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The article presents information on the use of Internet's interactive technologies by newspapers to improve the coverage of public affairs. "Cyber-democracy" proposes that the Internet's ability to close gaps of time and distance with electronic interactivity has the power to make institutional journalism at least anachronistic and perhaps even unnecessary. Online Web sites associated with newspapers can offer themselves as venues for greater citizen engagement because newspapers are the traditional source of the most in-depth information regarding political communication, especially at the state, regional and local levels, and also because they are the focal point for online news consumption. The study found that the promise of online journalism to create conditions for improved political communication is largely untapped. It found that only three of the 13 devices used to operationalize online facilitation of cyber-democratic practices were present at more than 50 percent of the papers surveyed in the study.

While the transition of traditional newspapers and magazines to the online space is gathering pace, and the literature on multimedia journalism is proliferating, little attention has been paid to date to the implications of convergence for the press in regulatory terms. One such regulatory dilemma arises from the proliferation of video content on newspaper websites. It is this question and others at the conjuncture of press freedom and the dynamics unleashed by convergence that the papers in this special section seek to shed light upon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the subject index of the articles published in this journal. Some of the articles based on newsgathering are "Beauty and the Beasts: Significance of Press Coverage of the 1913 National Suffrage Parade," by Linda J. Lumsden, "Civic Journalism and Nonelite Sourcing: Making Routine Newswork of Community Connectedness," by Brian L. Massey, "Comparing Distinctions and Similarities across Websites of Newspapers, Radio Stations, and Television Stations," by Carolyn A. Lin and Leo W. Jeffres, "Differences in Knowledge Acquisition Among Readers of the Paper and Online Versions of a National Newspaper," by David Tewksbury and Scott L. Althaus, "The Metro Wide Web: Changes in Newspapers' Gatekeeping Role Online," by Jane B. Singer, "The Mundane and the Arcane: Prestige Media Coverage of Social and Natural Science," by William Evans, "News of Hurricane Andrew: The Agenda of Sources and the Sources' Agendas," by Michael B. Salwen.

In this article, I examine how ‘old’ media organizations develop ‘new’ media technologies by analyzing processes of technological innovation in two Danish newspaper companies that integrated blogs into their websites in very different ways in 2007. Drawing on concepts from science and technology studies and sociology and building on previous research on blogging by news media organizations, I analyze how the three different communities involved in the development process – journalists and managers, but also the often-overlooked community of technologists – articulated different versions of what blogging ought to be in each organization and tried to shape the technology and pull the development work in different directions. On the basis of interviews with key participants, I show how the two newspaper organizations (equally ‘old’ media) came to develop nominally the same ‘new’ medium (blogs) for nominally the same purpose (journalism) in quite different ways through tension-filled and often contentious collaborative processes. I argue that researchers interested in understanding technological innovation in the media industry need to consider the important and active role played by the community of technologists (project managers, computer programers, information architects, etc.) that are increasingly integral to how legacy media organizations operate in a new and ever more convergent media environment under circumstances of great economic uncertainty, and discuss the wider implications for how we understand processes of technological development in the news media and the realization of the democratic potentials of new media technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses on the future of U.S. journalism in the 21st century upon which one of nation's biggest newspaper chief executive indicated that 19 out of the 50 biggest newspapers in the U.S. were suffering from money loss and even predicted for the number to increase. According to the author, he hopes that future organizations for news would find other means to compensate this type of journalism from websites and activities in the internet although it has not been a hopeful source of tax income. It is stated that a great challenge for the coming century would be paying for a great quality of journalism.

Within only a few years, the collaborative online encyclopedia Wikipedia has become one of the most popular websites in the world. At the same time, Wikipedia has become the subject of much controversy because of inaccuracies and hoaxes found in some of its entries. Journalists, therefore, have remained skeptical about the reliability and accuracy of Wikipedia's information, despite the fact that research has consistently shown an overall high level of accuracy compared to traditional encyclopedia. This study analyzed the framing of Wikipedia and its use as a news source by five US national newspapers over an eight-year period. A content analysis of 1486 Wikipedia references in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and The Christian Science Monitor found that Wikipedia is framed predominantly neutral and positive, and that it is increasingly used as a news source. By framing Wikipedia as credible and accurate, the newspapers help legitimize the use of the online encyclopedia. By allowing Wikipedia to influence their news agendas as a source, the newspapers confirm the growing reliability of Wikipedia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bloggers, tweeters, website ferrets — it’s time to realise that if the wolf is to be kept from the door, collaborative journalism is the way ahead [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]