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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.

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.

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]