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The new news - too much?

December 2006

Photo of Fiachra O Marcaigh

In an article written for the Virtual Ireland supplement to Open new window, go to external link The Irish Times (4 December 2006), AMAS Director Fiachra Ó Marcaigh writes that the changing nature of news forces readers to be more active.

"I don't have to rely on one newspaper's point of view any more, especially for foreign news. With the broadband, I check on the New York Times, al-Jazeera, even Fox News for a laugh."

That's the difference online news has made to one Dublin business owner.

For the first time in history, news has almost no limitations on its reach. Apart from large-scale censorship such as the so-called "great firewall of China", news information can spread more rapidly around the world than ever before.

Not only is it much more portable, it is much more permanent, due to online archives. The limitations of a newspaper's circulation area or a broadcaster's transmission range are a thing of the past. Finally, news is far more democratic.

The "cost of entry" is lower than ever before - publishing an e-mail newsletter, weblog or discussion board is negligible for anyone who has the time to do it and has access to an internet connection. High costs, as well as licensing for broadcasters, ensured in the past that most media outlets were large commercial organisations.

So what happens when you turn the traditionally local, high-cost, time-limited news media into a rolling, worldwide conversation? We are still very much finding our way but certain trends are already clear:

  • There are many, many more sources of news, both because of additional providers and greater reach by traditional ones.
  • The additional providers range from professionals who happen to work outside large media organisations through semi-professionals to amateur "citizen journalists". And yes, there are cranks and polemicists who have their own views of what is news.
  • There is much more specialist news available. It is economical to publish for smaller and widely distributed audiences. Take the Irish Emigrant, an early pioneer of online-only e-mail news (www.emigrant.ie)


In certain sectors - technology and some science, for example - online news is the most comprehensive and authoritative news service available.

It took some time for traditional journalists to accept this.

"How can you trust information from someone called 'Cmdr Taco'?" a journalist colleague asked me a few years ago. In fact, because of tens of thousands of credible postings he has put on his Slashdot.org discussion board, Cmdr Taco is one of the most respected commentators on technology news.

Of course there are charlatans, rogues and spoofers among the thousands of contributors to online news outlets. Of course some news sites break copyright laws and accepted standards of good taste and truthfulness.

The proliferation of sources for the new news puts additional burdens on audiences also. They need to be more active consumers of news to get the best of the changed world of news.

They need to go out and look for the news that they want, not just turn on the TV or look around the corner shop. They need to cope with potential information overload and put additional effort into establishing the credibility of each new news source.

The changed world of news is all about breaking down barriers. These barriers are between types of media (newspapers publishing audio and video online, broadcasters publishing text news on the web). The boundaries between media and their audiences are also becoming blurred, with e-mail feedback and reader-contributed content encourage by traditional news media.

Having many more sources of often specialised news means that audiences are fragmented in a way that just didn't happen when most people watched one of six or so TV channels and read one of a similar number of newspapers. There is a risk that people will meet their news needs with a "Daily Me" collection of news sources that keeps them abreast of their field but never challenges them or broadens their interests.

At a presentation in Dublin recently, the global advertising company Mindshare illustrated the fragmentation of TV audiences with some stark figures. In Britain in 1995, more than 200 TV shows had audiences of 15 million or more. By 2003, that was down to about 50. Over a similar period (1993 to 2006), the number of TV stations available to people in Britain went from 26 to 320.

Over time, audience fragmentation and specialisation in news may lessen the potential for national issues to emerge and to reach some kind of consensus through national debate. The wonderful serendipity of finding a fascinating news report that you didn't go looking for is still one of the delights of reading a broadsheet newspaper. That, too, is much less likely in a very focused online news site.

Fiachra Ó Marcaigh, a former systems editor of The Irish Times, is a director of online consultancy AMAS (www.amas.ie), which advises corporate and public-sector clients.