The use of Internet in newsgathering among European science journalists

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training of science journalists (Treise and Weigold 2002). Others (for instance,
Johnson 1998) have argued that science journalists should have some kind of
certified education, implying that they should obtain a scientific degree before
accepting the task of communicating science to the general public.
Most of the journalists interviewed in our survey (43.8 percent) think that science
journalists should have a science background, 35.4 percent don’t agree with this
condition and 20.8 neither agree nor disagree. It is not clear if these results
represent a change of attitude of science journalists towards the formal education
of these professionals, as the questions made during the interviews or the surveys
are not the same.
Hansen (1994) says that the British journalists he interviewed admit that “some
formal training can have advantages”, but there are also some “potential
drawbacks”. Most of these journalists “emphasized journalistic training or skills
as generally more important than a degree or other formal training in their
specialism”. Further studies are needed to understand if science journalists are
changing their opinion on this question, or if the results obtained in this survey of
European science journalists were influenced by the sentence used in the
questionnaire.
A similar problem was detected when European science journalists were asked if
they agreed or not with the sentence ‘I prefer to write breaking news, instead of
bigger, in-depth stories’. The possible answers went from ‘very strongly
disagree’=7 to ‘very strongly agree’=1. The mean obtained was 3.0, on the agree
side of the scale. A very significant number (31.6 percent) of respondents, though,
chose to answer ‘neither agree nor disagree’. This result contradicts, in a certain
way, what other studies have written on this issue, as science journalists seem to
be changing their traditional ideas on the subject.
Dennis and McCartney (1979) and Friedman (1986) state that science journalists
prefer to write feature stories. Dorothy Nelkin explained why this happened:

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Emphasis on breaking news is often detrimental to good coverage of
science, for important progress may not be associated with striking
single events, and significance usually lies in long-term
consequences. (Nelkin 1987, p.112)

Hansen (1994) says ‘science reporters are resigned to seeing science coverage as
“soft news” which tends to be squeezed out when set in direct competition with
political or crime news’. From what we have seen in this survey, this is not the
situation anymore, as science journalists are now much more prone, because of
internal and external competition, to write about breaking news, following the
agenda of peer-reviewed journals.
Fed with a continuous flow of information coming from scientific journals and
institutions – and knowing that they cannot ignore this information, as it is being
also sent to other media –, science journalists are choosing the easy way out: stick
with breaking news, follow the herd, don’t waste time and money with
investigative pieces, make your superiors happy.

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6.5. How is Internet transforming science journalism in Europe?

Many important characteristics of today’s European science journalism are a
direct consequence of the introduction of Internet in newsrooms. Easy access to
journals and ready-to-use press releases from scientific institutions all over the
world was made possible by a network that connects millions of people instantly
and effortlessly.
Several studies done in the past about the use of this technology by journalists
have emphasized the growing importance of Internet as a tool for gathering the
news (Morton 1996, Garrison 1997, 2000 and 2004; Middleberg and Ross 2000,
among others). In their study on the use of e-mail and the Web by American
science journalists, published more than one year after the starting of this research
project, Dumlao and Duke wrote:

E-mail and the Web are having a tremendous impact on the practices
of science journalism and on the lives of science writers. (Dumlao
and Duke 2003)

From the evidence collected in this survey of European science journalists, and on
the subsequent interviews, we can say that the Internet is even changing science
journalism itself. Sources, routines and writing are being affected by this new
technology, as science journalists now completely depend on it, and even abandon
some of old practices of their business:

It is a basic rule of journalism to give two sides to every story, but
the journalists did not always feel obliged to do so for peer reviewed
articles in respected journals. (Entwitsle 1995, p.921)

Some of the first studies about the introduction of Internet in newsrooms
concentrated on the evolution of the use of this technology by journalists
(Garrison 2001, for instance). In 2000, Middleberg and Ross wrote that the
number of American journalists searching for information online was already 81

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percent. At that time, 53 percent of the surveyed said that they were online two or
more times a day.
The results of this survey of show that the Internet is no longer a technology
journalists use once in a while, as 70.8 percent of the respondents say they are
searching for information online ‘continuously’, meaning ‘three-four times a day
or more’. 93.8 percent say they usually check and send e-mail ‘continuously’.
The number of hours spent on the Internet is also increasing to levels where one
can ask if journalists have the time to do anything else. Respondents to this survey
say that they spend, on average, 3.5 hours on the Internet per day, while at work.
25.3 percent say that they spend more than four hours a day using the Internet at
work. This number is even more impressing in younger journalists, as 62.5
percent of the science journalists between 25 and 34 years old say that they are
online more than four hours a day.
When Middleberg and Ross (2000) did their study on American journalists, the
time spent on the Internet was, on average, 9.9 hours per week, while at work.
This study of European science journalists obtained an average of 17.5 hours per
week (3.5 hours x 5 days). The use of Internet has almost doubled in three years
time (our survey started at the end of 2003).
European science journalists also use the Internet while at home during 40
minutes, on average. 46.9 percent of the surveyed journalists do not use the
Internet while at home, and 35.4 percent use it for 30 minutes to one hour.

