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Editing, Online and Digital

Digital technologies have been used by newspaper and magazine editors since word processors – simple computers for writing—were introduced into newsrooms in the 1970s. Since the mid-1990s, digital editing has referred to the practice of working with digitized source materials: text written on a computer; photographs taken with a digital camera and prepared for publication using digital video editing software; video and audio captured, stored, and edited in digital format; and graphics (such as illustrations or information graphics) created on a computer. Online editing refers to using digital editing procedures to prepare material for publication on the World Wide Web.

Origins

Early attempts to deliver digital news content were made in Great Britain. In 1970, one of the world's first teletext services was established. Television sets equipped with a box to decode the digital signal were used to display text and crude, low-definition graphics. Videotex soon followed, distributed by cable. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the online consumer services CompuServe, Prodigy, and America Online (AOL) contracted with news organizations to distribute content. Around 1990, some newspapers began to deliver online content using BBS (bulletin board system) technology. With these developments in distribution methods, newspaper editors began to see the potential future in paperless media.

When Mosaic, the first widely popular web browser with a graphical user interface (GUI), was released in 1993, online newspapers had the opportunity to release news material (text and photos) on the web before television and radio stations could air a news story. Before online publication, newspapers usually were forced to wait until the next day's news cycle—long after broadcast media had broken the story.

For traditional print media organizations, this immediacy brought new opportunities to increase readership; to expand local content to a global information market; to provide in-depth coverage, not limited by the physical size of a newsprint page; to interact with readers through e-mail, online chat, and discussion boards. Although the immediacy of online publication offered new possibilities, it also presented a new challenge for online editors. A news organization's credibility may be its most valued asset. Accuracy, assured through careful fact-checking and editing, is a key to building a media organization's credibility over time. Online content can be published for the world to see with the push of a button on an editor's keyboard, adding a new element of risk. A news media organization's credibility may be compromised with a careless key stroke. Online editors have an ethical obligation to themselves, their reporters, their employers, and their audiences to maintain a high level of journalistic integrity by taking enough time to check facts and assure accuracy.

Hypertext, Interactivity, and Multimedia

In the mid-1990s, online editors (and reporters) were discovering the impact of technology on their daily work routines. Online editors who had been trained as print journalists were introduced to the concepts of hypertext, interactivity, and multimedia.

Online editors are aware of the differences between reading printed material and reading a computer screen. Because reading on-screen is known to be slower and more fatiguing to the eye than reading a printed page, online editors encourage reporters to write short sentences and to use frequent paragraph breaks. Bulleted lists also assist the reader, who may need to quickly scan for items of interest to hunt efficiently for specific information.

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