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THE FUTURE OF NEWSPAPERS

Martin Conboy & John Steel
Published online: 02 Sep 2008.

To cite this article: Martin Conboy & John Steel (2008) THE FUTURE OF NEWSPAPERS, Journalism
Studies, 9:5, 650-661, DOI: 10.1080/14616700802207540

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 THE FUTURE OF NEWSPAPERS
Historical perspectives

Martin Conboy and John Steel

To what extent can we disassociate the technology and economics of newspapers from their
political and cultural functions? Many of the latter functions have survived previous eras of
technological change, often with a heightened promise of a more democratic engagement with
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readers and a subsequent amelioration of civic communication. Toolan (1998) has provocatively
suggested that, in their narrative conventions, newspapers often literally do not know what they
are writing about. This has partly been because of the time constraints on the production of news
and the narrative conventions which this economy imposes upon them. Yet this clearly has not
prevented newspapers from having a very strong sense of longer narratives and ideological
identities, in combination with an ability to tailor these to a highly conventional notion of
audience. What happens when newspapers are freed from this diurnal duty, as is increasingly the
case in the contemporary world of newspapers, when more and more breaking news is dealt with
by ‘‘quicker’’ media? Does this provide newspapers in whatever new formats with the opportunity
to reconfigure themselves as spaces more accessible to traditions of communication and civic
engagement; ones which draw upon a more discursive space of commentary and opinion on the
contemporary rather than being limited to the provision of daily news? This paper sketches an
analysis of how the shift of newspapers from news to commentary and identity politics which is
already occurring may be informed by previous paradigms of periodical news production. It
explores certain aspects of the newspaper’s function over time in order to consider what it has to
offer in whatever reconfigured technological future.

KEYWORDS cultures of communication; newspaper history; politics; technology

Introduction
Historical understanding of any cultural form allows us to appreciate not only their
distinctiveness but also their relationship to other forms and their ‘‘constructedness’’
(Poster, 2002). By viewing them as constructed within such a network of influences, we
might be better able to consider the prospects they have in the future. Many of the
political, economic and cultural functions of newspapers today have survived from
previous technological regimes and it is these functions which surely need to be secured if
they are to survive through a period of radical technological reorganisation. This paper
opens by summarising the ways in which newspapers have always, hitherto, combined
economic, technological and cultural imperatives that have sought to represent systems of
shared beliefs through the emergence of differentiation. The paper then focuses on news
and debates about ‘‘information society’’, suggesting that the radical and rapid
technological transformation witnessed towards the end of the 20th century and
gathering pace at the start of the 21st century, should be seen as a continuation of
socio-economic trends that go back as far back as the 17th century. Finally, the paper
considers debates central to the political imperative of newspapers and reflects on how
Journalism Studies, Vol. 9, No 5, 2008, 650
661
ISSN 1461-670X print/1469-9699 online
– 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14616700802207540
 THE FUTURE OF NEWSPAPERS 651

the current trends of what we term ‘‘hyper-differentiation’’ might impact on political

formations of the future.

Newspapers and the Emergence of ‘‘Differentiation’’

