Online Newsgathering Trends paper, 1997

A paper presented to the Communication Technology and Policy Division, spring conference, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, St. Petersburg, Fla., February 8, 1997.

Abstract	ABSTRACT
Introduction and literature	INTRODUCTION
Research questions	RESEARCH QUESTONS
Methods	METHODS
Findings	FINDINGS
Conclusions	CONCLUSIONS
Data tables	TABLES
References	REFERENCES

This paper focuses on online newsgathering resources at U.S. daily newspapers over a three-year period, 1994-96. The paper reports findings of three different national surveys conducted as part of a project studying computer-assisted reporting at newspapers with daily circulation of at least 20,000. Results look at current status of online resources, but also review trends over the three-year period. The most significant growth has been in use of the Internet, particularly the World Wide Web, as a news reporting resource. Other online resources gaining expanded use included America Online, DataTimes, PACER, CompuServe, and Westlaw. Services that declined in use included Delphi, public and private bulletin board systems, and Dialog / Knowledge Index. General use of online services-including commercial, public / government services, and the Internet-in newsrooms has also increased over the three-year period. While the number of newspapers using online services increased, use became more frequent over the three-year period.

Journalists use online computer information for a wide range of purposes. Research shows they use the Internet and commercial online services to enhance their newsgathering (Garrison, 1995a; Reddick & King, 1995). Among the most-cited uses are finding people and news story sources, locating experts for stories, checking clips of other news organizations while preparing stories, conducting background research about businesses and individuals, identifying new story ideas, and locating both public and private information stored in digital form. These online tools save time, save money, are more thorough, and can link information in widely diverse locations (Garrison, 1996b; Garrison, 1996c; Garrison, 1996d; Anon, 1996a; Reddick & King, 1995; Paul, 1996; Grossman, 1994; Anon, 1996b). The technology is not as threatening as might be suspected; some scholars believe content makers, such as journalists, will readily adapt, even thrive, in the digital world (Johnson, 1996).

Computer-based online technology, among other types, has also begun to change the role of many newspapers in their communities. Use of online resources is not just a one-way process. Because of their increased use of online information-gathering resources and databases, many newspapers now regard themselves as "information stores" for citizens in their regions. Using their computer systems and telephone-based communications, these companies are selling information in some of the same ways it is gathered-by telephone connection, by computer, and by imaging hardware (Anon., 1996a). Some experts have called this new data-oriented facility an "information recycling center" (Johnson, 1995).

Reddick and King (1995) have argued that online communication networks are the natural progression of technological evolution in newsrooms- following the printing press, telegraph, telephone, and television. "As with the new technologies of the past, the Internet and other online information networks will profoundly affect the art and craft of journalism," Reddick and King observed (p. v).

The dual approach to using computers in newsgathering has become commonly known as computer-assisted reporting (CAR). It includes (a) online-based newsgathering that uses both specialized commercial services and Internet-based services, such as the World Wide Web (Garrison, 1995b), and (b) database-oriented analysis using existing and originally created databases from both the public and private sectors (Garrison, 1995a; Houston, 1996). Commercial database services are often credited for starting the current information revolution (Paul, 1996). Certainly, the development of the Internet and its World Wide Web has fueled it.

CAR strategies have been increasingly adopted by investigative reporters as subjects have dictated (Garrison, 1996a; Garrison, 1996e; DeFleur, 1997) and after CAR's journalistic birth in newspaper and news magazine newsrooms, its use has spread into television newsrooms as well (Hall, 1996).

Even the online services themselves are evolving at a fast pace (Paul, 1996). With the dominant influence of the Internet in the last half of this decade and the expectation of that to continue into the next decade, access to electronic information is not what it once was for journalists and other online users. The industry is incredibly fluid and re-inventing itself. Access is easier than ever; it is also more widespread.

Online resources are among the most basic CAR tools (Houston, 1996). The leading types of online services are the World Wide Web, Newsgroups, and electronic mail on the Internet; general commercial offerings, such as America Online and CompuServe; database library "malls," such as Nexis / Lexis, Dialog, and Dow Jones; government information services, such as PACER and FedWorld; and private specialty services that offer enhanced government data, such as Westlaw and Database Technologies' Autotrack Plus (Garrison, 1996e).

The type and number of electronic resources available to news organizations has grown in recent years. Not only has the number of news sources in electronic form gone up, the number of businesses distributing information in database libraries has increased as well. The effect, one newspaper recently recognized, "puts more information in the hands of readers" (Anon., 1996, p. NB4).

Therefore, it seems valuable to study the use of online resources in newsgathering. This paper reports long-term research into use patterns by journalists of commercial services as well as the Internet services over a three-year period. The analysis hopes to determine trends in selection and use of online resources and levels of use and the roles of individuals in the newsroom who are using them.

