There are signs at the AEJMC annual conference that academics are starting to understand online journalism.  At one of the panels, Sue Robinson from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, talked about the impact of the internet on journalism.

She said that going online for journalists meant more than reading a few stories online. In her view, it meant joining a collaborative, network culture. This relates to an argument I have made in the past that news is shifting from being a destination to being a journey.

As a first step for journalists, this means reading and engaging with comments on stories. But in her research, Robinson has found that only about half of journalists read comments, but none actually talk part in the conversation.  She argued that posting as story is the start of a process, rather than the end.

But journalists tradtionally view publication as a final destination and move on to the next story.  Paul Bradshaw has written on how this has to change, coming up with the model of the news diamond. He describes this as the iterative journalism of the new media, where the story that is forever unfinished.

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