It may seem obvious but it is worth stressing from the start that newspapers have
always produced readers, not news, as their primary goal; creating a selection of news
tailored for a particular readership to create profit and/or exert influence on that
readership. Bearing this in mind will help focus our discussion on what future newspapers
will continue to do, if they wish to survive, in changing technological circumstances. We
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can trace the emergence of newspapers in Britain to the regular production of the
proceedings of Parliament in the 1640s (Raymond, 1996; Sommerville, 1996). This was in
itself, given the political tensions of the time, a partisan development despite the naming
of periodicals as ‘‘True’’ or ‘‘Perfect’’ Diurnals. It was a continuation of the contestation of
authority which had accompanied such publications as it constituted a challenge to
previous hierarchies of information dissemination (Conboy, 2004). The first regular
periodical newspapers may have restricted themselves to reports of the latest political
developments but this in itself did more than merely communicate political events; it
served to generate a community of information, a community of political preference for an
informed middle-ranking citizenship. Of course, this deployment of technology for political
purposes had a profitable advantage for the printers who took the attendant risks in
producing such new products since they could make good money from the requirements
of this new audience of readers.
The need for newspapers to develop a differentiated readership became more
apparent with the division of publications along broadly Royalist and Parliamentary lines
from 1643. Many of these were also entitled as being ‘‘true’’ or ‘‘perfect’’ accounts but this
truth was being increasingly manufactured from a particular perspective. The Restoration
of the monarchy in 1660 saw more control exerted on the publication of news and as a
consequence the reporting of political debate in Parliament on a regular basis was to wait
over a hundred years before it was once again to be permitted. For the rest of the century
up until the lapsing of the Licensing Acts in 1695, newspapers concentrated on dealing
with the commercial interests of their readers in their formal reports. From 1695, the
technology of printing became permitted, once again by political shifts, to allow a cultural
experimentation with the communicative form of the newspaper and this, once again, was
to provide evidence of the imperative in this format to address and influence a carefully
defined readership. Political restrictions still meant that the readerships were much more
likely to be expressed in terms of their lifestyle, tastes and broadly emergent bourgeois
identity. The quantity and range of journalistic experimentation produced a great variety
of attempts to articulate more specific readerships from the first women’s periodicals
(Adburgham, 1972) to the first regular daily newspaper from 1702, the Daily Courant. One
of the most celebrated and important experiments was conducted from 1709 by Addison
and Steele in The Tatler and later The Spectator. The Tatler began by incorporating news
but after its 83rd edition this was dropped. The paper produced criticisms of newspapers
and newswriters which indicated a certain cultivated cynicism about the exigencies of
producing a regular supply of topical information, particularly about foreign wars (Tatler
18, 1709 and Tatler 77, 1709). Addison and Steele preferred to concentrate on what had
 652 MARTIN CONBOY AND JOHN STEEL

become the distinctive identity of their output which was the articulation of the tastes of
the rising class, the bourgeoisie.
The Tatler has more of the tone of the coffee-house, even of the tavern. It appealed,
and was designed to appeal, more to the fashionable world than The Spectator. The latter,
as benefited the character of its silent and retiring ‘‘writer’’, Mr Spectator, was addressed
more to the morning tea-table, to the reflective hours of the civil servants and merchants
represented in its subscription lists (Ross, 1982, p. 37).
Newspapers through the 18th century tended to treat their audience as more or less
a homogenous readership with similar interests in court and commerce. Differentiation
and experimentation with readerships based on class, gender or special interest took place
within other periodical publications. For instance, throughout the 18th century it was the
writing of letters, anonymously or pseudonymously, to the newspapers which allowed
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political factions to express themselves in more guarded fashion and cluster around
particular publications (Adburgham, 1972; Shattock and Wolff, 1982; Tusan, 2005;
White, 1970). Added to this was the increasing tendency for single-issue sheets to address
a readership via the radical views of the author, or the narrow range of authors around a
particular political perspective. This tradition, which Chalaby (1998) identifies as a
precursor to modern journalism, was enhanced by the work of men who he sees as
‘‘publicists’’, from Wilkes, Gayle and Paine to Cobbett, Carlile and Wooler.
The great era of consolidation for daily newspapers was the 19th century. This was
accomplished to a large extent through a growing emphasis on the consistency of appeal
to a particular audience. The key to the success of the newspapers was industrialisation.
This enabled steam printing and distribution by train during the exponential growth of the
economy at this time. Yet, the assertiveness of newspapers as articulators of the reflected
glories of Empire throughout the period was less to do with technology and more to do
with the continuing refinement of the address to a specific readership through the careful
orchestration of different newspapers by distinctive editors. It is from the late 18th century
onwards that this phenomenon emerges. Men like James Perry on the Morning Chronicle
and Daniel Stuart with his Morning Post laid the foundations for the function of the editor.
The word is first used in the context of a newspaper in 1802 and was refined throughout
the century to the point where the editor became the driving identification of the
newspaper’s articulation of its audience. Barnes, Delane, Stead, O’Connor, Scott and
Massingham all contributed to the consolidation of the newspaper as a voice consistently
fashioned for a particular readership identified by its political persuasion and social
identity.
The narrative conventions of newspapers have always been tentative in their claims
to truth and reliability (Toolan, 1998). Sommerville (1996) has also commented on the ways
in which the eruption of newspapers created a shift in understanding the world which for
the first time foregrounded simplicity and brevity. What newspapers can perhaps be more
reliably credited with are those longer narratives of ideological coherence and identity.
The Times at its height of mid-Victorian influence became the textual identification of
confident, aspiring professional classes and an upper bourgeoisie while the weekly
popular papers created narratives which crafted a carefully marketed version of the
aspirations, frustrations and tastes in entertainment of the working classes (Humphreys,
1990). This propensity for narrating a particular version of events, crafted for a specifically
targeted audience in terms of class and political orientation, became amplified from the
late Victorian period. Increased pressure on space because of advertisements, increased
 THE FUTURE OF NEWSPAPERS 653

