VITAMEDIAS
Emerging Alternatives: Terms of Authority: Readers and Viewers — Rich Now in Alternative Sources of News — Are More Assertive and Far Less in Awe of the Press
First we had readers at the other end of the journalistic act. Then in the twentieth century came radio listeners, then TV viewers, and along the way we picked up news consumers. Now we have "users," which has become a conventional term for the audience on the Internet. These are all ways of further describing the public, while inscribing an image of what a public does. Thus, we speak of the reading public, the listening public, the viewing public. But a computer and Internet-using public is not really in the same genealogical line as readers, listeners, viewers, consumers. They were all receivers of information. The Net user, it has been said many times, doesn't fit that mold. It's a much more active identity, requiring more active nouns and verbs, which is why it hardly makes sense at all to talk about an Internet "audience."
The age of global interactivity that is now descending changes the terms of the transaction not only by upgrading what publics can do for themselves, but also by granting new powers of invention to journalists. In that long historical arc from the first correspondents writing letters to today's pros uplinked by satellite, there have been several revolutions in journalistic authority. The last big one was in the mid-twentieth century, when journalism evolved from a low-status trade to a higher-status profession. By pledging themselves to fairness, accuracy, and disinterested truth-telling, American journalists improved their cultural authority, separating it from partisan politics and the struggle to shape opinion. They became, in a sense, experts in the public's daily business. This worked well enough, and it still works.