This column appears in the December 1998 issue of The American Journalism Review. To date, they've shown a remarkable indifference to one of the fundamental hallmarks of new media. While mass media like newspapers, magazine and TV newscasts bring the same information to large numbers of news consumers, the Internet makes it possible for news transactions to be micro-targeted to individuals. Since 1996, Web portal sites such as My Yahoo, My Excite and My Netscape have grown in popularity, with users able to select favorite news topics, stocks, TV listings, sports teams, horoscopes, and other interests, plus handy reminders of friends' birthdays or relatives' anniversaries. Old media traditions, in part.
Editors put up pages and force readers to drill down to find what they want.
They feel threatened now that they're losing their gatekeeper role. There's also confusion about what personalization really entails. Personalization lets readers tailor the news to their narrow interests. Personalized news should serve as a supplement to readers' news diets, not as a replacement. Readers still want to know what's important to us as a society and community.