flow and quantity of news through improved technologies of transport and communica-
tion, meant that the structure of newspapers was oriented away from reports and more to
the modern configuration of the ‘‘story’’, chopped and shaped to fit the template of the
newspaper’s available space and directed by the ascendant figure of the sub-editor
Matheson (2000). The Daily Mail came to embody the aspiring lower-middle classes’ views
of themselves in similar ways to the dominant newspapers of the 20th century which may
have distinct news agendas but they are always differentiated by an astute commercial
consideration of the cultural and political inclinations of their readerships. This can be best
appreciated when viewing the ‘‘audience design’’ (Bell, 1994) of newspapers. The
monopoly of newspapers on reliable accounts about the latest events in the world was
broken by the advent of radio. As the radio consolidated its influence on communities of
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listeners who tuned in for the latest news, so the newspapers turned increasingly to
various forms of product and even medium differentiation in order to retain their
readerships. They achieved this by enhancing the textual performance of audience
especially in the popular market (Conboy, 2002; Smith, 1975) and promoting this above
the function of simply providing the news to an audience imagined, as with radio, as an
ideal homogenised group. Television news drove this search for audiences in print further
as experiments in form and content reached the elite press from the 1980s. All newspapers
subsequently had to redefine their place in the media ecology. These experiments saw the
rise of feminised content, especially in the Daily Mail, and developments in lifestyle and
consumer journalism in a daily elite newspaper, the Guardian, in the 1980s and were to
culminate in the shift of elite newspapers from broadsheet to compact format in the new
millennium. With the further development of media technologies, they have had to
continue this process of refinement, increasing their function as arbiters of taste, opinion
and identity to such an extent that their news function now seems almost entirely
obsolete (Preston, 2004).
Carey (1989) has argued that newspapers have always been more concerned with
rituals of identity formation rather than any positivist contribution to knowledge about the
world. He therefore sees news as a cultural form and one which was created by and for the
bourgeoisie in the 18th century and one which set the template for developments to
follow even as it broadened out its social and economic base*not information but drama,
conflict between rival forces not a world of fact impacting upon fact. He elaborates this
‘‘ritual’’ view over the ‘‘transmission’’ model of communication.

