Can the web replace the newspaper industry?
Jinfo Blog

7th April 2009

By Penny Crossland

Item

It is indeed a sign of the times that the Guardian’s April fool’s joke this year was its announcement to become the world’s first newspaper to be published exclusively via Twitter. (http://digbig.com/4ypan) The Guardian’s spoof article claimed that social media experts believed that ‘any story can be told in 140 characters’. Cynics may believe that in our age of bite-sized information, the Guardian’s story is not that far-fetched. However, although the lines between blogging and investigative newspaper reporting are becoming increasingly blurred, at least in the UK, print media still co-exists comfortably alongside online communication. In the US, it is another story. There has been talk of the demise of the US print industry for some time. However, recently, the country’s ailing newspaper industry received a boost from the influential blogging site, The Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/) . The site, which already refers to itself as an ‘internet newspaper’ announced its intention to set up the Huff Fund, a not-for-profit investigative journalism fund, which is to produce a wide-range of journalism created by staff reporters and freelance writers. (http://digbig.com/4ypat) Apart from the positive news of providing opportunities for experienced job-less journalists, discussions have centred around what this launch means for the shape of journalism and newspapers in the US. Questions are being asked as to how the new venture's business model will guarantee good and objective journalism. Who will be donating to the fund? While writers of investigative reports will be paid, readers of the articles will continue to have free access. Although we are unlikely to be reading our news exclusively via Twitter for some time yet, as blogs move away from news aggregation and towards original content, this is a debate that is set to continue.

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