A lot of trivia was published about the convention and a lot more Republican faces were seen in places they had not appeared in before, but no scandals were uncovered, no Republicans were cornered on previously ignored issues. The political spin doctors still controlled proceedings nicely from their point of view. Diversity, the supposed panacea that online journalism would deliver, was a placebo. In Australia, the news media, especially the commercial broadcasters, have reached a state of comfortable homeostasis by knowing what each is going to publish and not bothering to try to upset each other for fear of reprisal. Their reporters even help each other out on occasion by sharing video tape and swapping notes.
Viewers have no choice but to accept the mediocrity.
Viable Internet publishing will not tolerate such mediocrity many barriers to a renegade rival publishing a scoop have been removed competition, not just diversity, will force change. The other, more fundamental, reason for the absence of proximity, impact and conflict is that the Internet has no geography, while some of the public s interests do. The three missing news values relate to an audience with some common concept of us . Previously, each publication had a reasonably clearly defined us to write for a target demographic, geographic or prophylactic. No single publication can possibly cater to them all, but the Web can.