The ritual view of communication, though a minor thread in our national thought, is by
far the older of these views*old enough in fact for dictionaries to list it under ‘‘archaic.’’
In a ritual definition, communication is linked to terms such as ‘‘sharing’’, ‘‘participation,’’
‘‘association,’’ ‘‘fellowship,’’ and ‘‘the possession of a common faith,’’ . . . a ritual view of
communication is directed not toward the extension of messages in space but toward
the maintenance of society in time; not the act of importing information but the
representation of shared beliefs. (Carey, 1989, pp. 20
1)

This perspective would seem to reinforce the impression which emerges from the
summary of newspapers’ articulation of readerships across history above. Apart from
moments of radical intervention, the majority of newspapers have, in their appeal to
audience, been responding to the primary imperative in a capitalist era of production,
offering optimal engagements with the latest configurations of capitalist culture for
 654 MARTIN CONBOY AND JOHN STEEL

well-targeted sections of the national community. What we might be witnessing at the

start of the 21st century is the continuation of ritual by other, technological, means.
What makes the Internet such an interesting phenomenon in the contemporary
history of newspapers is that it is at one and the same time a rival and a medium for the
continuation of the newspaper in a radically altered form. Various explorations offer us a
glimpse of the activity which newspapers are engaged in to try to adapt their traditional
appeal to readership for a new technological era. Sumpter (2000) considers the ways in
which editorial evaluation of news values for the readership of specific newspapers has
long been a matter of hierarchical hunches rather than anything based in scientific market
research. Site-metrics based on readership of online newspapers threatens this sort of
traditional assessment of what is suitable for particular readerships. Gasher (2007)
considers the limitations of reach of even online newspapers as they remain rooted in a
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national ‘‘cartography’’ of readership which contrasts with much of the hyperbole

surrounding the global reach of Internet news media. Niblock (2007) identifies the ways
in which newspapers are reacting to the challenges of the Internet by further reinforcing
older patterns of identification with readerships through more sophisticated ‘‘lifestyle
identities’’ expressed in their pages. All newspapers are using aspects of the interactive
facilities of the Internet to promote the impression of a greater accountability to a
generalised readership. It may be that the development of the Internet is simply a
technological reconfiguration of older aspects of audience identification. On the other
hand, it may be worth considering such modification in line with McLuhan’s ‘‘Four Laws of
the Media’’. Levinson summarises McLuhan’s interpretation of any innovation in media
technology as follows:

What does it enhance or amplify in the culture? What does it obsolesce or push out of
prominence? What does it retrieve from the past, from the realm of the previously
obsolesced? And*and here the tetrad projects into the future*what does the medium
reverse or flip into when it reaches the limits of its potential. (2001, p. 16)

Our initial contribution to this debate involves asking a set of fundamental questions
of this new technological shift in newspapers. Are the changes in relations between
informers and informed (Deibert, 1997) allowing a blossoming of human agency or are
they merely assisting in the redrafting of the future so that it conforms to the ideological
predispositions of communication in a capitalist world, confirming the suspicions of Carey
that:

Such transformations involve not only technical change but the complex alteration of
physical, symbolic, and media ecologies which together will determine the impact of the
medium . . . [and] attempts to domesticate the future, to bring it under rational,
predictable control . . . [are] . . . less predictions of the future than attempts to legislate
and control it, to make sure the future conformed to particular ideological predisposi-
tions. (1998, p. 28)

News and the ‘‘Information Society’’

In order to assess whether the current shifts in newspaper practice and potential are
simply reconfigurations of traditional articulations of readership, and indeed ones which
promise much to benefit these readers, we will need to first consider the structural
implications of the information society as it is currently framed, and its relationship to the
 THE FUTURE OF NEWSPAPERS 655

production of news. The phrase ‘‘information society’’ can be broadly understood to

denote the social, political, economic and cultural shifts in society that have come about
primarily because of relatively recent innovations in information and communications
technology. Thinking about how technology might impact on society began to emerge as
early as the 1950s, but the most notable and systematic contribution to the debate about
the impact of technology came with Daniel Bell’s The Coming of Post-Industrial Society
(1973) (Bell, 1999). Bell suggested that capitalist society had shifted from an industrial, to a
knowledge-based economy.

