Online Journalism - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

184 Online Journalism
it to rethink existing practice (around free content, for instance).
Other elements, the notion of cheap or even free and universal
access, for example, may ultimately prove rather more problematic
for them.
Some argue that the Internet and the new communication technologies
are breaking the corporate stranglehold on journalism
and opening an unprecedented era of interactive democratic
media. There is no evidence to support this view as regards journalism
and mass communication. In fact, one could argue that
the new technologies are exacerbating the problem. They permit
media firms to shrink staff while achieving greater outputs and
they make possible global distribution systems, thus reducing the
number of media entities. 43
And rethink those entities. The traditional newspaper is an information
carrier derived from print technology and cohering around a
particular revenue model which brings together several disparate
businesses: news dissemination, weather reports, display ads, stockmarket
reports, classified ads, listings, entertainment, etc. With the
obsolescence of its defining print and broadcast technologies there is
not necessarily anything remaining to hold the package together. Its
rationale disappears and specialist publishers will rapidly appropriate
the various parts of the business to repackage them as discrete
products and deliver them more effectively and, as we have seen,
more cheaply.