An oral history of the epic collision between journalism and digital technology, 1980 to the present

A project of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy

An oral history of the epic collision between journalism and digital technology, from 1980 to the present

Aggregation vs. Creation

Volume 1:
CEOs, Coders, News Execs, Disrupters

I think when Google News was invented. It was the first time we saw that a simple tool that could literally aggregate common stories could be so useful and that people would be so worried about it.
Everybody keeps trying to say, “You are a content company.” They still pretty much aren’t, although YouTube is paying for some content to be created. They didn’t want to ever get into that battle where they saw Yahoo starting to pay for news. Yahoo pays seven figures to the news companies for the raw materials. They don’t do rev shares anymore.
Games and communicating and community. They didn’t really like the news business.

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Grading Coverage of the Digital Era

Volume 2:
Tech Journalists

It’s difficult to filter through what could come about and what couldn’t come about, in part because it is so difficult to know what’s going to happen there. You’re trying to catch a target with a non-linear trajectory. It’s really hard.
Steven Levy
But as a whole it was in fits and starts. There was more of gee-whiz reporting than there was holding people’s feet to the fire.
Brock Meeks
Everyone says to me “Julia, why do you care about privacy? What’s the harm? Blah-blah-blah.” I’ve started to say “Well, it’s killing journalism. Is that enough for you?”.
Julia Angwin

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The Big Picture

For most of the 20th century, any list of America’s wealthiest families would include quite a few publishers generally considered to be in the “news business”: the Hearsts, the Pulitzers, the Sulzbergers, the Grahams, the Chandlers, the Coxes, the Knights, the Ridders, the Luces, the Bancrofts — a tribute to the fabulous business model that once delivered the country its news. While many of those families remain wealthy today, their historic core businesses are in steep decline (or worse), and their position at the top of the wealth builders has long since been eclipsed by people with other names: Gates, Page and Brin and Schmidt, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Case, and Jobs — builders of digital platforms that, while not specifically targeted at the “news business,” have nonetheless severely disrupted it.

Keep reading Vol 1. 

The Tech Journalists

A transformative wave washed over the world economy this past quarter-century and technology journalists were its chroniclers and front-row witnesses. Many, among the twenty interviewed, say a catastrophic disruption of the news business was to be expected. But they feel their warnings went largely unheard within their workplaces, a contributing factor to the industry’s late and ineffectual counter-efforts. In contrast to pessimism about the future financial underpinnings of their business, they’re optimistic about the outlook for journalism as new tools, audiences and approaches emerge and evolve.

Keep reading Vol 2. 

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Volume
Vol 1: CEOs, Coders, News Execs, Disrupters
Vol 2: Tech Journalists

Four veterans of digital journalism and media — John Huey, Martin Nisenholtz, Paul Sagan, and later John Geddes — interviewed dozens of people who played important roles in the intersection of media and technology — from CEOs to coders, journalists to disruptors.

Riptide is the result: more than 50 hours of video interviews and two narrative essays that trace the evolution of digital news from early experiments to today. It’s what really happened to the news business.

Read Vol. 1  
See interviews