This paper focuses on use of commercial online services and the non-commercial Internet as newsgathering tools of daily news stories and special investigative projects that involved CAR from 1994 to 1996. Generally, this paper seeks to answer these research questions:

An on-going national project studying the development and use of CAR has been underway since 1993. This paper reports findings involving use of online services from three national surveys:

Editors were asked either to complete the questionnaire themselves or to forward it to the person in charge of online news research and computer-assisted reporting. In some cases, as many as two or three persons completed various portions of the questionnaires. Questionnaires were developed from discussions and interviews during the Investigative Reporters and Editors and National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting conferences at Raleigh, N.C., in 1993, at San Jose, Calif., in 1994, and at Cleveland in 1995. The instruments consisted of four sets of questions, including institutional and personal information, CAR tools, online news research, and field reporting use of computers. Data were processed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences for Windows, Version 6.1.3 (Norušis, 1995).

In 1994, a total of 208 responses were received, a rate of 41 percent. In 1995, 287 responses were received, a rate of 56 percent. In 1996, 233 responses were received, a rate of 45 percent.

Table 1 shows overall response demographics. Respondents in each of the three groups were typically managing editors, CAR supervisors or directors, or news researchers or reference supervisors. In some cases, several individuals contributed to completion of a single questionnaire representing their newspaper.

There has been considerable growth in use of online tools in newsgathering in the past three years. As shown in Table 2, barely more than half of newspapers responding used online resources in 1994. This grew to 64 percent in 1995 and to 81 percent in 1996, a cumulative increase of 24 percent.

Among the newspapers not using online services, the most-cited reason for non-use was lack of hardware and software to go online. Data in Table 3 show this reason was cited by 28 percent in 1994, 23 percent in 1995, and 32 percent in 1996. A growing number of respondents offered unclear "just starting" or "not yet online" explanations. A more concrete explanation, aside from offering hardware and software problems, was money or budgetary reasons, but this reason was cited less in the past two years than in 1994, dropping from 26 percent to 13 percent in 1995 and then rising slightly to 16 percent in 1996.

Frequency of use of online services continued to grow, data in Table 4 show. While the basic number of newspapers using any type of online services for any news-related reason increased, so did the amount of use of those online resources. The number of newspapers using their online resources on a daily basis increased slightly from 27 percent in 1994 to 29 percent in 1995 but jumped to 37 percent in 1996. Similar increases were observed in each of the other use level categories, with weekly or more-often use growing to 26 percent in 1996 and monthly or more-often up to 13 percent in 1996. The number of missing responses or "never used" responses declined by 19 percent from 1994 to 1996.

What are the most popular online resources? Which resources have grown the most? The least?

Whenever discussion of online services takes place, there is usually interest in what services are being used in newsrooms across the country. The Internet, particularly the World Wide Web, has become the online resource of choice at U.S. daily newspapers. Much less widely used in 1994 at 25 percent, the "Web" was used by 45 percent in 1995 and 67 percent in 1996, as shown in Table 5. This reflects a major jump in use of 42 percent over the three years.

While it has not grown as fast as the Internet, the consumer-based America Online service has also experienced rapid growth as a resource in newsrooms since 1994. Used by just 17 percent of newspapers in 1994, AOL grew faster than any other service from 1994 to 1995 at 38 percent use. Its growth at newspapers slowed from 1995 to 1996, but it remained the second-most popular online service at 47 percent in 1996.

DataTimes, a full-text newspaper and other periodicals service, grew about 10 percent from 1994 to 1996, the third-best increase, to a current use level of 25 percent. Other services grew much less over the three years, usually from one to four percent. The most widely used services, those used by one-fourth or more of respondent newspapers, in 1996 were:

For several years, there has been a transition in news research occurring in some daily newspaper newsrooms. At one time, online research was exclusively the province of news researchers in the news department library. Gradually, more and more non-news researchers have begun to handle online research. Data in Table 6 show an increase in what could be labeled "do-it-yourself" news research. Reporters doing their own online research grew eight percent from 24 percent in 1995 to 32 percent in 1996. Librarians and news researchers doing online research dropped about eight percent from 25 percent in 1995 to 17 percent in 1996.

The Internet, with its World Wide Web, has consumed much of the attention of those involved in mass communication in this decade. The extremely rapid development and growth of the World Wide Web has not left the news business untouched. The data collected in the three surveys reported in this paper indicate that newspapers are not only considering the Internet and World Wide Web as distribution tools for the future, but also as information gathering tools for development of their content.

Clearly, newspapers are not depending solely on the World Wide Web or other Internet resources. While much of the focus is clearly on global communication using the Internet, this is also facilitated through other online tools. Many of these are highly specialized and serve the needs of journalists as information gatherers. These tools have also experienced growth in use in the past three years, this study has shown.

