Online Journalism - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

150 Online Journalism
so far unsuccessfully reappropriated by proprietors such as Rupert
Murdoch – who so successfully drove the market-centred approach in
Britain – was the appearance of a new journalism in publications like
the Drudge Report in the USA and Scallywag in Britain, and their many
imitators (some markedly more successful than their epigones).
Drudge is able to publish from his two-room flat in Hollywood by
employing a technology that demands very few overheads. His
‘team’, mostly comprising other news providers such as Slashdot,
mobilised by no more than a link to their website, are virtual in the
extreme.
His nerve center is a fluid cacophony – a cheap Sanyo television
monitor tuned to CNBC, another to CNN, another to C-SPAN …
a Sony radio purring phone talk, an RCA satellite dish bringing in
European news, show tunes, and extra TV channels, a police
scanner looking for local action, and, most importantly, two
computer screens linked to chat-rooms, e-mail, news wire
services, and the Internet. 33
Without wishing to elevate Drudge as the contemporary counterpart
of the printer publishers of the great age of radical journalism,
William Cobbett or Tom Paine, his newsroom also serves as his
printing press or transmitter. The Drudge Report makes no concessions
to its readers in terms of visual appeal or newsworthiness. Its
sheer lack of style or discrimination is breathtaking to the readerly
eye that has been educated in the contemporary news’ aesthetic.
Newsweek’s satisfaction at Matt Drudge’s sacking by Fox News, especially
after his forcing their publication of the Monica Lewinsky
story, must have been tempered by his immediately leading with a
link to their own (slightly triumphal) report of the event in
November 1999. Any report of the death of journalism in the emergence
of Drudge was premature, however the craft, with its skills and
its determining principles, was certainly changing.
The Return of the Real
While Drudge’s journalism may well be unappealing to many,
including as it does distortions, inaccuracies and a more or less
complete dependency on the work of others, at the same time it