On September 12, CNN.com featured streaming video of the attacks and the president’s address to the nation.
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When terrorists created the biggest news event of the last 50 years by flying hijacked planes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon on September 11, television news stations responded admirably. The mesmerizing imagery of that day and the days immediately following were tailor-made for TV's unique ability to deliver high-impact visuals that put an audience in the middle of fast-breaking events.
Many of us found ourselves glued to our sets for hours, unable to tear our eyes away from the scenes playing out before us. It was a big moment for television news, a moment that solidified television's reputation as the country's primary news medium. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in the weeks following September 11, more than 80% of those polled said they used television as their primary news source for information on the attacks and their aftermath.
But the events of September 11 also represented a big moment for the Web. Although only 6% of those polled in the Pew survey cited the Web as their primary source of news, the traffic to news websites soared, shattering all previous records.
“On September 11,” says Michael Silberman, managing editor, East Coast for MSNBC.com, “we pretty much doubled our previous high. We hit something like 13 million unique users on the 11th and again on the 12th. The previous high had been 6.5 million on Election Day in 2000.”
Similar figures were reported by all the other major news sites as well, including CNN.com, ABCNews.com, and CBS.com. More importantly, though, the traffic numbers have stayed high more than two months after the initial attack. While traffic peaked during the week of September 11, it has since settled back to a level two to three times as high as it was in the weeks prior to September 11.
On a typical day before September 11, says Silberman, MSNBC.com had an average of 2.5 to 3.5 million unique users. More than two months later, he says, “We seem to be bumping along at somewhere between 4 and 6 million users a day.”
A Milestone for Web News?
Despite the traffic increase, however, Silberman is reluctant to label the September 11 attacks and the subsequent war on terrorism as a milestone event in the history of the news media.
“I don't necessarily buy that this was a defining moment,” says Silberman. “The significant moment in the history of media was when CNN or the New York Times or one of the folks that preceded MSNBC.com onto the Web first put their website up. Or maybe the defining moment was when MSNBC was created by Microsoft and NBC as a clearly cross-platform, serious media outlet. I would say that was more of a defining moment on some level than this.”
What September 11 represents, he says, is the cementing of a trend that has been going on for a long time, which is that more people are getting into the habit of turning to the Web for news.
“The reason that people were able to come to MSNBC and the other news sites on September 11,” says Silberman, “was because they had developed the habit of doing that and had the idea of doing that and had had a previous gratifying experience in checking their news online. The thing that happened on September 11 is just a lot more of them wanted that information at the same time.”
Indeed, it's true that this was not the first big news event of the web age. The funeral of Princess Diana, the online publishing of Ken Starr's report about the Clinton sex scandal, and Election Day 2000 also represented big moments in web history that saw traffic to web news sites spike and then level off at a higher plateau than it had been at before.
Still, there are plenty of people who argue that this latest news event was different, and willingly grant it the label of being a watershed moment. After all, this event was not just about a massive increase in web usage. This was a moment when the Web gained widespread credibility as a news source and carved out a clear role for itself that was distinct from that of either television or print. It was also a moment that changed forever the relationship between the broadcast divisions and the dotcom divisions of the traditional media companies.
“It's been really fascinating to watch this,” says Larry Pryor, executive editor of the Online Journalism Review based out of the University of Southern California, “because the two mediums have really sorted themselves out since September 11 in a way that we might not have been able to predict. Television became the immediate source of information, both visually and with the scrolls along the bottom of the screens of the major stations. It became our update service. The Internet became more of the archive — a news medium that held the TV newscasts in video file form in a way that the public could come back to and use whenever it wanted.
“I think the public recognizes that what's going up on the cable news channels is a very incomplete picture,” Pryor says. “It's not even the first draft of history. It's like a tip service. And I think the public has recognized that that may not be the most reliable information, but it is there and it is like an alert signal. And the Internet is the place where you go to get confirmation. Where, after you got tipped to some event, you go on about your business for two to three hours then you go on the Internet to pick up the story in a more complete form.
“I think that is extremely important to online journalism,” he concludes. “It has become a credible medium, almost overnight.”
Lee Rainie, director of Pew Internet and American Life Project (www.pewinternet.org), agrees that one of the Web's greatest strengths is its ability to complement newscasts with a wealth of information that simply can't be put on air. He credits the news stations with recognizing that fact, noting that during broadcasts they often referred people to their websites to get more information on a particular topic. And interestingly, he says, people did just that, as web traffic data shows surges that were related to those announcements.
But the web news sites have also served several other important functions. They have been a headline service that people could check at any time of the day from nearly any location to keep abreast of new developments. Millions of people even took advantage of email alert services offered by the news sites to ensure they would be kept informed. Beyond that, the sites at times served as a substitute for television.
“For a lot of people in offices, the TV in the boss' office or the TV in the conference room was a gathering point,” says Rainie. “But a lot of people were able to get audio and video straight to their desktop. There was a real upsurge in the number of people that downloaded video players from Real and Microsoft. So a lot of people were using their desktop as their TV set in some respects.”
