Coventry Journalism Review 2008

In this paper I aim to show that the development of news technology has and continues to change the methods of news delivery and the users experience of news content. In doing so I also aim to show that at the start of the 21^st century we are on the verge of new breakthroughs in virtual reality technology that have the potential to fundamentally alter the news environment.

We live today in a world of technological development that is progressing faster and more efficiently than any period of technological advancement that has gone before. Technology is getting smaller, more adaptable and helping create a world that is becoming increasingly ‘globally localised’ (Sreberny-Mohammadi, 1997: 174).

Twenty-four hour news channels, constantly updated news websites and satellite communications have allowed for news and information to be accessible to a member of the public almost anywhere on earth soon after a new event takes place. It may initially seem that all of these various technologies have in turn fundamentally altered the news environment, but in the history of global news communications there have only been three technological developments that have fundamentally altered the news environment. Firstly, the invention of the Guttenberg press in 1450, secondly the process of permanent photography developed by Nicephore Niepce in 1826 and lastly the first transatlantic transmissions using telegraph cables in 1858.

While previous technological breakthroughs allowed for the invention of the Guttenburg press, permanent photography and telegraph transmissions, these subsequent technologies laid the foundations for the mass production and global distribution of information and news that we rely on today. They took previously existing technologies and created a new age of possibilities for the delivery and presentation of news and information that would go on to radically change the news environment. With the Guttenburg press books could for the first time be made quickly, accurately and relatively affordable (BBC, 2008), with photography people could actually see events that were not present at and transatlantic telegraph transmissions allowed for information to be delivered to other continents without the need for someone to physically take the information there.

While developments like newspapers, radio, television, satellites and the internet have played a dramatic and vital role in creating the news environment of today, at their core these technologies are essentially only improvements and refinements of the work of Guttenburg, Niepce and the transatlantic communication pioneers.

In the case of the internet, it allows us to access news twenty-four hours a day but in principle it delivers the same service as the first mass produced texts by Guttenburg. It provides people the all over the world the opportunity to read identical accounts and information on news stories in the same way that the Guttenburg press allowed for people to read identical copies of the same book (BBC, 2008), free of the inherent problems of the aural and hand written methods of information delivery. The ability of internet to share information quickly across the world, an ability which is central to the ideas that led to the internets creation (Johnson, 2006) stems from the 1858 transatlantic telegraph communications, with the multimedia content of today’s news internet sites stemming from the development of permanent photography.

These technologies allowed for the creation of the news industry (McPhail, 2002: 18). The Guttenburg press allowed for the creation and production of newspapers, pamphlets and political propaganda. The problem that faced them was the time it took for news to be gathered and delivered, with the full potential of Guttenburg’s invention only being attainable with the development of telegraph communications. In 1851 pigeons were still used by some papers to gather information (Marr, 2005: 330) but by 1872 ‘London’s need for hard facts and the new technologies of cable and telegraph meant that Reuters was able to announce President Lincoln’s assassination’ (Marr, 200: 331).

Events such as the police hunt for Doctor Crippen and the sinking of the Titanic could now reach news stands only hours after they happened (Wynn Jones, 1974: 72-75). Technological developments including stereotyping and web-perfecting printing presses in 1863 and radio telegraphy in 1901 had created a quicker, more efficient and profitable news industry. More importantly though was the improvements in content. With the development of Halftone engraving in 1897 newspapers could now carry photographs of the events giving a reader a better understanding of the news stories, realising the news potential of Niepe’s breakthrough.

The amount and variety media content in news has rapidly grown since 1897 to the multimedia news environment that we have today. The development of radio news allowed people to hear sound recordings of events, interviews with those involved in and discussions about news events. With television people were able to access a greater amount of information on a news story than pictures and sound recordings would be able to convey. Thanks to television technology events such as the first moon landing, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and the first Gulf War, coinciding with the launch of twenty four hour news channels (McPhail, 2004: 148), would become some of the defining historical images of the twentieth century (Dayan and Katz, 1995: 98).

What radio and television news allowed was for a viewer to use their senses of sight and hearing, alongside their own knowledge and reasoning, to understand and experience news events in a way that had never been available before. The impact of being able to see the World Trade Centre attacks live on television gave people watching it on television a better understanding of the events than those trapped in the towers themselves (Sreberny and Patterson, 2004: 3).

The growth of the technologies involved with newspapers, radio and television have reached a zenith point. From their fundamental origins with the Guttenberg press, photography and transatlantic telegraph communications news technologies are being collated with the internet. Newspaper circulation continues to fall with a rapidly growing number of readers now relying on the internet for news coverage (Press Gazette, 2007). The technologies of the day are though constantly being negated by the possibilities of the future. While the speed, variety, amount of content and accessibility of information will continue to improve, it is not the internet that will cause the next fundamental change to the news environment.

Recent developments in virtual reality technologies could potentially cause the next fundamental altering of the news environment. The idea of virtual reality has long been established in science fiction and in terms of being a scientific possibility (Day and Laycock, 2005). The idea of being able to interact with another environment without having to physically be there, or for that environment to actually physically exist, has so far though always been ahead of the technological capabilities of making the idea a reality.

Science is now catching up with the idea of a virtual reality. In a breakthrough similar to the first transatlantic telegraph transmissions in 2002 teams based at the Michigan Institute of Technology and University College London were able to virtually manipulate computerised image of a small box from another in the other continent, the first transatlantic virtual touch (MIT, 2002). By 2005 this technology had improved radically. Instead of just being able to manipulate a virtual image, scientists at the University of East Anglia unveiled technology that allowed users the sensation of actually touching and feeling a 3D virtual object (Day and Laycock, 2005).

