The Changing Role of Journalism in the Internet Era

by Terry Wimmer

Wimmer, a 1976 WVU graduate, is the Shott Professor in the Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism at WVU. He earned his Ph.D. in journalism and mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From 1994 to 1996, Wimmer directed coverage of a scandal at the University of California, Irvine, for the Orange County Register. The stories won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism.

I was working at the Charleston Gazette when computers first made their way into America's newsrooms. A tide of grumbling swelled from senior staffers who were quite comfortable with glue pots and reams of flimsy typing paper. One writer insisted on pounding out her stories on a battered black Royal, and then retyping them into the computer system. Change generates uneasiness.

Change rejuvenates me. I left West Virginia in 1986, moving to California in a rust-weary 1972 Nova because I believed a geographical change would help me become a better journalist. My skills did improve over the next decade at the Orange County Register, yet in hindsight I believe that the same growth could have happened if I had remained in West Virginia. I have learned that growth requires only the will to embrace, and not eschew, change.

I am a West Virginian again by geographical definition. In my heart, I always was. I recently completed two years of study at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The focus of my work was new communications technology, and the change that can be wrought through technology.

It excites me that people can communicate in ways I never imagined when I was an undergraduate student at WVU. The idea that people can use the power of computing technology to share ideas and shape public policy leaves me giddy. I remember the chant from the 60s: "Power to the People!" Computing technology carries the hope of that empowerment.

Not since 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell introduced the telephone to the world, has a new means of communication excited so many. Then, Scientific American gushed about the telephone's potential. "It is a remarkable achievement," the magazine reported, "indicative of the marvelous possibilities in the future, in an art still in its infancy." Today, those same words befit well the new communication era of the Internet. Indeed, the possibilities are marvelous. Indeed, the art is still in its infancy.

As an infant needs nurturing to reach maturity, so does Internet-based communication. Journalism is positioned uniquely to bring maturity to Internet-proffered communication. The telephone proved to be an invaluable tool for journalists—reporters were quickly linked to sources and editors, facilitating the production and ultimately the delivery of information—and the Internet has the potential to become the same.

The Internet does not erase accessibility issues between journalism producers and journalism consumers, but it does increase the opportunity for feedback and exchange. It is my belief that the future of journalism links indelibly to the exploration and development of interactivity and exchange with on-line customers.

This process of feedback in the traditional model of journalism involves effort for readers and viewers. They can write a letter to the editor. They can call or visit the newsroom. If so inclined, and financially able to do so, they can publish or broadcast their own version of events. The joy of the Internet is that with a modem anyone can publish. Anyone can broadcast.

In the rapidly changing world of on-line media development, journalism is uniquely positioned to serve as an informational conduit for the cacophonous explosion of information flying as bytes and bits in cyberspace. Journalists sift. The process of sorting a day's information into understandable packaging is a simplified definition of journalism. Journalists contribute to community by reporting community. A greater mission, however, is to connect with that community of readership, to provide the means of engagement that allow that community to coalesce.

That is my hope for the journalism of tomorrow. Such work is essential today because the fast-paced growth of the Internet begets a genuine concern that adhering to the traditional model of journalism—we deliver, you accept—will isolate journalism from the Internet's financial growth by inattentiveness to the medium's interactive detail. Simply, either media managers offer the means of interconnectivity with their on-line product, or users will gravitate and develop brand loyalty to sites that do. The risk is nothing short of obsolescence.

The upside of this technological revolution is that journalists can use new technology to help communities explore social and political issues and use the knowledge gained to reshape our democratic institutions. It's a major change that should not be met with uneasiness, but with hope for a common good.