Book Review: Breaking News

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BREAKING NEWS: Sunil Saxena; Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited, 7,
West Patel Nagar, New Delhi-110008. Rs. 275.

This book by Sunil Saxena is a chronicle and a guidebook to the brief
history of news on the Internet, with particular reference to India. It is
also a textbook and a sourcebook with practical chapters on writing and
editing creatively to make the most of the medium.  The author uses his
experience of starting websites for the New Indian Express group and of
teaching students at a journalism college to give "Breaking News" a longer
shelf life than a period-specific volume might merit.

He traces the evolution of news websites, from the time they were started by
news organisations to provide material from their print editions to mostly
Non-Resident Indian (NRI) audiences as a matter of prestige, to the present
when technological changes have ramped up competition. There is also a brief
and naturally inconclusive discussion in the book about the question of
whether websites affect print sales; the newspaper research and consulting
firm Belden Associates reported results of a study that showed single copy
sales of newspapers had negative growth last year contradicting earlier
studies that seemed to show a beneficial impact of websites on print sales.
Such fears, coupled with weak advertisement revenues, have resulted in print
being placed above online in the scheme of things in many Indian newspapers.

However, the competition among websites is intense and the author looks at
the frantic search that websites make for good stories all the time and how
they try to innovate with headlines, pictures and text to keep the online
reader coming back. Websites score over other media when stories break;
unlike television, which "pushes" programming to the viewer, the Internet is
a "pull" medium where a variety of content, including visuals, sound and
other graphics, can be downloaded from a variety of sources at the same
time. The content built up by newspapers in searchable form also becomes a
resource for scholars and the public alike when they look for background and
insight into particular topics.

Source:
http://www.hindu.com/br/2004/05/18/stories/2004051800371500.htm