ideal medium for journalists who believe getting information to the public quickly is their key role^ and many of these respondents share that belief. A goal directly related to informing users was mentioned by 45 of the 49 editors (91.8%) who offered at least one goal. Of those, 19 referred specifically to the Web's ability to provide timely news, especially onElectionNight.Representativegoals included "to present results of major races fast" and to provide "complete
election returns throughout the evening, updated within minutes of changes in voter returns."
In addition to timeliness, the Web offers an unlimited news hole. With no time or space restrictions on content, information can be offered in significant depth and detail. The editor who referred to the site's goal as keeping people "abreast of over 400 local elections" recognized this, as did the one who emphasized providing a "comprehensive collection of resources."
A handful of editors with information-oriented goals defined those goals specifically in terms of the value of information for voters facing a ballot decision. The goal was to "give voters the ability to understand the choice they were about to make," said one; "provide news useful to readers wanting to make a decision," explained another.
Notably, these editors saw the Web site extending the franchise of the print newspaper rather than standing apart from it. The goal was to "provide an online resource that combined the best elements of the newspaper coverage with supplementary material online to broaden the information available to readers," one editor said. Some saw the Web site as finally enabling them to beat television, something they could never do in print. "We were trying to beat the TV stations at their game, and we succeeded with better live coverage. We also scooped them on the biggest local race," said one proud online editor.
In addition, these editors saw themselves filling the separate function of making the Web site itself successful. One editor said his goal was "helping citizens make better choices" and, "by making material available all the time (instead of just one day like the print election guide), to driveonlineviewership."Some reversed thepriodties, such as the editor who sought to "generate traffic, grow brand identity and provide a public service by providing detailed and useful information."
Only 4 editors described goals not directly related to providing information orbuilding a viableonlinebusiness,butratherto stimulating political discourse among a community of online users. One sought to "create a local community for discussion of a national issue." Another sought to "empower our community to interact more directly with candidates and officials and to provide the foundation for an electronic town hall." Two others emphasized the desire to engage readers in what one called "lively discussions" about the election.
RQ2: Election 2000 Accomplishments and Sources of Pride. Whatever their goals, the editors were nearly unanimous in declaring that they had been met. Of 48 respondents answering this question, only one admitted failure to meet his goals, citing the "overwhelming number of races" and expressing regret that it was not easier for users to find key information.
Many evaluated their success in terms of usage, citing heavy traffic, especially but not exclusively on Election Night. The overwhelming majority of these editors reported that usage of their election site as a whole either exceeded (18 editors, 31.6%) or met (31 editors, 54.4%) their expectations, even given the amount of work the
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section required. "Online traffic soared, so someone must have found it valuable," one editor explained.
In particular, they expressed satisfaction over how quickly they were able to update results on Election Night. Fifty-four of the 57 editors (94.7%) provided timely returns, with 37 editors (68.5% of those who posted results) saying updates were made at least every 15 minutes for some or all of the races they covered. "We were posting results as fast as the TV and CNN," declared one editor who judged the election section a success. "Readers could find out the results of local races seven to eight hours earlier than if they had waited for the newspaper to arrive on their doorstep," said another.
Although wire services and government offices were cited by a majority of ttie editors as sources for their Election Night updates, newspaper reporters aiso supplied local information that appeared online ahead of the print edition, according to 24 editors (44.4% of those providing updates). Eight editors (14.8% of those providing Election Night results) relied on their Web staffs or resources put in place to feed results to the site quickly. A few papers threw everyone they had at Election Night coverage—including the editor at a large-circulation paper who reported "dam near everybody, including a number of people from the business side" helped keep the site current. Many sites remain woefully understaffed, however. More than half of the 57 respondents (32, or 56.1%) had 4 staffers or fewer on Election
Respondents also were asked whether their election sites contained content unique to the Web and, if so, to describe briefly as many as three online-only content areas of which they were most proud. Forty-five editors (78.9%) said they provided at least some unique election content. (Another 3 w h o said they did not provide such content answered subsequent questions as if they actually did.) Admittedly, most of the content came from print; 38 (66.7%) said at least three-quarters of their online election content also ran in the paper, while only 4 (7%) said more than half their online content was original. (One other editor said political sections contained "substantial" Web-only content.) Their descriptions of unique aspects special to them reveal what these editors are learning the Web can do that the newspaper carmot. Table 1 provides an overview of editor responses to this question.
