What's new in online news?
Helen M. Hasan, Nor Hazlina Hashim · Research Online (University of Wollongong) · 2009
Although traditional news services have made some of their products available online since the early 1990s the changes that have taken place in this arena over the past few years has been phenomenal. Distributing news online has a significant impact on the traditional news cycle, the business model of news corporations, the work of journalists and the role of traditional news consumers among the general public. In addition to the online presence of the traditional news media, entirely new online news websites are emerging outside the mainstream media ownership, allowing both professional and amateur journalists a global forum for individual reports and opinions. In this paper, we revisit the results of the first phase of a longitudinal study of online news, conducted two years ago and compare those results with the current state of affairs. The most dramatic change that we are now witnessing in the news industry is the emergence of citizen journalism together with the trend to the convergence of the roles of news producers and news consumers. Here we describe and discuss the lessons learnt