Journalists have learned that these online tools are time savers, are generally more thorough, and extend the reach of their reporting skills. While costly at times, the expenses are efficient when the expense of other, more conventional, procedures are considered.

There is probably a competitive element involved in the use of online services also. While only large dailies used these services several years ago, the use has spread to newspapers of all sizes. Affordability, simplicity in use, and widening access avenues have encouraged it, but competition and keeping up with what other news organizations are doing seem to be the most significant forces at work. There is no empirical evidence offered here to back that point, but anecdotal evidence, such as discussions at recent CAR conferences, various comments and threads on distribution lists devoted to news research and CAR, and informal personal discussions, indicates it is a strong possible explanation.

The Internet is not just a new distribution vehicle for journalists. It has become a highly valuable resource for newsgathering and, in time, the World Wide Web, electronic mail, and other Internet tools most often used will take their place at all newspapers alongside other time-tested resources of newsrooms, such as reference books and the telephone. As early trends reported in this paper suggest, the adoption process is evolving and more and more newspapers are using these tools. It is only a matter of time and reduced costs until even the smallest newspapers will use online tools, just as they use telephone-based conventions, such as voice and fax communication.

Despite its useful findings, this analysis falls short in several respects and deeper probing into the subject matter may be needed. It would be helpful to analyze data by looking at characteristics of the newspapers, such as size, region, available CAR resources, computer literacy levels of journalists involved, and availability of data, for instance. There were other weaknesses. This study did not include wire services becoming increasingly involved in CAR, nor did it look at specialty publications, such as news magazines, that were readily using CAR in their investigative reporting. It would also be valuable to look at broadcast news media since an increasing number of local news organizations are producing investigative projects that use numerous CAR tools. The study was being repeated for its fourth year in early 1997 with increased focus on newsroom uses of the Internet, particularly the World Wide Web. This new direction is directly a result of the findings reported in this paper.

n=208, missing observations = 150 in 1994; n = 287, missing observations = 225 in 1995; n = 233, missing observations = 202 in 1996.

TABLE 5: Use of Online Services, 1994-96

Anderson, Ian E., ed. (1994), Editor & Publisher international year book 1994, New York: Editor & Publisher.

Anderson, Ian E., ed. (1995), Editor & Publisher international year book 1995, New York: Editor & Publisher.

Anderson, Ian E., ed. (1996), Editor & Publisher international year book 1996, New York: Editor & Publisher.

Anon. (1996a, July 14). "Technology transforms newspapers into 24-hour 'information store'," The Arizona Republic / The Phoenix Gazette, final chaser edition, Special section, p. NB4.

Anon. (1996b, Winter). "Computer-assisted reporting," Merck Media Minutes, pp. 1-4.

DeFleur, Margaret H. (1997, in press). Computer-assisted investigative reporting. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Garrison, Bruce (1995a). Computer-assisted reporting. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Garrison, Bruce (1995b, Fall). "Online services as news reporting tools: Daily newspaper use of commercial databases in 1994," Newspaper Research Journal, 16(4), pp. 74-86.

Garrison, Bruce (1996a). Successful strategies for computer-assisted reporting. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Garrison, Bruce (1996b, August). "Newsroom Tools for Computer-Assisted Reporting in 1995," unpublished paper presented to the Communication Technology and Policy Division, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Anaheim, Calif.

Garrison, Bruce (1996c, August). "Online Services and the Internet: Computer-Assisted Reporting in Newsrooms in 1995," unpublished paper presented to the Newspaper Division, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Anaheim, Calif.

Garrison, Bruce (1996d). "Computer-Assisted Reporting Tools: A Study of Daily Newspaper Use in 1994," Newspaper Research Journal, in press.

Garrison, Bruce (1996e, April 27). "Interactive communications: Computer-assisted reporting tools," Editor & Publisher, 129(17), pp. 86-87, 102-104.

Grossman, Joel. (1994, July-August). "Locating experts via computer: Cyberspace is filled with sources and experts," IRE Journal, 17(4), pp. 10-11.

Hall, Lee (1996, April 15). "Newspro: Reporters find good stories just keystrokes away," Electronic Media, p. 21.

Houston, Brant (1996). Computer-assisted reporting: A practical guide. New York: St. Martins.

Johnson, J.T. (1996, June). "Turning pages gives way to information click: Old-fashioned newspaper fun to hold, read, but…," Quill, 84(5), pp. 12-13.

Johnson, J.T. (1995, November/December). "Money, technology converging to help media's bottom line," Quill, 83(9), p. 16.