But of all the roles for the Web, the one that struck Rainie as being most unique was its role as a virtual commons — a place where people could gather to check in with one another, console one another, share opinions, debate policies, and get practical information on what they could do. Bulletin boards and chat rooms offered on the news sites proved immensely popular, as did posted information about how to donate blood, give money, or organize memorial services.
“The sites were seeing themselves as more than just a news source but almost like a community steward,” says Rainie.
What Were Viewers Looking For?
Andrew Lock edits a video piece for MSNBC.com on an Avid Xpress workstation. (Photo courtesy Bob Croslin)
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Like all of the major news sites, ABCNews.com knows it has to play to the Web's strengths to make it attractive as a news medium. One way it does that is to keep careful track of the kind of information people are most interested in — an ability that is unique to the Web.
“We are pretty religious about monitoring what people watch,” says Thomie Nista, director of multimedia at ABCNews.com. And from a video perspective, what people wanted to watch, at least on September 11 and the days immediately following, were video clips of the planes crashing into the WTC towers.
A video clip on the ABCNews.com site depicting that moment of devastation was far and away the most popular video clip of all, says Nista. It generated more than 100,000 streams per day during the first few days after the attacks. Whether or not they had seen it on television, it was a clip people wanted to review again and again.
As the weeks passed, other types of information took on more importance. Eventually, people wanted to understand what was going on in Afghanistan. “So we focused on getting reporter's-notebook kind of video,” Nista says. “Video about what it's like to be in Afghanistan, interviews with everybody from the Taliban to the Afghani refugees. Very human interest-driven stories.”
In addition, the site streamed live feeds of the various, daily government briefings from the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department, a service deemed particularly important for the office-bound members of the site's audience who didn't have access to TV sets during the day.
As is the case with virtually all of the news sites, only a handful of the on-demand video clips available on the ABCNews.com site represent original video created exclusively for the Web. For the most part, the clips come from footage that has been aired but repackaged for use on the Web.
“We really try to not make people feel like we just took something off the air and just plopped it on the Web,” says Nista. “If something's on World News, and it runs, say three minutes, we pretty much cut it down to a two-minute spot. Not to change it editorially, but to make it a tighter package and more concise, because that's what our users are there for. They want to read, they want to watch video, they want to see as much as they can in the amount of time that they have.”
Interestingly, though, Nista says ABCNews.com is not putting up significantly more video streams now than it was prior to September 11. In part, she says, that's because they want to be very selective about what they put on the site, and in part because they want to use their resources for other projects, such as text-based articles or interactive special reports.
No doubt another important piece of the equation is that video still doesn't play to the Web's strengths. Despite the advances in streaming technology and the richness that archived video adds to a site's database, television still remains the superior platform for that kind of visual imagery.
It's a point that Silberman of MSNBC.com readily concedes. “Television is good at the things it's always been good at — bringing you there, bringing you live coverage, using images to tell stories in a kind of immediate, visceral way. It's a way the Web can't, except through imitation. Television is able to give you a sense of being on top of every little twist and turn of a story as it is happening.
“The Web has some of that,” he continues, “but the Web is not a continuous-feed, live medium. But what we have is a whole rich backlog of stuff that we might be able to add to whatever the latest news event is. So the Web can put the latest development into some kind of broader context. That's harder for television to do.”
Of all the news sites, none has been more aggressive in providing that background context than MSNBC.com, which has been able to produce an impressive number of sophisticated, interactive reports and Flash graphics on a wide range of topics, including Osama bin Laden's biography, the Taliban, U.S Special Forces, and the treatment of women in Afghanistan. A big part of the reason for its success in that area is that, unlike many of the other news sites, MSNBC.com has a staff of reporters and news crews dedicated exclusively to its website. While most of the other sites have editors working at news desks writing and repackaging content for the Web, MSNBC.com is able to put its own news crews into the field to gather stories.
Particularly fortuitous was the fact that seven months ago, MSNBC.com had sent producer/writer/reporter Preston Mendenhall to Afghanistan to do a story about life under the Taliban and the relationship between the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.
“We thought that was an interesting story then,” says Silberman. “We never knew how interesting it would wind up being.”
The material gathered during that assignment became a very important part of the coverage, Silberman says. “Especially in the first week [after September 11], as everybody was trying to understand who these folks were, what they were up to, what this country was like, and what it would be like if we sent troops in there. Those kind of issues.”
As for MSNBC.com's use of streaming video, Silberman says that has increased significantly.
“It's been a moving target since 9/11. Obviously it hit a huge peak on 9/11 and 9/12, with 38 million live and on-demand video requests on those two days combined. It tailed off to roughly 1 million per day by the first week of October, then surged back up to 2 to 3 million per day during the week after the airstrikes. In the past couple of weeks, we've been averaging roughly 500,000 to 600,000 streams each weekday, which is about double what we saw before the attacks.”
