Several chapters of Charlie Beckett’s SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save The World were posted online ahead of its publication by Blackwell on 20 May 2008. The book’s organising idea was Networked Journalism, which Beckett described as both a description and an aspiration: a journalism that reaffirms the core functions of the trade while deliberately breaking down the rigid distinctions of the past — between professional and amateur, producer and product, audience and participation — and embraces permeability and multi-dimensionality.
His introduction set out why he thought the moment was favourable rather than terminal. News information had never been more plentiful and journalism never more abundant. Journalists had never had more resources for reaching people anywhere, and audiences had unprecedented access to the news media. Journalism had never been more necessary to how individuals and societies function, or to global social, economic and political relationships. And the technological, educational and economic potential existed for a large expansion of journalism’s impact.
The argument extended past production. If the distinctions are permeable, the nature of news changes too: it stops being a destination and becomes a journey, in which any single piece of journalism is one stop on a route that distributed information travels. Networked journalism was therefore as much a claim about how people come across the news as about who makes it.