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14 Beyond Journalism:

A Profession between

Information Society

and Civil Society

Jo Bar doel

Is journalism becoming redundant? Is the profession, slowly but surely, losing its
prominent place in communication between the citizen and government? Over
the past years, it has repeatedly been said that the function of journalism is
gradually being eroded. Underlying such concerns are the changes that have
taken place in the journalistic dissemination of news as a result of new media
technology.
Several years ago, this concern was directed towards the steady advance of
broadcasting stations like Cable News Network (CNN) and the satellites that
allow them to bring direct, uncut reports of world events, from the Gulf War to
peace keeping in the former Yugoslavia. [...]
More recently, the advent of new, interactive communication services such as
the Internet, ‘free nets’ and ‘digital cities’ has given rise to expectations that in
the future journalistic intervention in political communication will no longer be
necessary. Mitchell Kapor, founder of the American digital citizens’ movement
Electronic Frontier Foundation, gives the example of vice-president Al Gore’s
appearance on CompuServe:

It was the first live interactive news conference by the vice-president.
The New York Times observed: This actually might be like when Franklin
Roosevelt went on television at the New York World Fair in 1939.
Symbolically it could be marking the beginning of an era, in which public
officials are available to discuss and interact in real time. (Wiering and
Schröder, 1994)
These developments pose questions as to the significance of the new information
technology for the traditional task of journalism. What will the information society
mean for the position of journalists in political communication? Will they become
redundant, as some have suggested? Will the advance of the direct registration of
news smother the journalism that seeks to explain its background? Or might it be
the other way round? Will individuals lose their way on the information highway
and feel a greater need for journalistic direction? In this context we are of course

Source: EJC (1996), vol. 11, no. 3: 283–302.