[Internet] has entered normally in our everyday life. I think we don’t
understand the ways it has changed our way of doing journalism, but
it has: it is now very easy to do a research about whatever you need,
but it’s like a normal thing now. We can´t remember how it was
before the Internet. [Interview 5]

At almost the same time we were conducting the survey, Mark Glaser, a freelance
journalist for Online Journalism Review, was asking questions on the use

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American journalists did of the Internet and was getting very similar answers.
Here’s what Richard Smith, a staff writer at Waco Tribune-Herald, told Glaser:

There is so much information that reporters need to develop ways to
sometimes deal with the overload. I look back at life before the
Internet and ask “How did we get by?”’ (Glaser 2003)

Most of the journalists surveyed in this project have completely integrated
Internet in their daily routines. They are constantly online, checking and sending
e-mail, searching for information, finding sources. Most of these professionals are
under tight deadlines and they just don’t want to loose time trying to find a figure
they need for an article they are writing. Turning to the Internet for these tasks is
now a common procedure in European newsrooms. And science journalists have
no doubts about its advantages:

It has made our work easier and more comfortable, especially
because you can get information very quickly. [Interview 6]

The main advantage is to check for information in a faster and easier
way. [Interview 8]

Most of these science journalists use the Internet for article research and reference
material (95.9 percent) and for reading publications on-line (89.7 percent). As a
comparison, here are the uses American journalists did of the Internet just some
years ago (data from Middleberg and Ross 2000):

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Use of Internet Percent
E-mail 90
Article research, reference material 86
Press releases 72

Finding new sources, experts 71
Reading publications on-line 70

Story ideas/pitches 54
Downloading still images/video 46

Downloading databases
Usenet newsgroups
25
14
Other 3

Table 37 - What American journalists use the Internet for, according to Middleberg and
Ross (2000)

Because of the specific nature of their job, and also because the transformations
science journalism is suffering, these professionals now use the Internet mainly
for article research and reading publications on-line.
This trend needs to be explored by further research, as the lack of studies about
science journalists does not allow us to make solid conjectures. Nevertheless, it is
interesting to note that most European science journalists use the Internet to
search and read articles on-line (certainly peer-reviewed articles from scientific
journals, having in mind what we have learned from other answers in the survey)
and that this task must consume most of their daily time.

The more important is that now I have access to publications that
were not available before. I had connections with Nature, etcetera,
before, but it was very, very slow. Very difficult to get the prepublication
information, and now it is very, very easy to connect if
you have the right password. [Interview 4]

The focus on scientific publications was inflated by the Internet, because science
journalists can now have a very easy access to peer-reviewed journals and press
releases from those publications. The creation of Eurekalert! in 1996 may have
changed for good science journalism all over the world. Eurekalert! is a site of the

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American Association for the Advancement of Science, where journals make their
issues and press releases available to journalists, regarded they respect the
established embargo. Press officers from scientific institutions and universities
can also publish their press releases on the site, making them available to
hundreds of science journalists all over the world.
The dependency of science journalists from science journals did not start with the
Internet or with Eurekalert!. In 1967, Hillier Krieghbaum wrote about it:

While some top-flight science reporters do go out foraging in
laboratories and on campuses for news, most spend their time
attending science and technical conventions, reading journals, and
scanning press releases (…) More than in most other fields, such as
politics, say, the news comes to the science writers. (Krieghbaum
1967, p.100)

Although science journalists have always used science journals as their sources
for news, the fact is that, with the Internet, the “supply of easy stories” (Turney
1998) is now completely guaranteed. Nowadays, journalists routinely check some
of the main sites for science news and, by doing so, they can be sure that they
have got the most important science stories of the moment.
To test if European science journalists were using the same sites, no matter in
which country they were working, we asked them to mention their three main
sources for science news. It was an open-ended question, so respondents would
not be influenced in their choices. As expected, Eurekalert! was the most cited
source for science news, chosen by 46.6 percent of the surveyed journalists.
Nature, which has a series of journals and its own site with embargoed
information for journalists, came second (38.6 percent).
It is clear from this survey that European science journalists working for the main
print media in their respective countries use Eurekalert! as their most important
source for science news. This site has certainly a big impact on what gets reported