The Ultimate Convergence
But even if MSNBC.com is fortunate in having a larger, dedicated web staff than most of the other sites, it echoes the sentiments of its competitors in observing that the September 11 attacks and the resulting war on terrorism have altered the relationship between themselves and their broadcast counterparts within their own companies.
That's not to say that their web strategies have changed, or even that their processes for producing content have changed. In fact, those interviewed for this article insist that wasn't the case. The web strategies and processes have been in place for some time, they say. Likewise, the sharing and coordinating of stories between the broadcast people and the web people has been going on for some time. Still, there's general acknowledgement that the level of cooperation between the broadcast and web worlds has risen dramatically in the last few months.
The difference, says MSNBC's Silberman, can be largely attributed to the fact that the magnitude of these recent news events has brought the two worlds into an unprecedented convergence.
“In the past,” says Silberman, “while we both have covered the top stories of the day, we might have covered them differently, or we might not have covered them in a way that allowed us to find connections between complementary content. Also their list of the top five stories of the day frequently might have been different from our list of top five stories.
“Now, in the aftermath of 9/11, there is very little difference between what we cover and what they cover. We frequently have content on the site that relates directly to what they are doing on air at any given moment. We are trading ideas back and forth on how to cover this story. Segments that they may be thinking about will inspire us about a story that we'll do along the same lines, or maybe an interactive story or graphic that will flesh that story out on the Web as opposed to on air.
“So we are feeding each other ideas and there is a really great synergy between our coverage and the TV coverage,” he concludes. “Before, that happened some of the time, but not that frequently.”
After the attacks, features of the ABCnews.com website included Middle East maps and airport security information.
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How important is that? Actually, it's very important. For what it means is that the last few months have not only seen the Web take a dramatic leap forward as a credible news source in the eyes of the public, but it has taken a dramatic leap forward in becoming an integrated part of the news distribution mechanism within the traditional big media companies.
For the past six years or so, some of the most severe skepticism about the Web's value as a credible news source has come from within the media community itself. In the last few months, that attitude has changed significantly. Traditional media has embraced the Web as one of its own, even as an extension of itself. Just as the Gulf War may be remembered as the moment when CNN established itself as a premier news source, so will the September 11 attacks and the war on terrorism likely be remembered as the moment that web news came of age.
SIDEBAR
Crossing the Credibility Gap
Back in the early to mid-1990s, when the Web was very young, one of its most attractive qualities to those surfing it was that it enabled them to leave traditional media gatekeepers behind and collect their news and information from alternative sources.
Today, that's all changed. By a wide margin, most people who are getting news online are getting it from the websites of such mainstream news organizations as CNN, MSNBC, ABC, Fox, and CBS. A big reason for that, says Lee Rainie, director of Pew Internet and American Life Project, is because people trust them. “They are familiar brands. But part of it is that the news sites that have been created by the networks are very rich sites. They've got deep databases that let you dig deeper into the story,” Rainie says.
MSNBC.com’s homepage includes buttons to access video news headlines, as well as an “As Seen on TV” video archive.
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That's not to say that the alternative sources of information have disappeared. Although some alternative news sites, such as Salon, Feed, and Suck, have found the Web to be a cruel place to make a living, there are a variety of both left-wing and right-wing alternative news sites, such as AlterNet.org, TomPaine.com, News Max.com, and WorldNetDaily.com, where web surfers can get alternative perspectives. There are the online sites of such alternative print magazines as Wired, The Nation, and Mother Jones. And, of course, there are the hundreds and thousands of personal websites put up by individuals eager to share their opinions about what's going on in the world, especially in the wake of an event like the September 11 attacks.
But despite all these options, it's the news sites of the traditional news outlets that are proving to be the most popular with today's web surfers.
The upside of that, especially in the wake of the September 11 events, is the ability of these sites to bring credibility to the Web as a news medium. And that's not insignificant, given the credibility problems the Web has struggled with.
“We all know that there is a lot of junk on the Internet,” says Mike Sims, director of news and operations at CBS.com. “I think what sets the websites that are attached to major news outlets apart is reputation and trust. And that counts for a lot when you go to a site. Can you believe this? Is this really the top story?”
Ultimately, of course, there's no way to stop the Web from being used to disseminate rumor, propaganda, and myths disguised as journalism. The last few months have stood as testament to that. Among the tidbits of misinformation circulated through cyberspace were such gems as these:
Four thousand Jews were warned against going to the World Trade Center on the day of the attack.
Another wave of terrorist attacks was planned for September 22.
A man caught in the explosion of one of the WTC towers rode bits of the falling building down to safety.
An unburned Bible was found in the smoldering wreckage of the Pentagon.
But even though the Web will likely always be used to distribute such questionable information, there is a perception that this is not a fatal flaw — in part because of the contribution to credibility made by the major news sites, and in part because of some growing faith in the sophistication of the public.
“I don't have stats to back this up,” says Sims, “but I hope that people have become savvy enough on the Internet to realize and to cull through what is fact and what is unsubstantiated. I still think there is a lot of both out there. We all deal with Internet rumors once in a while, but I think that people also know where to go when they want the real thing.”
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