What is different now is that the new information age is founded not on a mechanical
technology but on an intellectual technology and that the new conceptions of time
and space transcend the boundaries of geography (is there any portion of the world
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that is now exempt from some searching voice or image?) and take place in ‘‘real
time,’’ making the phrase ‘‘virtual reality’’ seem like a truism rather than a trendy
slogan. (Bell, 1999, p. liii)

What is particularly interesting about the idea of the ‘‘information society’’ is its
advocates suggest that it is both descriptive as well as explanatory: it describes a society
(essentially global) that is characterised by an abundance of information that is available to
all those with a computer and Internet connection. It is also explanatory in that the phrase
has come to be understood as providing a catch-all term that neatly sums up and
encapsulates the impact that information, and technology, have had on our very
existence. Information is both the currency (Lennon, 1999) and the commodity of the
‘‘globalised’’ world in which we live (Castells, 1996). Though information society
perspectives vary to a large extent, a key theme amongst information society scholars is
the claim that the quantitative increase in the amount of information available necessarily
leads to a qualitative change in social formations (Webster, 2002). Change seems to be the
watchword here and the proliferation of newspapers offering digital online content, seems
to support, or at least reflects the perspective that news production and distribution has
changed beyond all recognition. News as an ‘‘important category of information’’ (Hill,
1999, p. 178) seems now to be central to contemporary economic, cultural and social life,
yet the ‘‘news’’ provided by newspapers has been redefined and rearticulated to take into
account such change in society. Indeed one author has suggested ‘‘the survival of the
newspapers as a mass medium has been achieved by adaptation to changed
circumstances’’ (Feather, 1994, p. 64). Circumstances which presumably induce the
majority of British newspapers to focus on celebrity gossip, political scandal and salacious
content. Such an analysis, however, underplays the cultural power of newspapers in
whatever form (digital or paper) to define and thereby (re)-create their readership.
Rather than signalling dramatic and revolutionary change, technology and
technological innovation can be seen as part of the continuous development of capitalist
production relations, in Webster’s view this should be seen as part of the continuing
process of ‘‘‘informatisation’ of life, a process which has been ongoing, arguably for several
centuries . . .’’ (Webster, 2002, p. 265). In emphasising continuity rather than change,
Webster’s analysis of the so-called information society does not see technological
innovation as bringing forth a completely new form of society. Change certainly takes
place, but as an element of the perpetual development of capitalist production relations.
Webster takes issue with much of the technologically determinist literature prevalent in
analyses of modern communications technology. Instead he aligns himself with Shiller’s
 656 MARTIN CONBOY AND JOHN STEEL

(1996) analysis of technology which focuses on the economic dynamic within technolo-
gical innovation; Giddens’s (1990, 1991) focus on elite development and use of
technology; and Habermas’s (1962) critique of the reformulation of the public sphere.
Though Webster does not dismiss post-modern approaches to the information society
debate, he suggests that in emphasising change and ‘‘newness’’ what these approaches
miss out are the continuities of media and information production that have their seeds in
the 16th and 17th centuries. He is of course not suggesting that nothing has changed,
rather that the pace of change has given a false impression of ‘‘newness’’. What we have is
an intensification of information production and distribution which he terms ‘‘the
informatisation of life’’.
If one looks to the historical record the idea of rapid change and development
heralding a new era is nothing new (see Marvin, 1988). In relation to the press in the 19th
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century, there was an awareness of the capacity for new technology to deliver what might
be described as an ‘‘enhanced conversation’’ with expanding audiences across time and
space (Marvin, 1988, p. 194). The following extended quote from John Pendleton in his
book Newspaper Reporting in Olden times and To-day (1890), enthusiastically embraces the
‘‘immediacy’’ of news production:

