CNN iReport

The Internet has changed all of that. Now, there is absolutely no limit to how much information and news can be transmitted. According to a 2008 article in the Columbia Journalism Review, in just the year 2006, 161 exabytes of data were produced. That number was expected to increase nearly eight-fold within the next 2 years. To put that in perspective, 5 exabytes are worth 37,000 Libraries of Congress, and the 161 that were produced is the equivalent of three million times the information contained in all books ever written. What makes information on the Internet so revolutionary is that it is available on a user-specified basis at essentially no cost.

With the explosion of information available via the Internet, traditional papers find themselves migrating to the information superhighway. With this migration comes a substantial increase in the number of deadlines publications have daily. British “right-of-centre” newspaper The Daily Telegraph found their deadlines increase from once per day, to five times per day just to keep up with the daily flow of information.

IV The Effect of Advertising on the Media

The transition of journalism to new media is not due to just the Internet, though that is a major reason. According to Mr. Pavlik, the cause is “a set of economic, regulatory, and cultural forces, driven by technological change.” The economic forces he is referring to are the declining state of the economy as well as the decrease in revenue from advertisements.

The decrease in advertising revenue has had a huge hit on many media companies across the globe. Over the course of just two years, shares of News Corporation dropped in price from $23.38 to $9.47. To put that into perspective, Stephen Quinn, an associate professor of journalism at Deakin Universty in Australia, said that Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founders, could buy nearly every newspaper group in the United States and still have $12 billion to spare.

Mr. Quinn feels that print editions can save money “by going Net-only.” He feels that that this is a necessary move on their part because people need news “to be able to function as citizens.” People are always going online looking for more and more free information, and in uncertain times like today, that urge becomes “even more ravenous.” Unfortunately journalism is becoming more and more expensive. Over time, Mr. Quinn feels, advertisers will see more of their customers choosing to retrieve their information from a digital rather than an analog medium, and thus will inevitably follow them on to the Internet.