If they’re to remain relevant in the Digital Age, online news organizations must begin to seriously cover the news as it happens

This column appeared in the June 1997 issue of The American Journalism Review.

By J.D. Lasica

Should online news organizations cover breaking news?

If they want to remain relevant in the digital age — especially among a new generation of readers — they’d better get used to the idea.

Ben Compaine, a professor of telecommunications at Temple University, recently asked the students in his Cybermedia course whether they believed online newspapers would become the dominant provider of news and information on the local scene.

The students had serious doubts. The reason? The stale brand of news now being served up by online newspapers. “These very elaborate local newspaper Web sites are primarily static for 24 hours, with the only compromise being perhaps some AP updates,” Compaine says.

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