“This is a new thing.”
“Look, film didn’t get to be film by trying to be theater. First, they had to figure out the things they could do that theater couldn’t, like moving the camera around and editing out of sequence—and only then did film come into its own.” This was why Citizen Kane did so much to put filmmaking on the map: not simply because it was well made, but because it provided a rich experience that no other medium before it could have provided.
As I read that story, I realized the same idea applies to the web as a news medium. In terms of delivering the news, the web can do everything a newspaper can (except stain your fingers with ink, I guess). It can do radio and television, too. But the web can also go way beyond any of those media and tell stories in ways that none of them can. The web is the best medium yet invented for reporting news. But to maximize its potential, journalists need to think like Orson Welles did with Citizen Kane: this is a new thing, and the old rules don’t apply. We must treat the web as its own medium and not try to make it like a newspaper, or a radio station, or a TV station. Too many of us don’t do that, which is why too many of us fail at digital journalism.