Among the 44 editors who described at least one online-only content area that they were most proud of, the Web's two key information-related attributes—ability to offer depth and detail, and to provide frequent updates—were both appreciated. Atotal of 95 content areas were cited, of which 38 (40%) were features that provided information too extensive to offer in print or, if offered, too expensive to publish and distribute more than once. These included ballot guides; candidate profiles or questiormaire responses; and other "news to use" features locating precincts or tracking presidential campaign contributions "right down to the local town level." In genera], editors who cited online features in this category saw their site providing what one described as a "one-stop shopping section for voters by pulling in
TABLE I Key Attributes of Online-Only Content Areas That Editors Cited as Sources of Pride
Depth and Detail Updated News / Chats and Multiinedia Candidate Total (Voter Guides, Election Discussion Features, "Match" Editor Links, Archives, Results Forums Especially Feature Responses
Candidate Bios ...) Audio/Video
Cited First
Cited Second
Cited Third
Total Times Feature Cited '
15
11
12
38
16
9'
4
29
8
4
2
14
1
7
2
10
4
-
-
4
44
31
20
95
' Includes one editor who cited Web radio and chat features as part of his "live" Election Night coverage.
'° Some of the 44 editors who offered at least one response to this question cited as many as 3 different online-only areas in the same general category.
analysis and detailed reporting from as many different sources as possible."
Twenty-nine of the 95 content areas (30.5%) cited by editors as sources of pride took advantageof the Web's ability to provide breaking news. The key coinponents seemed to be the ability both to compete with television on Election Night and to enhance the service provided by the affiliated newspaper.
Although only a few editors described facilitating discussion as their primary goal, chats and discussion forums were cited 14 times (14.7% of the total 95 responses) as sources of pride. Again, the key advantage was the ability to offer something impossible to offer in print. Chats with candidates "added a previously non-existent dimension to the voter-candidate relationship," said one editor. Others appreciated providing an opportunity for fresh voices to be heard, such as the editor who said "some of the best content" came from readers talking politics in her site's forums. Several described the forums as lively and active, and one editor suggested they made a concrete contribution to democracy: "Discourse on our education issues forum, for example, has been cited during legislative debate on school reform measures."
A somewhat different aspect of interactivity involves users' ability to personalize information, something possible but more cumbersome in print. An example offered by editors here was a "candidate match" feature, cited by 4 editors, which let users identify candidates whose views come closest to their own on various issues.
One other cited content category was multimedia material, primarily audio and/or video of the candidates. Ten of 95 content areas
^Nimans 4 7
mentioned (10.5%) involved only this type of content, which is obviously not possible in print. (However, only one editor listed multimedia content as a top source of pride, while 8 of 14 editors mentioning chats and discussion forums listed such interactive components first.) Again, multimedia content was seen primarily as supplementing print coverage. For example, one editor described video interviews of the candidates as a way for voters to "assess their credibility and sincerity."
These editors, then, zeroed in on four core attributes of the Web in describing how they used it in covering this major event: its ability to offer timeliness, depth, interactivity (including personalizahle content), and multimedia formats. Interactivity merits a closer look, given its central role in scholarly consideration of the potential of the Internet as a tool for political discourse and citizen ennpowerment, as well as its novelty for most print journalists.
Two-thirds of the editors (38 of 57) said their sites contained or linked directly toopportunities for users to engage in political discourse. Twenty-three editors (60.5% of those offering forums) said they took action to stimulate online discussion, from linking from relevant stories, to promoting discussion boards in print, to seeding the boards with provocative questions. Several editors said they used moderators effectively.Although32 of theeditors(84.2%ofthoseoffering discussion opportunities) said usage of their boards or chat areas met (17 editors) or exceeded (15 editors) their expectations, they were more hesitant to characterize the boards as successful. While 15 editors (39.5%) said they were a success, an equal number gave them uneven results or even characterized them as less than successful.