Given the rapid growth of virtual reality technology, and the equivalent growth in the technologies of a century ago, it is not totally inconceivable that these developments could one day fundamentally alter the news environment. By virtually incorporating the sense of touch to news reporting it could allow a person to experience some of the realties and comprising elements of a news story. When an automotive journalist describes the feel of the interior of a new car a viewer could experience the sensation of feeling it for themselves or when a health journalist describes a new medical procedure a viewer could experience the sensation of putting pressure on the scalpel to cut through the tissue. The basic technologies needed for these examples to become a practical reality exists today.

These developments are in addition to the recent developments and improvements to head-mounted displays, HMDs. HMDs allow for a user to view a virtual environment by wearing small display screens in front of their eyes. Once a cumbersome technology, HMDs are increasingly becoming lighter, providing increasingly higher resolution image with and a dramatically larger field of vision (Boger, 2007: 10).

Given that the technology used for newspapers, radio, television and the internet has adapted and changed radically over the years since their invention it is important that we recognise that it is likely that the basic technology involved in virtual reality today will continue to develop to the point where the technology that is used bares little resemblance to the contemporary technology. The television technology of today has changed dramatically since the first experiments of Logie-Baird in 1923, the first non-mechanical television invented by Philo Farnsworth in 1929 (Abramson, 1995 :13-15) to the multi-platform, digital, LCD screen television that exist today.

For virtual reality technologies to fundamentally alter the news environment its economic viability is essential. Today news can be accessed for free as multimedia content online, in free newspapers or by radio. While circulation figures for commercially bought newspapers indicate that they still hold a significant position in the news environment their circulation figures are still falling (ABC, 2008) as the concept of news as a commodity as changing with free access to news. Newspapers, radio, television and the internet were only able to obtain the place in the news environment that they currently possess because they were economically viable for people to invest in. As such for virtual reality technologies to fundamentally change the news environment it needs to be able to provide the public with an experience, service and understanding of news events that they consider to be both essential and also one which is affordable.

Without economic viability virtual reality technologies will still be radical and significant technological breakthrough, but one that will be redundant and unused. History does though indicate that technologies that were once economically unviable later became an every day, indelible part of people’s lives. In 2003 75% of all adults in the UK owned a mobile phone (National Statistics, 2003), by 2006 there were over 69 million mobile phones in the UK (CIA World Fact Book, 2008), 9 million more than the entire population. Mobile phone prices had dropped to the point were a once expensive technology was now available and affordable to all to the point where it is almost considered to be a disposable piece of technology.

The technology involved with virtual touch and manipulation may be at an early stage of development but ‘just like Bell didn’t anticipate all the applications for the telephone’ scientists today ‘don’t know all of the potential’ for virtual reality technology’ (Srinvisan, 2002). Lord Kelvin, one of the pioneers of telegraph communications, once famously dismissed the potential future possibilities and uses of radio technology, so while we may not be able to see or even fully understand the full potential of virtual reality technology today but we should not be to sceptical about its potential to fundamentally alter the news environment. Virtually reality could potentially give someone an understanding of a story that would simply not be achievable with past technologies.

While virtual reality may potentially offer a greater understanding of news events it threatens the position of the established journalist. Recent technological breakthroughs have coincided with the rise of arguments about the ‘dumbing down’ of the media, the introduction of ‘bite-size McNugget journalism’ (Allan, 2005: 202) and the rise of ‘infotainment’ (Musa, 2006: 131). In 2000 the main debate at the News World Conference focused on whether the quality of journalism was being affected by the rise of the internet (Macmillan, 2000). The internet has led to a situation where journalism is becoming increasingly office based, with fewer journalists needed, requiring a widening range of technological skill and with editors having to decide whether it is economically viable for reporters to be sent to where a news even is taking place (Brand, 2000).

Virtual Reality threatens the very necessity of employing journalist to provide an understanding of news events. Rather than a journalist needing to describe events to a reader, virtual reality would allow for a person to experience the events for themselves. Given the parallel rise in the development of news technologies and arguments about the ‘dumbing down’ of news, virtual reality technology could potentially further extend this trend providing a substantial threat to the established news environment.

The problem that faces arguments about the ‘dumbing down’ of news is that the news industry is economically dependant on the buying and viewing preferences of the public. The public has a choice of which paper it reads and with the internet a person can choose to look at news content from a variety of different sources, from tabloid to broadsheet and from local to global. If ‘the culture of celebrity, like an army of ants, has colonised the news pages both tabloid and broadsheet’ (Bell, 2004) then it must reflect the tastes and interests of a significantly, large proportion of the public.

Virtual reality may though provide a solution to the problem of news ‘dumbing down’. By providing the public with a far greater understanding and experience of hard news events virtual reality could potentially create a news environment in which the public become more interested in hard news (increasing the necessity of journalists to explain and contextualise events) , akin to public reaction worldwide to the Vietnam war and the unrestricted coverage of its realities. This would be in keeping with journalism having ‘always been a profession whose basic capacities and functions are rooted in technology’ (Campbell, 2004: 245) Rather than continuing the trend of the increase in technological capabilities with the erosion of journalism, virtual reality could fundamentally change the news environment be reinstating the importance of the journalist and rebalancing the importance of journalism with the capabilities of the technology they use.

The rapid development of news technology from the first transatlantic telegraph transmissions to the multimedia news environment of today provides a firm basis for arguing that the news environment of 150 years in the future will be dramatically different from what currently exists. Virtual reality technology could potentially be the telegraph technology of today. To start with, primitive and limited in its uses, but possessing the inherent potential to fundamentally change how the public receive and understand the news but the also the role and position of journalists.

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