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in other European media, as radio and television tend to follow the agendas and
the issues set by print media (Schlesinger 1978, p.93; Manning 2001, p.54).
European science journalists also read quite frequently two specialized
publications that are not peer-reviewed scientific journals: BBC News (38.6
percent) and New Scientist (28.4 percent). Science, one of the most important
peer-reviewed journals, was mentioned by 23.9 percent of the surveyed
journalists. Alphagalileo, the European imitation of Eurekalert!, was mentioned
by 13.6 percent of the respondents; and NASA, the American space agency, by
10.2 percent. Only 16 answers (in 264) ³⁶ mentioned national sites (.at, .de, .nl, for
instance); only 2 answers (also in 264) mentioned universities as a main source of
science news.
These results show that European science journalists have very similar sources,
independently of the country they work in. Contrary to what might be expected
with generalized access to a potentially infinite source of information, there is a
concentration of attention in half a dozen sites that have become key for science
journalism news. We agree with Loosen:

Currently, the rise of the Web is one of the main reasons for the
acceleration of technicalization and economicalization in journalism,
and it faces a difficult challenge in applying professional standards
to the Web (…) Economics and the technology of the news gathering
process will dominate future news production. (Loosen 2002)

In fact, European science journalists, and probably science journalists in other
continents, are all drinking from the same fountains and transforming science
journalism in a continuous flow of breaking news after breaking news, without
providing readers with the necessary reflection that scientific activity usually
demands. Economics and the technology of the news gathering process is, as
Loosen says, dominating the production of science news.

36

88 respondents with three sites each.

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From the individual worker’s perspective, bureaucratic information
is a practical necessity. From the organization’s economic
perspective, bureaucratic information is a welcomed subsidy.
(Fishman 1980, p.152)

The use of pre-packaged information from a small group of sites shows that
European science journalists tend to favour these bureaucratic sources Mark
Fishman mentions. Even when using search engines, European science journalists
seem to know only one: Google. This engine was mentioned by 86.9 percent of
the respondents. Yahoo came second with 5.1 percent. In Middleberg and Ross
(2000) study, Yahoo! was mentioned as “number 1 search engine” by 41 percent
of the journalists. Google was “number 1” for 16 percent, and Altavista for 14
percent of the respondents.
European science journalists are not only following the same journals, reading the
same publications, visiting the same sites: they are also using the same search
engine. What are the consequences of this practice? Most of the information these
journalists find, and most of the sources they look into, are the same, no matter
where they are looking from.
If journalists made their searches in their native language, they could certainly get
different results, but the fact is that these are science journalists. And English is
the language of science. So, unless they are trying to find local experts, science
journalists all over Europe will certainly be making most of their searches in
English, in the same search engine, and so getting the same results.³⁷
When asked about the credibility of the sites they visit, European science
journalists gave high marks to science journal’s websites (5.92 average, for a
maximum of 7), University websites (5.71), international organizations (5.24) and
big news organizations (4.91).³⁸ Craig Trumbo and colleagues did a similar
question to American science journalists in 1999: the most trusted web source

37

This assertion needs a more solid proof, but it might well stay here as an hypothesis for further
research…

38

The complete results for this question can be checked in table 32, chapter 4.

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were universities, followed by government and individual scientists. Their
questionnaire did not consider science journal’s websites, international
organizations or big news organizations (Trumbo, Sprecker et al. 2001).
Of course, science journalists have an opinion about the way Internet is changing
science journalism. As in Dumlao and Duke (2003), a large percentage of
European science journalists (88.8) agree that the Internet has made their job
easier. Only 2.2 percent say the opposite, the rest neither agree no disagree.
During the interviews, as we have seen in chapter 5, most science journalists talk
about the easiness of Internet as one of its main advantages, although some admit
that it has brought more time pressure:

[Internet] has given more time pressures. If you work in a daily
paper, it’s the time pressure and too much information. [Interview 3]

European science journalists also think that the Internet has improved the quality
of their job (85.5 percent) and of science journalism in general (75.5 percent).
This positive view of Internet was also detected by Dumlao and Duke (2003). In
their study, American science journalists “seemed united in the belief that the
Internet, generally, and e-mail specifically, are invaluable in doing their work”
(Dumlao and Duke 2003, p. 371).
Both the survey and the interviews for this project show that European science
journalists feel the same as their American counterparts. But despite being strong
supporters of this technology, European science journalists understand very well
the consequences it has brought to reporting: they know that the Internet is
making them focus more on breaking news – 57.8 percent agree with this
statement, 20 percent neither agree nor disagree, 22.2 percent disagree – and that
the Internet is keeping them inside the newsrooms – 74.4 percent disagree with
the sentence “the Internet is making journalists go out of the newsroom more”.
In his thesis, Richard Holliman suggested that “rather than increasing the global
coverage of science news, the use of Internet “appears to have led to an increased