Some who were happy with their boards liked them for reasons that would warm the hearts of political theorists. "It gives a soapbox to people who would not otherwise have one. Despite excesses and Ixmacies of some posters, boards remain a powerful populist tool," one editor said. "I am not used to seeing people actively engaged in discussing politics, but they did, extensively," said another. Others had criteria for success that hit closer to their own homes. "We received tens of thousands of page views in our political forums on some days," declared another editor who judged them a success. And some saw discussion opportunities as a win-win-win offering: "Traffic was dramatic, the dialogue was imconventional in pohtical terms, and the candidates enjoyed the experience."
Those who were less happy focused on the quality of the conversation (low) or diversity of participants (also low). "The people who truly cared participated, but there was no great groundswell of interest from the general populace," said one editor. "The forums were more useful for entertainment value than educational value," said another. "Most political discussions seem to attract the same kind of ranters you hear on talk radio," said a third. Many online editors, then, were less than fully satisfied with their sites' success as venues for meaningful political discourse. "I considered them a success," a fourth editor said, "but not a roaring one."
RQ3: Plans for Election 2004. Was it worth all the effort? Again, most of the editors said usage of their election sites met or exceeded
]ouiifiMjsM& MASS C o
their expectations, though some still expressed dissatisfaction.. "Our expectations were not terribly high," said one. "An election section is one of those things you feel that you have to have, and that it should be innovative and informative, but you realize that, unless you are CNN or ABC, the section is not going to generate much traffic." Others were unsure whether the demand for information justified the work required to supply it. "We devoted an incredible amount of time to this section," an editor said. "In retrospect, we questioned if we (should) have focused as many resources on a product used by our readers for such a relatively short amount of time."
Others viewed the experience with a great deal more enthusiasm. "Election Night was a great night to be in the news biz—and a watershed for (our site). We were able to keep on top of a flood of numbers and stories and keep ourpages fresh and up to date," said oneeditor. "Better still, people were paying attention. We had record traffic, including more than a hundred thousand page views between 3 and 4 in the morning!" Another felt the Web has "revolutionary implications for election coverage. Our expectations, on usage and popularity, have been exceeded with every foray into this area."
But there is always room for improvement. Editors were asked what they hoped to do differently in 2004, based on their experience in 2000 and given the certainty that the medium wili continue to change. Of the 57 responding to this survey, 43 (75.4%) took a crack at crystal ball-gazing (not counting the one who daydreamed simply about "more food, more flasks"), and most had multiple items on their wish list. Many hope to take even better ad vantage of the two online attributes they saw as most important: timeliness and depth. Again, Election Night was a common focal point, with 26 editors (69% of those offering ideas) hoping for better ways to gather and present election returns in 2004, including automated feeds and a database to display results. Others wanted to go beyond results, for instance by having "more candidates online for chats during counting."
Better voting guides, offered earlier to accommodate early-voting initiatives and provide information at what one editor called "an even more granular community level," were also popular wish list items. Some saw opportunities to combine detailed content with multimedia applications or a personalizable interface, such as an interactive district map, "so as you roil over it, you'll get a district description and list of candidates." Half a dozen editors cited enhanced audio/video applications, typically along with other things they hoped to offer in 2004. Only one specifically mentioned going beyond the Web itself. He anticipated an infrastructure in place that would provide information to other platforms, such as hand-held mobile devices.
Only a handful of editors mentioned enhanced opportunities for citizens to engage in political discourse. But those who did were eloquent about its benefits. In the words of one especially ardent supporter:
This medium is about the empowerment of our community, to facilitate interaction with interesting or meaningfulpeople.
to house "forums" in which users can exchange ideas and information, to focus on the local angles, to give people a voice... .My newspaper bias as a former op-ed editor is that the liveliest page of any newspaper is (or should be) the letters to the editor page. This is the place the readers have a voice, have a stake in the "community" that a good newspaper nurtures. Newspapers have always been the bridge between newsmakers and readers. With interactive Intemet applications, we have a way to enhance that role and make that bridge a two-way thoroughfare. This is good for the newspaper, good for the online service and gocid for the users. We're muddling through the continuing chaos of an election in which roughly half the voting public is going to feel disenfranchised by the system, no matter what the outcome. This is a good time to be in the "enfranchisement" business.
Discussion and Conclusions
This study found thatasjourna lists moveonline,a "normalization" process seems to be occurring: information-oriented functions, particularly related to getting news out quickly, remain key compo- nents of their self-perceptions, especially in the political context of furthering democracy. Like candidates and voters examined else- where, journalists do not see and are not enacting a fundamental change in this role as they move online. While content may be evolv- ing in new directions, their concepts of their own role in providing tl .at content are not.
Indeed, the information disseminator role seems, at least to these editors, particularly well-suited to a medium that facilitates both depth of content and speed of delivery. If their predictions are correct, that will continue to be the case in the future. While all of these sites did include content contained in the newspaper, material original to the Web was designed primarily to provide more and faster infonnation—to enhance what is provided in print.
That said, the dominance of Election Night updates in editors' reflections may indicate too much emphasis on speed over what could be classified as true public-service political journalism. This study cannot address why editors were perhaps inordinately proud of being able to provide results readily available to every American with a television set, particularly on an Election Night that demonstrated the danger of emphasizing speed over certainty. But these findings seem to indicate that the timeliness of the medium is a key attribute for online editors, despite inherent risks of the speed that one observer has described as a "fabulous drug" for news organizations.**
Still, editors also gave considerable weight to roles that address criticisms of media coverage of politics as superficial and cynical. They were proud of offering breadth, depth, and utility not easily available in print. The sites studied were all affiliated with leading newspapers, and newspaper journalists have traditionally taken pride in offering depth that local broadcast competitors cannot. Again, this survey is
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only a starting point for exploring why these editors emphasized what they did, both on the sites and in discussing the sites. But their goal seemed consistent with Gans' "journalistic theory of democracy," which suggests (not necessarily correctly) that more information equals better-equipped citizens and therefore better and more participatory democracy.'"' And their attempts at meeting that goal address what Gans suggests is crucial: both deeper and more "user- friendly" coverage of politics.
These goals and achievements reflect what orJine editors see as good newspaper journalism—which they believe can perhaps be done better on the Web. Again, this suggests a process of normalization as journalists become conafortable online. Good journalism involves getting information to people quickly, and good newspaper journalism provides background and context that enable people to make sense of it. One online editor said as much:
These surveys focus too muchon whether online newspaper sites had content "not available in print." What I see every day is that people want the online newspaper to just BE THE NEWSPAPER! My industry has spent billions of marketing dollars and millions of production hours trying to come up with the "killer app" for online newspapers when the answer was really rigfit in front of us. So I really believe that the future of online newspapers will be determined not by the number of Web-only gadgets, but by
'' how effectively companies like mine strengthen the newspaper brand and identity online.
But while the newspaper's strengths and reputation can be replicated and extended online, the medium also can do things that print cannot. Public journalism initiatives notwithstanding, the newspaper cannot truly be a two-way medium. Nor can the "dead tree edition" offer the ability to hear a candidate hesitate in responding to a question or show how well the candidate makes eye contact with an interviewer. While these editors tended to give such unique online capabilities less prominence in reflecting on their campaign sites, some did see the potential.
Interactivity offers interesting possibilities for significantly enhancing the democratic process—and, should they so choose, the media's role in that process. By the early 1990s, a number of journalists believed it was extremely important to "give ordinary people a chance to express their views on public affairs. " * That is difficult, costly, and problematic in print; it is relatively simple, cheap, and desirable online. The newspaper is a zero-sum medium: Space is limited, and the portion of the news hole taken up by one story means another gets bumped. The Web, with unlimited capacity for varied content and varied informa- tion providers to co-exist, offers newspapers ways to encourage public participation in civic discourse without jeopardizing their role as trustworthy, relatively impartial sources and sense-makers of information.
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There is an opportunity here, then, for newspapers to take this "normalization" process in more pro-social directions—to strengthen and extend in new directions their "brand identity" in the democratic realm. Indeed, it may be vital for them to do so as their traditional information-provider role is challenged by thousands of Web sites on any given topic, including politics. Online, core functions related to engagement as well as impartiality can be both distinct and complementary in ways that they cannot in a finite, discrete, and severely limited media space. True, the discourse will not always be high-minded—it may not even be particularly civil And true, the number of people who participate may remain relatively small. But, as several editors pointed out, the potential for increased democratic empowerment is enormous.
Journalists who see their role as crucial to democracy have an opportunity to expand that role in a meaningful way. Providing credible information is tremendously important, and will become even more so as the volume of online "content" grows and people turn increasingly to a name they know for help in sorting out and making sense of it all.'" But an informed citizenry is only one step toward an engaged and active citizenry. The online medium offers journalists the opportunity to play a central role in facilitating not just one but both.
NOTES
1. Herbert J. Gans, "What Can Journalists Actually Do for AmencanDemoctacy'!"TheHarvard International Journalof Press/Politics 3 (fall 1998): 6-12. See also Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect (New York: Crown Publishers, 2001), 17-20.
2. Michael Schudson, ThePozverofNews (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 205.
3. David H. Weaver and G. Cleveland WUhoit, American Journalists in the 1990s: U.S. News People at the End of an Era (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996), 133-40.
4. See, for example, its emphasis by gatekeepers, as described in DavidManning White, "The 'Gate Keeper': A Case Study in theSelection of News/' Journalism Quarterly 27 (winter 1950): 383-90; Glen L. Bleske, "Ms. Gates Takes Over: An Updated Version of a 1949 Case Study," in Social Meanings of News, ed. D. Berkowitz (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1991), 72-80.
5. "Daily Newspapers," Newslink, undated (2002), h t t p : / / newslink.org/daynews.html.
6. "About Political Information-a targeted search engine for politics, policy & political news," politicalinformation.com, undated (2002), http://politicalinformation.com/about.html.However, citizens using the Web to obtain political news in 2000 continued to rely most heavily on the sites provided by familiar media outlets such as CNN or the New York Times; see "Internet Election News Audience Seeks Convenience, Familiar Names," The Pew Research Center for the People and the
Press, 3 December 2000, h t t p : / / p e o p l e - p r e s s . o r g / r e p o r t s / display.php3?Report!D=21, h t t p : / / p e o p l e - p r e s s . o r g / r e p o r t s / display.php3?PageID=137. The Pew study suggested an additional cause for optimism for traditional media sites as Internet use achieves mainstream status: Internet users with more experience (those online for three or more years) visited the sites of major news organizations at higher rates than did "newbies." For some as-yet-unexplored reason, self-described liberals appeared more likely to go to the Web for political information than conservatives; 43% of liberals said they checked the Web for political news at least once a week during the 2000 campaign, compared with 33% of conservatives. See Eve Gerber, "Divided We Watch," Brill's Content, February 2001,110-111.
7. BruceGarrison, "Journalists'Perceptions of Onlir\e Information- Gathering Problems," journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 77 (autumn 2000): 500-514.
8. Michael Margolis and David Resnick, Politics As Usual: The Cyberspace "Revolution" (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2000), 2.
9. "Affluent Americans Drive internet Growth, According to Nielsen/ /NetRatings," Nielsen//NetRattngs, 15 October 2002, http:/ /www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_021015.pdf.
10. Andrew J. Fianagin and Miriam ]. Metzger, "Internet Use in the Contemporary Media Environment," Human Communication Research 27 (January 2000): 153-81; "Nielsen//NetRatings Announces the First Digital Media Universe Rankings, With Microsoft and AOL Time Warner Neck-and-Neck as the Top Parent Companies," Nielsen// NetRatings, 21 November 2002, http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/ pr/pr_021121.pdf.
11. Guido H. Stempel III, Thomas Hargrove, and Joseph P. Bemt, "Relation of Growth of Use of the Internet to Changes in Media Use from 1995 to 1999," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 77 (spring 2000): 71-79.
12. Andrew J. Fianagin and Miriam J. Metzger, "Perceptions of Internet Information Credibility," journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 77 (autumn 2000): 515-40.
13. "Internet Election News Audience," Pew Research Center. 14. Stempel, Hargrove, and Bernt, "Relation of Growth of Use of the
Internet." 15. Hsiang Iris Chyi and Dominic Lasorsa, "Access, Use and
Preferences for Online Newspapers," Newspaper Research journal 20 (fall 1999): 2-13.
16. Scott L. Althaus and David Tewksbury, "Patterns of Internet and Traditional News Media Use in a Networked Community," Political Communication 17 Qanuary 2000): 21-45.
17. Robert S. Boynton, "New media may be old media's savior," Columbia journalism Review, July/August 2000, http://www.cjr.org/ year /OO / 2/boynton.asp.
18. "The Internet News Audience Goes Ordinary," The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 14 January 1999, http://people- press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=337.
19. Jeff South, "Web Staffs Urge the Print Side To Think Ahead," Online Journalism Review, 11 June 1999, http://www.ojr.org/ojr/ business/1017968570.php.
20. Alison Schafer, "2000 Fizzled as THE Internet Election," Online Journalism Review, 1 February 2001, h t t p : / / w w w . o j r . o r g / o j r / technology/1017962091.php.
21. John W.C. Johnstone, Edward J. Slawski, and William W. Bowman, The NeiDS People: A Sociological Portrait of American Journalists and Their Work (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976); David H. Weaver and G. Cleveland Withoit, The American Journalist: A Portrait of U.S. News People and Their Work (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986); Weaver and Wilhoit, American Journalists in the 1990s.
22. Examples include John Henningham, "Characteristics and Attitudesof Australian Journalists," Efecfronic/ourna/ofCommHf!(CHf!o«/ Lfl Revue Electronique de Communication 3 (December 1993), h t t p : / / www.cios.org/www/ejc/v3n393.htm; Wei Wu, David Weaver, and Owen V. Johnson, "Professional Roles of Russian and U.S. Journalists: A Comparative Study," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 73 (autumn 1996): 534-48.
23. Arm M. Brill, "Way New Journalism: How the Pioneers Are Doing," Electronic Journal of Communication/La Revue Eledronicjue de CommumcatioH 7(1997), http://www.cios.org/www/ejc/v7n297.htm.
24. Jane B. Singer, "Still Guarding the Gate? The Newspaper Journalist's Role in an Online World," Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 3 (spring 1997): 72-89.
25. See Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction, Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 184-85; Thomas E. Patterson, Out of Order (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 247-48; S. Robert Lichter, "A Plague on Both Parties: Substance and Fairness in TV Election News," Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 6 (July 2001), 8-30; Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman, The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists and the Stories that Shape the Political World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 84-85.
26. Doug Miilison, "Online Journalism FAQ," The Online Journalist (1999), http://www.online-joumalist.com/faq.html.
27. This ability to accommodate immediacy carries risks that trouble many journalists and observers; see Dave Kansas and Todd Citlin, "What's the Rush?" Media Studies Journal 13 (spring/summer 1999): 72- 76; Jim Benning, "The Lesson of Emulex," Online Journalism Review, 8 September 2000, http://www.ojr.org/ojr/ethics/1017%3430.php. In particular, it makes online journalism prone to mistakes. As TV coverage of the 2000 presidential race demonstrated, an emphasis on being first (or at least not being last) over being right is risky for any journalism that operates in real-time. Still, the ability to offer breaking news online is at least potentially an advantage over the print product, one this study indicates is clearly perceived by online journalists.
28. J. D. Lasica, "The Promise of the Daily Me," Online Journ- alism Review, 2 August 2001, h t t p : / / w w w . o ) r . o r g / o j r / l a s i c a / 1017779142.php.
29. Lawrence K. Grossman, The Electronic Republic: Reshaping
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Democracy in the Information Age (New York: Viking, 1995), 1-7. 30. Bruce Bimber, "The Internet and Political Transformation:
Populism, Community and Accelerated Pluralism," Polity XXXI (1998): 133-60, h t t p : / / w w w . p o l s c i . u c s b . e d u / f a c u l t y / b i m b e r / r e s e a r c h / transformation.html.
31. "Internet Election News Audience," Pew Research Center. 32. Tanjev Schultz, "Interaction Options in Online Journalism: A
Content Analysis of lOOU.S. Newspapers,"/oumai of Computer-Mediated Communication 5 (September 1999), http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/ vol5/lssuel/schultz.html; James W. Tankard Jr. and HyunBan, "Online Newspapers: Living Up to Their Potential?" (paper presented at the annual meeting of AEJMC, Baltimore, 1998).
33. Richard Davis, The Web of Politics: The Internet's Impact on the American Political System (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 90-92,109-114.
34. Jennifer Stromer-Galley, "On-line Interaction and Why Candidates Avoid It," Journal of Communication 50 (autumn 2000): 111- 32.
35. Diana Owen, Richard Davis, and Vincent James Strickler, "Congress and the Internet," The Harvard International journal of Press/ Politics 4 (spring 1999): 10-29.
36. Howard Rheingold, The Virtttal Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1993).
37. Margolis and Resnick, Politics As Usual, 7. 38. Margolis and Resnick, Politics As Usual, 103,110. 39. Lincoln Dahlberg, "Computer-Mediated Communication and
The Public Sphere: A Critical Analysis," Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 7 (October 2001), http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol7/ issuel / dahlberg.html.
40. Bimber, "Internet and Political Transformation." 41. Joseph R. Wimmer and Roger D. Dominick, Mass Media Research:
An Introduction, 6th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 2000), 161.
42. W. Lawrence Neuman, Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (Needham Heights, MA: AUyn and Bacon, 1991), 203-204.
43. Kim Sheehan, "E-mail Survey Response Rates: AReview,"/our«fl/ of Computer-Mediated Communication 6 (January 2001), h t t p : / / www.ascusc.org/jcmc/\'ol6/issue2/sheehan.html.
44. Weaver and Wilhoit, American Journalists in the 1990s, 135-36. 45. Editors also were asked the size of their staffs—full-time, part-
time and shared with print—in an attempt to determine how tliey allocated resources in covering the election. However, the question did not specify whether "staff" meant total online staff or only editorial staff, and responses indicated that editors interpreted the question in various ways, limiting the usefulness of these findings. Still, a couple of interesting patterns were discernible. One is that Web staffs remain small in comparison with print; 35 editors (61.4%) reported fuil-time staffs of 10 people or fewer—and this survey covered leading newspapers in each state. Another is that while a few years ago, online and print
55
staffs overlapped considerably (see Jane B. Singer, Martha P. Tharp, and Amon Haruta, "Online Staffers: Superstars or Second-Class Citizens?" Nezospaper ResearcJi Journal 20 [summer 1999].- 29-47) typically with copy editors and/or graphic designers doing douhle duty, that situation has become rarer. OrJy 7 editors (12.3%) said they shared any staff with print, and 3 of those shared just a single person.
46. Kansas and Gitlin, "What's the Rush?" 76. 47. Gans, "What Can Journalists Actually Do?" 10. 48. Weaver and Wiihoit, American Journalists in the 1990s, 140. 49. Schudson, The Power of News, 1-2; Kovach and Rosenstiel, Elements
of Journalism, 23-25.
