A Horse Race with No Sign of the Finish Line: The Internet

by Melanie Espeland

Television broadcasting is undergoing enormous changes in the way it delivers the news, so contends NBC-TV "Weekend Today" anchor Soledad O'Brien, who compares this new reality to a horse race, "Everybody is sprinting towards the finish line, and we don't even know where the finish line is." A guest lecturer invited by the Institute for Young Journalists to discuss "The Impact of the Internet on the Broadcast Community" at Greenwich High School, Ms. O'Brien continued her analogy by indicating that news organizations will have to bet on all of its horses to be winners to make sure that they stay on top of the changes that are happening on the internet daily. "In fact," she said, "the company that is not invested in some kind of technology will be in big trouble."

Enhanced opportunity and more competition go hand in hand with the internet and the technology that is constantly being developed. Today, there are many more channels from which we can get our news, and there is expanded coverage of the news to a 24 hour cycle, so no one is running home to catch the 6:00 p.m. news the way they used to. "People want to get their news when it's convenient, and they can now choose from a seemingly infinite number of news sources," Ms. O'Brien told her audience of students. NBC hooked up with Microsoft four years ago so that they could go with the flow of technology changes. Recognizing that teens are plugged into the internet, news organizations realized that internet news was an essential move. "Networks, like mine are terrified that people like you won't watch the news," admitted Ms. O'Brien.