Nearly every daily newspaper had sent out the instruction ‘‘Gladstone, first person,
verbatim’’. Twelve, sixteen, even twenty reporters formed the corps of some newspapers;
and the half-hour ‘‘turns’’ were suspended for three, five, or ten minute takes, the
reporters deftly working hand over hand, section by section; so that when Mr. Gladstone
resumed his seat at eight o’clock in the evening, having spoken since thirty five minutes
past four o’clock in the afternoon, nearly the whole of his speech, sent either by
telephone or messenger, was in the offices of the London morning papers, and so on the
wires for the country. It was an anxious time in many a telegraph office and in many a
sub-editors room, but the speech, which contained 24,700 words, was nearly all in type in
Manchester, Leeds and Edinburgh before midnight*before the great statesman who
delivered it had emptied his pomatum pot of voice restorative and gone home to bed.
(Pendleton, 1890, pp. 103
4)

In a seemingly prophetic speech on the future of newspapers Robert Donald, the

then Chairman of the Institute of Journalists in 1913, suggests that one day news could be
delivered to a person’s home in the same way as electricity or gas was currently delivered
(cf. McEwen, 1982; Taylor, 1934). Such enthusiastic speculation about the possibilities of
future media was not unusual in the late 19th century; nor was fevered speculation about
the potential impact of such technology on the circumstances of the day (Marvin, 1988,
p. 193). Even in the 1940s we see discussions of how the press of the future might look. For
example, Harris predicts that if the popular press ‘‘deteriorated seriously’’ because of
market pressures, a ‘‘public utility newspaper’’ not unlike the BBC could be a possibility
(1943, pp. 132
3). This would only be necessary, however, if the monopolisation of the
press continued and over-commercialisation became predominant. In discussing the
impact of technology, Harris also suggests that air travel has offered new possibilities for
the internationalisation of the press, either in terms of an Anglo-American or Anglo-
European venture. He argues that the technicalities of such a venture are not the issue but
there are issues about language, culture and profitability. The point being that technology
may enable commercial ventures but does not drive them; if there is no market, the
venture will fail and Harris is crucially aware of this.
 THE FUTURE OF NEWSPAPERS 657

Technology, Differentiation and Democracy

It has been suggested that the recent Internet ‘‘revolution’’ offers both
opportunities and barriers to enhanced political participation and democracy. In terms
of expanding the existing traditional political context, such technologies can be seen as
providing opportunities for an increased sense of connectedness both to the political
system and to those who inhabit this system on our behalf. Though the potentialities of
this technology have yet to be realised in practice, there seems to be a willingness by
the political elite to pay at least some lip service to the ‘‘interactivity’’ and ‘‘democratic’’
potentials of this new technology, though it is unclear whether their motives are purely
instrumental or genuine. Similarly from the perspective of what might be termed
‘‘alternative’’ politics, the potential to break down existing barriers to communication
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and participation are being realised in newsgroups, discussion boards, websites and so
on. The optimistic view is that technology has liberated us from the tyranny of control,
where ‘‘closed’’ information pathways have now given way to open information flows
(Castells, 1996; McNair, 2006). Indeed there have been many discussions focusing on
how traditional political formations might make use of such technologies in order to
enhance and augment existing political institutions (Coleman, 2001; Coleman and Ward,
2005; Rheingold, 1995; Ward and Vedel, 2006). Cyber optimists see this current era in our
history as heralding new opportunities which will enable us all (should we choose to) to
become active citizens. Information can be viewed as the core material that enables us
to ‘‘make sense’’ of the world and thus aid our participation in it. ‘‘News’’ and its
production and dissemination can be seen as one of the important strands of this
information society and recent attention has been given to exploring how news
production and delivery can take advantage of the ‘‘information revolution’’ that the
information society has given rise to. News, though a commodity, is available to nearly
everyone with a computer, PDA or mobile phone. Not only is news different from that
dry stale content that we see on paper, that terribly old-fashioned media, it is up-to-
date, personalised and just for me! Current trends in newspaper digitisation allow
content to be tailored to the end-user that enables them to manage content in ways
that best reflect their own personal choices. ‘‘News’’ then becomes the picture of the
world that we have some power in creating. This power to filter out content and
information that the consumer might deem irrelevant and uninteresting enables the
end-user not only to have the ultimate power as a consumer*the power to define what
it is they read; it also enables individuals to bracket off information and content that is
outside their sphere of interest. In short, the consumer has ultimate power over content.
This power is taken even one step further when one considers the increasing
preponderance of user-generated content (UGC). Not only can users now discriminate
against undesirable content, they can now create their own content that reflects their
particular view of the world and speaks to the values that they might wish to promote.
This has long been the aim of techno-centric movers and shakers such as Nicholas
Negroponte and of course Bill Gates, who envisage a consumer society in which the
consumer has power to change the frame of reference through which he or she
engages with the world, or not, as the case may be.
Though many variations of optimism exist, there are also numerous critiques of
Internet technology in the political sphere, for example a number of radical critiques
emphasise how Internet technologies come to replicate existing technologies and
thereby replicate existing structures of power. In short, the Internet has become a
 658 MARTIN CONBOY AND JOHN STEEL

