News Delivery

   The basics of journalism have not changed, but the delivery system has changed utterly.
   Gone are the days when printers set type one line at a time, made up pages manually, and newsboys hawked the final product by roaming the streets calling out, "Extra, extra! Read all about it!"
   Then came radio, but newspapers still thrived.
   Then came television, and many predicted the end of print journalism. It didn't happen.
   Then came computers, the internet and email, but newspapers still refused to die. But while jobs in the press room were sharply diminished, jobs in the news room rapidly increased, as reporters wrote stories on computers, editors revised them, and technicians made up the pages on computer screens.
   The system developed so that very little was passed around physically until newspapers came rolling off the press for the first edition.
   In the beginning of the newsgathering process, there were -- and remain -- reporters with note pads and pencils. At the end is the hard copy newspaper itself. In between, nearly every other step in the process has changed.
   Now social media platforms have joined the competition for reader attention on mobile devices of every description, and traditional news operations have finally noticed. Result: Even more jobs have been trimmed at major newspapers, and in pursuit of advertising revenue, publishers have set up web pages and editors have encouraged reporters to file their stories directly on the web sites, even paying bonuses to those whose stories attract more computer page views.
   Result: An increase in the number of gossipy stories, and less emphasis on hard news stories, which require more time and effort to research and write. That's true especially at larger dailies, but smaller daily and weekly newspapers, with more emphasis on local news, have not succumbed as much to the pressure to maintain high readership in the face of competition from big city television stations and internet-based social media.
   National and world developments can be seen and heard as they happen, thanks to television, and social media enable government officials to spread their opinions instantly to millions, with the bother of their words being filtered and edited by those they deem pesky reporters and editors who insist on providing counter-balancing opinions and facts that contradict the politician's words.
   So there's good news here and some not-so-good news as the information world turns. More people have more access to more information sooner and faster than ever before.
   But such a system enables more people to spread misinformation and gossip faster and more efficiently to more people in more countries than ever.
   Therefore, an educated consumer of the news product has become an ever more important element of a free, democratic society. Otherwise, gossip-mongers and propagandists will easily manipulate the information flow to their own ends.
   The pen may be mightier than the sword, but computers cut a wider swath faster and sooner.