Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology

260 journalism and the computer industryfor journalists should apply to bloggers and online newsreporters.In addition to blogs, photo and video sharing sites(see, for example, YouTube) now widely distribute material,often quite controversial, that might once have beenignored by mainstream media. For their part, many mainstreamjournalists now also maintain blogs through whichreaders can respond to stories of the day.At the same time, in an era when a stream of bothimages and the printed word is on tap 24 hours a day, printjournalism faces a shrinking market and the need to justifyitself to consumers. The industry has responded since the1970s by an increasing number of mergers of metropolitandaily newspapers as well as the merging of newspapers intobroader-based media companies. Many people have grownup with the daily routine of a newspaper at the breakfasttable, and there is still a cachet for prestigious publicationssuch as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.Futurists have predicted that newspapers might eventuallybe delivered to “electronic book” devices, perhaps througha wireless connection (see e-books and digital libraries).This might combine the immediacy of the Internet with thephysical convenience and portability of a newspaper.Further ReadingCornfield, Michael. “Buzz, Blogs, and Beyond: The Internet andthe National Discourse in the Fall of 2004.” Pew Center forInternet & American Life. Available online. URL: http://www.pewinternet.org/ppt/BUZZ_BLOGS__BEYOND_Final05-16-05.pdf. Accessed August 11, 2007.Daily KOS. Available online. URL: http://www.dailykos.com.Accessed August 11, 2007.Gillmor, Dan. We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, forthe People. Sebastapol, Calif.: O’Reilly, 2004.Meyer, Philip. The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in theInformation Age. Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press,2004.Pew Center for Civic Journalism. Available online. URL: http://www.pewcenter.org. Accessed August 11, 2007.Quinn, Stephen, and Vincent Filak, eds. Convergent Journalism: AnIntroduction—Writing and Producing across Media. Burlington,Mass.: Focal Press, 2005.Salon.com. Available online. URL: http://www.salon.com. AccessedAugust 1, 2007.Slate.com. Available online. URL: http://www.slate.com. AccessedAugust 1, 2007.Wulfemeyer, K. Tim. Online Newswriting. Ames, Iowa: BlackwellPublishing, 2006.journalism and the computer industryDevelopments in the computer industry and user communityhave been chronicled by a great variety of printed andon-line publications. As computer science began to emergeas a discipline in the late 1950s and 1960s, academicallyoriented groups such as the Association for ComputingMachinery (ACM) and Institute for Electrical and ElectronicsEngineers (IEEE) began to issue both general and special-interestjournals. Meanwhile, the computer industrydeveloped both computer science-oriented publications(such as the IBM Systems Journal) and independent industryperiodicals such as Datamation.The development of microcomputer systems in themid- to late-1970s was accompanied by a proliferation ofvaried and often feisty publications. Byte magazine, whichcoined the term PC in 1976, became a respected trade publicationthat introduced new technologies while showcasingwhat programmers could do with the early systems. Theweekly newspaper InfoWorld provided more immediate anddetailed coverage of industry developments, and was joinedby similar publications such as Information Week and Computerworld.Meanwhile, technically savvy programmers anddo-it-yourself engineers turned to such publications as theexotically named Dr. Dobbs’ Journal of Computer Calisthenicsand Orthodontia (eventually shortened to Dr. Dobbs’ Journal).Many groups of people who owned particular systems(see user groups) also published their own newsletterswith technical tips.The success of the IBM PC family of computers establisheda broad-based consumer computing market. Itwas accompanied by the success of PC Magazine, whichaddresses a wide spectrum of both general consumersand “power users.” As the revenue for the PC industrygrew in the 1990s, the trade publications grew fatter withadvertising. The popularity of the Internet and particularlythe World Wide Web in the latter part of the decadeprovided niches for a spate of new publications includingInternet World and Yahoo! Internet Life. At the same time,many traditional publications began to offer expandedcontent via Web sites. For example, Ziff Davis, publisherof PC Magazine and other computer magazines createdZDNet, which offered a large amount of content from themagazines plus expanded news and extensive sharewareand utility libraries.Like earlier technological developments, the PC andthe Internet have also spawned cultural expressions. Theculture growing around the Internet and a generation ofyoung programmers, artists, and writers saw expression inanother genre of publications, ranging from small, eclecticprinted or Web “zines” to the slick Wired magazine.From Print to OnlineMany of the pressures on mainstream journalism also applyto computer industry journalism. As computer hardwarebecame a commodity with lower profit margins, and withthe shift to e-commerce and online activity, many printmagazines have folded or at least shrunk. In 1998 the venerableByte became an online-only publication, a path finallyfollowed by InfoWorld in 2007.Online sites such as ZDNET and CNET now carryin-depth news and product reviews. Slashdot (“New forNerds”) is particularly popular among programmers. Aswith mainstream journalism, blogs also play an importantpart in professional and industry journalism in the computingfield.Further ReadingCNET. Available online. ULR: http://www.cnet.com. AccessedAugust 11, 2007.“Computer Industry: Trade Magazines.” Yahoo.com. Availableonline. URL: http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/