I was interested to read Ellyn Angelotti's post suggesting that the informal, personal element of blogging allowed her to bring new dimensions to her story about the aftermath of Krystal Bateson's death. I would add that the nature of cyberspace allows news writers and editors, along with TV producers, to reconsider the parameters of the news story.
The conventional understanding of news is tied to the print and electronic media which transmit it. We can define "news" as "current events of broad public interest," but we also tend to think of news as something concise, bite-sized. We tend to forget that these are artificial constructions based on the limitations of the technologies. Yes, news consumers value bite-sized stories, but, depending on their personal connection to a story, they may want more. A Web site can offer that. A story can be as long as it needs to be, and it need never be truly "finished." As new information comes in, the writer updates, revises, appends--using links, video, audio, dialogues, reader response, archival material, and any other element that might help tell the story and add the context that is lacking in the other media.
We often hear the complaint that TV and print journalism are too shallow; to some extent, it is necessarily so because editors and producers must encapsulate the day's events into so many column inches or 22 minutes in between the commercials. The 24-hour news channels have more flexibility, but their ratings-driven agenda compels them to maintain a rigid, narrow format.
On the web, however, the only limit is the scope of the subject matter and the time a writer has to explore it. Ellyn could have written a book-length narrative about Krystal Bateson, about fathers and daughters and softball and the preciousness of life and family, if she had the will and time to do so. And if only ten people read it? No harm is done, no trees are sacrificed, but for those ten people, maybe she has done justice to the scope of the story.
Of course, all writers value succinctness, and the Web allows for neat, concise writing as well as lengthy dissertations and dialogues. The beauty of the Web for the newswriter is that it expands the possibilities of what a news story can entail. The story no longer need be shoe-horned to fit the demands of the medium; on the contrary, the medium expands or contracts to meet the demands of the story.
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