Ministry of Innovation / Business of Technology

Has the Internet “hamsterized” journalism?

A new FCC report on media suggests that the modern online newsroom has become …

Hey there newspaper reporter—has your broadband-powered job got you filing not only conventional stories, but blogging, video blogging, Facebooking, podcasting, picture posting, and Tweeting? If so, you'll be happy to know that the Federal Communications Commission earned its keep this week by coming up with a term for this ever growing set of digital duties: the "hamsterization" of American journalism.

"As newsrooms have shrunk, the job of the remaining reporters has changed. They typically face rolling deadlines as they post to their newspaper's website before, and after, writing print stories," the FCC notes in its just released report on The Information Needs of Communities.

Motion for motion's sake

The good news about this online convergence, the survey observes, is that it allows print journalists to produce short and longer versions of stories, the web versions of which can be continuously updated as the situation develops.


Thus, those "rolling deadlines" in many newsrooms are increasingly resembling the rapid iteration of the proverbial exercise device invented for the aforementioned cute domestic rodent. The observation was first made by Dean Starkman in a Columbia Journalism Review piece titled "The Hamster Wheel."

The "Hamster Wheel" isn't about speed, the report quotes Starkman as saying. "It's motion for motion's sake... volume without thought. It is news panic, a lack of discipline, an inability to say no."

Journalists complain that where newsrooms used to reward in-depth stories, "now incentives skew toward work that can be turned around quickly and generate a bump in Web traffic."

"None of this is written down anywhere, but it's real," Starkman contends. "The Hamster Wheel, then, is investigations you will never see, good work left undone, public service not performed."

Bureaucratize the phrase

These observations impressed the team leader of the FCC document, journalist Steven Waldman. "Since I now work at the Federal government, I decided to bureaucratize the phrase a little bit," Waldman told the FCC at Friday's Open Commission meeting, where the report was unveiled. "And we are now referring to this as 'hamsterization'."

It isn't likely that the Commission is actually going to do anything about this reporters-as-hamsters problem. The FCC, it should be remembered, has statutory authority over newspapers only to the extent that their owners try to buy radio or television stations. So most of the recommendations focus on TV and radio signal regulatory reform.

But the document does wonder about any further deregulation of the government's always controversial newspaper/TV-radio station cross ownership rules, which the FCC voted to loosen in 2007. The latest rules make it easier for entities to own newspapers and TV stations in the top 20 Nielsen Designated Market Areas of the US. But they are being challenged in court, and the Commission is currently reevaluating the provisions, as it must all of its media ownership caps every four years.

"It is easy to see how newspapers and TV stations merging operations could lead to efficiencies and improved business models that might result in more reporting resources and therefore help reach the policy goal of enhanced 'localism'," the report observes.

On the other hand, it is also easy to see how such mergers could simply improve the bottom line of a combined company without actually increasing the resources devoted to local newsgathering in a community. Therefore, we are not persuaded that relaxing ownership rules would inevitably lead to more local news, information or reporting or that it would inevitably lead to less.

The Commission should also "consider looking at shared services agreements with the same question in mind—whether the arrangements contribute to the overall media health of the community," the survey's recommendations in this area conclude.

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45 Reader Comments

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  1. @chimly: I guess you didn't read that link.
    650 posts | registered
  2. chimly wrote:
    About a month ago NPR did a series of programs about how fair they are. Their hosts talked about themselves and that was all, end of story.

    Of course it was propaganda -- they were fund-raising. What else would you do if a large political faction had challenged your integrity (therefore indirectly your funding)?

    chimly wrote:
    It was worse propaganda than any state media overseas... only they're all rich and white, meaning "good" in the Western view.

    Who's "rich and white"? