Breaking ground with breaking news: from typing to Twitter

When publishing changes, so too does society. Investigate and compare the impact of two publication technologies, one pre-1900 and one post-1962, on a specific aspect of society.

Publishing is paramount to the daily communication between all creatures. From animals leaving scratches on trees, to humans sending emails to the other side of the world, methods and modes of publishing differ greatly but essentially all serve the same purpose, to aide communication. Similarly, publishing has been around since the earliest animals learnt to communicate. It is an ancient practice, shown in such things as hieroglyphics and stories from the Bible. Over time, like any practice or innovation, publishing has developed. New modes and methods, instruments and techniques have been created allowing for more freedom when publishing. These innovations have also produced cost- and time-effective ways of communicating. In this essay I will examine two modes of publishing from different eras. The latter is a direct enhancement of the former and its development has seen a marked improvement in the speed and efficiency of an everyday communication form. I am referring to the typewriter, pre-1900, and the modern computer, post-1962. The development of the computer has revolutionised the way in which newsrooms gather, report and distribute information to the wider public. With the invention of the printing press by Johannes Guttenberg in c. 1450, communication took a major step forward. Suddenly the production of books became immensely easier. Similarly, the internet phenomenon has also created a paradigm shift in how we go about communicating with each other. Within minutes of news breaking, we can read about it online. The typewriter itself was a major innovation but the modern computer and internet have completely altered the ways we publish and communicate. I will in this essay discuss and compare the effects that both the typewriter and the modern computer have had on the production of news.

Although the exact date that the printing press was invented is unclear, it is widely said to be in the mid-15^th century, possibly 1450. The first printing press workshops were started in the 1450s in the Rhineland in Germany (Bawden & Robinson 2000 p. 52). Following this, the development of printing as a form of publication rapidly spread throughout Europe. Referred to by Eisenstein (cited in Bawden & Robinson p. 53) as a ‘knowledge explosion’, eight million books were believed to be in print by the end of the 15th century. Compared to the 30,000 printed manuscripts that supposedly existed prior to the printing revolution, this is a massive change (Bawden and Robinson p. 53). The printing press was also perhaps a double-edged sword. It had undoubtedly provided greater access to written knowledge, through the mass production of books. The Bible, for example, became widely available. However, as Bawden and Robinson (2000, p. 53) point out, the titles that were printed had limits on access as they were only available to those who could afford them. Slaves and peasants were nowhere close to reading openly. As technology developed and the capacity for printing increased, so too did the access to written knowledge.

An article in the Columbia Journalism Review of May 1973 documents a fascinating change in the newsrooms of the United States. Written by Ben H. Bagdikian, the article discusses the adoption of the cathode ray tube (CRT) computers by major newspapers in America at that time. Bagdikian (p. 8) suggests the most advanced newspaper in this regard was the Detroit News which had 48 CRTs at the time the article was written and an order for 12 more on the way. In 1973, the computer as described by Bagdikian (p. 8) consisted of “TV-like screens with keyboards connected to computers” was a new innovation in newsrooms. They were not cheap either, with the common CRT costing anywhere between $5000 and $18,000 (Bagdikian 1973, p. 8). Bagdikian’s article reads now like a diary entry, an insight into life in an American news industry that was rapidly developing. The typewriter was still present in every newsroom, with only 60 percent of daily newspapers using CRTs compared to the one percent in 1963.

As a side-note, the Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein book All the President’s Men – documenting their Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into the notorious ‘Watergate’ scandal – was published the year after Bagdikian’s report (Google Books 2011). It was a revolutionary period in American journalism. The two Washington Post journalists had exposed the greatest political scandal in American history through an epic trail of investigative journalism and the technology with which to report these times was constantly on the rise. The initial Watergate report and the subsequent best-selling book and successful film cemented investigative journalism as a major form of news reporting. Modern methods of publishing have built on this and can now deliver investigative reports as they happen, which will be discussed later.

While the computer was on the rise in newspapers around America, the typewriter was still heavily employed. Bagdikian’s article also outlines the many technological advantages in the CRT compared to the typewriter. Importantly, Bagdikian (p. 7) also claims that little had changed from the invention of the printing press up until the invention of the linotype machine by Mergenthaler in 1886. He also admits that little else had changed following that. The CRT was a revolution again. From pre-1900 to the advent of the computer, newsrooms followed a very formulaic procedure for gathering, copywriting, editing and printing news. Reporters would type up the news on typewriters, a laborious process comparatively. Copyboys would distribute each page to the various sections of the news office to be edited, formatted, re-typed and eventually printed. The whole process was refined and streamlined over the years, but until the computer, it remained largely the same process.

The computer brought many changes to the newsroom. As Brooker-Gross (1983, p. 24) explains, the wire services that were developed in the 19^th century greatly helped source news from all over the nation and the world, especially in small-town newspapers. But even when this news came in, the copyboys had to gather it and it still had to be interpreted and re-typed before editing. Bagdikian (1973, p. 8) explains the advantages of the computer:

At a major desk of the [Detroit] News—say, the city desk—the editor can type LO for local copy, then press DIRECTORY, and this instructs the computer to display on the editor's screen a list of all the stories placed in the computer for his desk's use. He can call up any story on the list by pressing the NEXT key, then read the whole story on his screen, edit it, and type GE to send the story to the news editor.

The process obviously cuts a great amount of time out of producing a news story. As we have seen in recent times, the time and cost efficiency of producing news has developed at a phenomenal rate.

In the modern day, newsrooms are information super-highways in themselves. With such advanced news-gathering technology as satellites circling the earth, news can be reported and consumed by the general public within minutes of breaking.

The quick and the dead: One of the biggest stories of 2011 was
plastered on the CNN website within minutes of breaking, With
journalists working exclusively in the online departments of
major newspapers, online sites such as CNN.com act as an
internet version of the newspaper or TV channel, as well as a
present-day news wire. Breaking news such as the death of Osama
Bin Laden (above) can be emailed to users, or received via a
number of feeds e.g. Really Simple Syndication (RSS)
Source: http://sh1ft.org/blog/?paged=2

The computer itself has reshaped the way we access and consume news on a daily basis. As readers of news, we no longer rely merely on the television and newspapers to bring stories from abroad. Going back as early as pre-1900, to receive news from abroad, one would read whichever newspaper was produced most locally to their home. The radio also brought a different format of news. Even up until about the beginning of the 21^st century, the number and variety of sources were limited to what newspapers were available in stores and the channels on television. Al Jazeera, the major news agency of the Middle East, was only accessible to the majority of Westerners if our local news syndicated something from the television network. The computer, and more importantly the internet, has allowed one to potentially watch news streams from all six of the habitable continents at the same time. Given the example of Osama Bin Laden’s demise, where the ramifications are felt in several corners of the globe, this becomes a very valuable way of aggregating and interpreting different perspectives of the issue. Where jubilation was recorded by news cameras in the streets of New York City, the distraught followers of the Al Qaeda leader were shown concurrently on the other side of the world.

Email, an invention of the 1990s, has also transformed the newsroom. It is no longer necessary for reporters to always go out in the field, research and write up stories for newspapers. Many public relations firms now compose their own stories and email them to the reporters for edit or direct publication. While some ethical implications might arise from this (Lee and Cheng 2011, p. 56), it is a time-saving way of reporting at least some news.

Email is not the only useful social networking tool for modern journalists. In 2006 a personal news feed service called Twitter was launched by blogger Evan Williams (Hamilton 2007). Twitter exploded in popularity as not only everyday bloggers, but celebrities jumped on board. The social network allows users to update their ‘statuses’ via short, individual posts, 140 words at a time. Celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Justin Bieber and LeBron James have all joined Twitter and use it as a safe yet personal method of interacting with fans and keeping them updated. It wasn’t long before the news agencies discovered the usefulness of Twitter as both a news source and as a mode of publication. The biggest newspapers in the world such as The Guardian all have Twitter accounts, through which a constant feed of information is streamed (Ahmad 2010 p. 149). Twitter also connects readers to other news sources all over the world. For example on the Associated Press Twitter page (pictured below), users can click links to other Twitter pages that are related or mutually followed – that is, both Associated Press and the user follow same page. Through this networking and aggregation, Twitter has changed from a social networking activity to a powerful news source. It is a stand out example of how the computer has revolutionised the production of news.

From the first news wire to the latest: Twitter has become a platform
through which Associated Press (AP) relays news as it happens.
Above is a screenshot image of the AP Twitter page. Most 'tweets'
contain links to bigger articles, meaning that Twitter can be used
as a bite-size sample of breaking news stories. In the right hand
column, links to related news Twitter pages are found as well as
sources that AP follows.

The delivery and consumption of news has changed dramatically since the 18^th century. As I have outlined in this report, three major technological changes have improved the cost- and time-efficiency of news production. I have examined and compared two technologies from before and after 1900. The typewriter was used in newsrooms from the 1880s through till the 1970s. The processes of gathering, typing, editing and printing the news developed gradually over the turn of the 20^th century and beyond but the computer, as I have shown, completely revolutionised this process. Innovations such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and the use of Twitter by journalists and news agencies have made news production a simpler, more global and more effective process.

Bibliography:

Bagdikian, B. H. 1973, ‘Publishing’s Quiet Revolution’, Columbia Journalism Review, May, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 7-15

Bawden, D & Robinson, L 2000, ‘A distant mirror?; the Internet and the printing press’, Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 51-57

Brooker-Gross S. R. 1983, ‘19^th Century News Definitions and Wire-Service Usage’, Journalism Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 1, pp. 24-27

CNN screenshot sourced from http://www.cnn.com/ cited on ‘Sh1ft’ blog at http://sh1ft.org/blog/?paged=2

Google Books 2011, All the President’s Men, accessed at http://books.google.com/books/about/All_the_President_s_Men.html?id=2R8Fajx34H8C

Lee, S. T. & Cheng, I. H. 2011 ‘Characteristics and Dimensions of Ethical Leadership in Public Relations’, Journal of Public Relations Practices, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 46-54

Twitter, ‘Associated Press Profile’, accessed at http://twitter.com/#!/AP

Week 12 - Distribution and Aggregation

This week's lecture was about distribution and aggregation which are two very important features of publishing and publics. Aggregation refers to the collection of any information, resources, items, notions, thoughts etc. that one comes in contact with or seeks out. Distribution is exactly as it sounds. It involves sending out the information that you gather or that you inherently possess to begin with. Distribution can also involve forwarding or deflecting information or thoughts. Where one might receive an email, for example, that is aggregation. To reply or forward that email, or compose a new one based on its contents is distribution.

In the tutorial we discussed our personal favourite modes of publishing. This was an exercise in both aggregation and distribution. We aggregated different styles and methods of publishing and distributed our favourites to the rest of the class. My particular choice was a piece of football commentary which evidently proved how valuable sound can be to that particular type of publishing.

The readings this week focus on distribution and aggregation and in particular the increasing role of the publics. Wes Dodson reviews Joe Salvo's theory that the Information Age is over. This age was very much about the arbitrary distribution of information by leaders and aggregation by followers. Now, says Salvo, the followers are also distributing at far greater a rate in what is dubbed the Systems Age.

David Gauntlett also mentions a similar point in his book 'Making is Connecting'. His website examines the many ways we can connect in the new era with subtitles 'WRITING is connecting', VIDEO is connecting, WIKIPEDIA is connecting, LINKING is connecting etc. His website here is a very interesting method of exactly what he is describing. He has aggregated a series of ways in which we can use the different modes of publishing to connect, assisted by the advent of web 2.0. This reinforces the role of citizens in producing their very own material.

Visualisation Project Proposal

Our Visualisation Project will revolve around the much publicised Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Widely believed to have spanned roughly four years (2006-2009), the GFC was considered by many economists to be the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of 1929. Australia was considered to have emerged from this global crisis relatively unscathed. Our team would like to visually represent just how well Australia fared compared to five of the most powerful nations on earth, namely the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China and Russia (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council). We decided on these five nations because their status as permanent Security Council members is an easily identifiable category.

We plan to prepare a list of figures representing the effect of the GFC on the six nations. These will be basic before-and-after numbers detailing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of each country prior to and following the GFC. We will then represent these numbers as a world map, with each nation scaled according to their economic wealth prior to the GFC (Visual 1). The second visual representation will detail how much each nation lost during the period of economic recession. This will be represented by a ‘black hole’ that will appear in the middle of each nation’s picture in the world map (Visual 2). The black hole will represent how much of the GDP (shown as the land mass of each country) was lost during the GFC.

The nations will then be compared as in Visual 1 but with adjusted size and scale according to their losses incurred during the GFC. By showing and comparing these visualisations, we aim to represent how well Australia actually performed during the GFC relative to five of the major economic powers. Hopefully, we can see proof of the claims that Australia performed better than many of these nations.

Wikileaks: to trust or not to trust? (wk 7)

In Week Seven the class held debates over the very contentious topic of Wikileaks. The class was split into three sub-debates all covering the issue of whether Wikileaks is a good or bad thing for society. Our particular debate focused on the issue of trust. I will discuss our points in a moment but first, I want to look at a few other things that came up while listening to other debates.

Firstly, a big question regarding Wikileaks is that of whether the organisation acts as a journalistic group. Does the production of material on a website count as journalism? If so, call me a journalist. One word explains why this question needs to be answered: responsibility. As a blogger, I can post nearly anything on the web, so long as it does not breach criminal or private law. For example, I could quite freely suggest that Julia Gillard is having an affair. Because I have absolutely no credibility as a writer, a comment like this will go largely unnoticed. As a journalist working for a newspaper however, it would be impossible to suggest such a baseless statement without being sued for libel. With the title of 'journalist' comes a need for responsibility.

So where does that leave Wikileaks? They do not produce a daily, weekly or monthly print publication, but all of their product is online. Many might say this makes it a blog site. But there appears to be a great deal of credibility attached to these documents. Julian Assange, the leader of Wikileaks, says that the documents released are all checked for credibility. This goes back to my point about blogging. My post about Gillard would almost certainly be ignored because, amongst the millions of bloggers, I have little to no credibility. But the Sydney Morning Herald site has a great deal of credibility as a journalistic website, therefore they would be pulled up on such a story. It could then be argued that Wikileaks is journalism.

So can we trust Wikileaks? They upload confidential government documents without any apparent discretion. There is no visible organisational structure. Julian Assange is an unelected leader of the organisation. Lives have been jeopardised at the release of the Afghanistan War Diary. These are all negative points to consider. Then there is the credibility of sources. Assange says they are entirely credible. Many are disgruntled former government employees. But does credibility alone mean we can trust Wikileaks? If we give a comment to a New York Times journalist, while we know they are a credible newspaper, how do we know they won't spin our words and omit key statements? Wikileaks is also stateless. This is cause for serious concern when deciding whether they are trustworthy. Websites are the only businesses that can remain stateless. This means they are not operating under the jurisdiction of any nation. They are lawless. Wikileaks therefore could release anything without fear of prosecution. How can we trust someone or something that has nothing to lose?

These are some of the questions that arose during the Wikileaks debates. They are not easy to answer as the debates (often disintegrating into all out arguments) showed.

Attention (wk. 6)

This week's readings revolve around the complicated relationship between attention and information with regards to the internet and web 2.0. Attention is the time we lend to certain priorities. It is claimed in the readings that attention is the "new hard currency" of the internet age and that it must be treated as that - a currency. The difficult part, as explained in the readings, is filtering through the massive amount of information available to us and prioritising which pieces of information are relevant and worthy of our attention. This was described by Howard Rheingold as 'crap detection'. This is how the currency argument can be explained. Whereas in conventional markets, the seller is primarily concerned with the customer's money, in the internet market the provider is aiming to get the reader's attention among the thousands, sometimes millions, of other competitors - they can do this by presenting the most attractive, relevant, efficient and/or credible information. This is competition in the internet age. This relates perfectly to publics and publishing because the publics are the users of the internet whose attention is seen to be scarce. It is a commodity that is highly sought after in the same way money is in a capitalist system. The publishing of online material must be done in a way that is highly efficient and attractive in order to secure the attention of the consumer. The more information, the less attention there is to spare.

Archive Fever (Week 5)

The week 4 readings (for week 5 tutorial) revolve around what Jacques Derrida calls 'Archive Fever'. This term has taken on different interpretations but it is commonly regarded to mean a neverending sense of requirement that keeping an archive produces, one which borders on obsession. Several of the authors this week look at this definition and link it to their own experience. The most interesting of these I found was Matthew Ogle's "A love letter to the post real-time web" in which he discusses taking a holiday from the internet, particularly real-time web (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr - websites which, in a sense, archive the now and produce real-time events and results). He took this trip because he couldn't remember a singal day without accessing Twitter. Ogle explains how difficult it was to break away from the shackles of real-time web - a direct example of Derrida's 'Archive Fever'. Furthermore, Ogle explains how when he arrived home, accessing other archives such as email and maps was a quick transition back to normality, while returning to real-time web was more difficult, akin to learning to ride a bike again. The explanation given for this, and I have found it in my other readings as well, is that archive fever has many dimensions. From the librarian who spends their entire work day sorting, checking and archiving materials, to the humble 'Facebooker' who logs two to three mundane events of their day, archive fever can affect anyone and everyone. Ogle's example supports the point that archives are important for recording our very existence. With changing technology, archives have also had to change. It is obvious through the readings, however, that the latter is falling behind. In the past, archives of battles, court findings, medical reports etc. were kept in files or books on shelves, to be accessed relatively easily at any time. Now, with the advent of sites such as Twitter and Facebook, there is a need to prioritise - often at the expense of the past. Real-time web means now. While these sites certainly have the capacity to archive our thoughts, movements and beliefs of a particular time (e.g. March 2008), we as basic archivists do not have the same capacity to find them at a later date. It is difficult without programming nous to find out what I was doing on the 22nd April 2010, although it was almost certainly recorded on Facebook. And therein lies the changing nature of Archive Fever. Whereas in the past it was perhaps about the obsession with accessing history and keeping records of current events stowed away for future reference, today archive fever is more about recording what is happening at this infinitesimal moment. And then again in five minutes when my new laptop arrives. Then in 15 minutes when I can't understand how the laptop works...

Actor-Network Theory

The week four readings look at Actor-Network Theory and its many criticisms. The ANT explains a series of connections between actors that make up a network. Interactions between these actors and any external actors or networks links them as well. Actor-Network Theory is a way of looking at how relationships are formed between actors in all walks of life. It could be used to explain ecosystems, management structures or publishing practices. It is a very general theory which allows for a massive flexibility. It can include thousands and thousands of nodes in a network, or as few as just two.

The theory also suggests that all actors in the network are equal. The actors, human or non-human, all have the same importance to the network and if one is removed or displaced, it affects the entire network and changes its dynamics.

The ANT has been acclaimed as a great method of better understanding the millions of networks and micro-networks that exist in society and nature. Using the ANT, one can gain a good understanding of how many systems operate through the existence of networks of components. In a publics and publishing sense, broad processes like publishing a book can be broken down by ANT and explained. Non-human and human actors include the printing press, computer, keys, paper, ink, publisher, author and publishing house. Semiotics could be the idea for the book, intended audience, appealing features of the writing etc. These facets are all linked in the network and each play a part in the publishing of the book. They could be seen as being equal parts.

The criticism of this theory is that it does treat all actors as equal. Using the same example as above, it seems like all actors are equal in that system, but some criticism suggests that there are actors more important within the network than others. For example, a pen might be included as an actor in the network. It is important to publishing a book, but is it as important as the author? Or the publisher?