The Internet Lets Everyone Become a Journalist

John Steele Gordon's article originally posted on Forbes.com provides a lesson in history for anyone worried that internet journalism is an unprecedented test to the medium's integrity. He cautions that the afternoon newspaper, once commonplace, has already dissappeared. The format of television news is changing. We can expect more things to change in the future, and the truth is that they've been changing all along.

Journalism Across the Years

• Truth was not always important to news organizations. Prior to the middle of the 19th century, newspapers were tools of political parties and shamelessly picked sides in camaigns.

• With the invention of the steam engine, circulation increased. Minimizing bias and covering news of public interest, stock prices, sports, and weather, the New York Herald achieved the highest circulation of its time, 135,000 during the Civil War.

• The Herald also pioneered practices like foreign correspondency and set the standard for timeliness with breaking news

• Muckraking got its start in 1871, when the New York Times brought down the Tweed Ring and ignited a reform movement in the New York state and city government.

• A complicated relationship developed between government and journalists. Politicians began leaking information to the papers to suit their own purposes.

• No firm code of ethics had been developed. New York Herald reporter George Crouch went to work for corrupt Erie Railway in 1870 in order to plant favorable stories about the organization in the paper.

• As newspapers became more expensive to own and operate, ethical standards increased to the level familiar to us today.

Now that anyone can publish on the Internet, Gordon says, we have returned to a condition where any news publication can begin "with a prayer and a song." Without financial constraints, people are freer to act without integrity.

In a self-published world, we can no longer take journalistic ethics or accuracy for granted. The problem is, people seem to prefer getting their news from the web.

So how will we know what's true?

There is a major difference between self-publication on the web and the "self-publication" of journalism's roots. The web allows writers to link to the primary sources that their stories come from, and the more journalists who do this, the more readers expect it of them.

Most stories on the web can be traced back to their origins or compared with competing opinions. In a world where information comes this easily, we always have the tools to find the truth. We just have to use them.

Back to Stories