reflection of more traditional communications technologies which have been appro-

priated by the elite and reflect their corporate agenda (Ford and Gil, 2001; McChesney,
2000). Moreover, journalistic norms increasingly have more to do with ‘‘packaging and
marketing information than with ensuring the integrity of the data conveyed’’ (Brown,
1997, p. 168; cf. also Franklin, 2004).
Sunstein (2001) and Winston (2005) suggest, however, that such hyper-differentia-
tion may place tensions on public discourse and democratic politics. For example, Cass
Sunstein suggests that in societies that are based on a deliberative model of democracy,
such hyper-differentiation may hamper or even undermine such deliberative processes.
He suggests that a deliberative democracy involves individuals being confronted with
ideas and information that otherwise they might have chosen to avoid. The physical act
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of reading a newspaper, which is chaotic and unsystematic in character, leads to

unexpected outcomes. For example, the reader’s attention may randomly be caught by
an interesting story about EU farming policy; they may come across an article written by
someone whose views they have no time for, yet might still read that article to confirm
their suspicions that the person is an idiot! By filtering out and personalising content
readers are in effect denying themselves access to some greater deliberative context.
Hyper-differentiation in effect cuts off opportunities to engage with issues that readers
might have never considered engaging with in the first place. The worst-case scenario
for Sunstein is that issues become even more sectarian and secular space for debate is
closed off. Active, open deliberation, which is informed by a wide spectrum of opinion, is
placed under severe pressure by closed, atomised sectarian perspectives. The model of a
deliberative democracy is therefore ultimately replaced by a consumer democracy in
which the tendency for fragmentation and atomisation has a real impact on political
debate. The newspapers of the future will no doubt continue to have an important role
in defining and shaping the audience, however, it would be lamentable if the
construction of hyper-differentiated audiences undermines rather than enhances the
deliberative component of democratic societies.

Conclusion
We can tentatively conclude that the evidence to date suggests that the impact of
the Internet on contemporary newspaper practice and indeed on the potential future of
newspapers is far from a simple switch of technological engagement with readerships. It
is rather a switch which has within its institutional and political dynamic a great deal
which destabilises traditional notions of citizenship and community. Hyper-differentiation
may indeed place pressure on the deliberative ideal, yet ultimately it is the producers
and the readers of newspapers who have the ultimate say and even responsibility for
the future. Beyond the sort of technological determinism which disempowers both of
these parties, we need to be able to restore confidence that it is human intervention in
the processes of technology which will determine the quality of social readership
available to us in the near future and therefore the quality of our media communication
as a ritual of shared beliefs.
 THE FUTURE OF NEWSPAPERS 659

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Martin Conboy (author to whom correspondence should be addressed), Department of

Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield, Minalloy House, 18
22 Regent Street,
Sheffield S1 3NJ, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
John Steel, Department of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield, Minalloy House,
18
22 Regent Street, Sheffield S1 3NJ, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
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