ONA Superpanel discusses future of online news

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Senior editors, writers and news executives formed a "super panel" at the 
Online News Association's fourth annual conference to predict the future of 
online news. The biggest news is bigger bandwidths. Bigger bandwidths 
pumping information into homes will mean bigger play for video. High-speed 
Internet connections, once mostly utilized by businesses, is turning the 
Internet prime-time from 9 to 5 -- when surfers could ride their company's 
massive Internet connection -- to 9 to 9. Panelist Richard Deverell, Head 
of News Interactive at BBC News, said every story should be broken down 
into short, independent, interlocked units -- sound, video, image, text -- 
that can provide content for a variety of devices, from cell phones and 
PDAs to those yet to come. People may spend 15 minutes at a news site, but 
they'll spend it in 5-minute chunks. Such a move is probably goodbye to 
linear storytelling, said Leonard Apcar, editor-in-chief of The New York 
Times on the Web. With video's influence, he said, watch coverage of the 
2004 presidential campaign to play out like coverage of the war in Iraq. 
Blogs will be there too with candidates and voters using the Internet to 
proselytize and analyze, political campaigns will change drastically at the 
grassroots level. Audiences will want more and more interactivity -- not 
only through their computers, but through their TVs as well. Give them the 
news they want, when they want it, or watch their wanting wane, panelists 
said. But all this choice is necessarily good, said Ruth Gersh, editorial 
director of AP Digital. By self selecting its news, the audience can 
isolate itself into a tight circle of its own limited interests -- and the 
threat of "losing the shared news experience" approaches, bringing change 
Gersh didn't try to estimate. Most panelists agreed though that the 
presentation of news will change drastically in the future, but the skills 
of  a journalist -- primarily the ability to quickly find what is 
newsworthy in a stream of information  -- will always be needed. 

Source:
http://www.journalists.org/2003conference/