Norušis, Marija J. (1995). SPSS for Windows base system user's guide, release 6.1. Chicago: SPSS, Inc.

Paul, Nora (1996). Computer assisted research: A guide to tapping online information. St. Petersburg, Fla., The Poynter Institute (HTML, Windows disk edition).

Reddick, Randy & King, Elliot (1995). The online journalist: Using the Internet and other electronic resources. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace.

Category	1994	1995	1996
Circulation mean	121,361	113,735	105,241
Circulation East	18%	18%	22%
Circulation South	28%	27%	26%
Circulation Midwest	28%	27%	26%
Circulation West	17%	22%	19%
Editors, supervisors	56%	20%	40%
CAR supervisors	6%	27%	21%
Investigations, projects	9%	9%	6%
Other	29%	44%	33%

Use	1994	Percent	1995	Percent	1996	Percent	Change 1994-96
Yes	119	57.2%	183	63.8%	188	80.7%	+23.5%
No	83	39.9	96	33.4	45	19.3	-20.6
Missing	6	2.9	8	2.8	0	0.0	-2.9
TOTALS	208	100.0%	287	100.0%	233	100.0%

Reason	1994	Percent	1995	Percent	1996	Percent	Change 1994-96
Just starting	6	10.3%	15	24.2%	6	19.4%	+9.1%
Not online	8	13.8	14	22.6	6	19.4	+5.6
No tools	16	27.6	14	22.6	10	32.3	+4.6
Slow	0	0.0	1	1.6	0	0.0	0.0
No experts	5	8.6	4	6.5	2	6.5	-2.1
No interest	4	6.9	1	1.6	1	3.2	-3.7
No priority	4	6.9	5	8.1	1	3.2	-3.7
No budget	15	25.9	8	12.9	5	16.1	-9.8
TOTALS	58	100.0%	62	100.1%	31	100.1%

Frequency	1994	Percent	1995	Percent	1996	Percent	Change 1994-96
Daily or more often	57	27.4%	83	28.9%	86	36.9%	+9.5%
Weekly or more often	23	12.1	63	22.0	60	25.8	+13.7
Monthly or more often	8	3.6	28	9.8	30	12.9	+9.6
Less than monthly	3	1.4	16	5.8	10	4.3	+2.9
Other	36	17.3	-----	-----	-----	-----	-----
Missing/ never used	81	38.9	97	33.8	47	20.2	-18.7
TOTALS	208	100.7%	287	100.3%	233	100.1%

Service	1994	Percent	1995	Percent	1996	Percent	Change 1994-96
Internet	52	25.0%	128	44.6%	155	66.5%	+41.5%
Amer. Online	36	17.3	109	38.0	110	47.2	+29.0
DataTimes	31	14.9	77	26.8	57	24.5	+9.6
PACER	-----	-----	56	19.5	54	23.2	+3.7*
CompuServe	79	38.0	113	39.4	97	41.6	+3.6
Westlaw	0	0.0	5	1.7	8	3.4	+3.4
Datalink	2	1.0	3	1.0	5	2.1	+1.1
Local govt.	-----	-----	78	27.2	66	28.3	+1.1*
Info America	-----	-----	11	3.8	11	4.7	+0.9*
FedWorld	-----	-----	57	19.9	48	20.6	+0.7*
Interchange	-----	-----	3	1.0	4	1.7	+0.7*
Lexis / Nexis	60	28.8	81	28.2	67	28.8	0.0
Prodigy	25	12.0	46	16.0	27	11.6	-0.4
GEnie	4	1.9	2	0.7	2	0.9	-1.0
Burrelle	8	3.8	9	3.1	6	2.6	-1.2
Newsnet	8	3.8	14	4.9	6	2.6	-1.2
Credit	13	6.3	16	5.6	9	3.9	-2.4
Dow Jones	34	16.3	35	12.2	31	13.3	-3.0
Govt. BBSs	81	38.9	90	31.4	83	35.6	-3.3
Comm. BBSs	31	14.9	46	16.0	19	8.2	-6.7
Dialog/KI	55	26.4	64	22.3	43	18.5	-7.9
Private BBSs	43	20.7	52	18.1	29	12.4	-8.3
Delphi	23	11.1	30	10.5	6	2.6	-8.5
MSN	-----	-----	-----	-----	1	0.4	-----

Position	1995	Percent	1996	Percent	Change 1995-96
Reporter	52	23.5%	74	31.8%	+8.3
Librarian- researcher	56	25.3	40	17.2	-8.1
Anyone in newsroom	50	22.6	52	22.3	-0.3
None	32	14.5	49	21.0	+6.5
Other	23	10.4	8	3.4	-7.0
Editor	8	3.6	10	4.3	+0.7
TOTALS	221	99.9%	233	100.0%