This spring the Online News Association, along with the Columbia University School of Journalism, created a new set of international awards for the best of Internet journalism. The awards are meant to encourage high standards. And they will also make an important distinction between the kinds of sites that include news. Some fear that the many new sites featuring news content as a sideline may find many new ways to blur standards. But such blurring is possible on journalistic sites as well.
New media create unique issues because of the possibilities in the technology.
Sites not only put related advertising adjacent to articles, but they can embed advertising within an article. Either way, linking articles to commerce is far more immediate and powerful online. While a print advertisement requires you to visit a store to make a purchase, online you can simply move your wrist slightly to buy. It depends, journalists say. Rich Gordon, who headed The Miami Herald 's online site for four years, says he is not necessarily troubled by commercial links embedded in news.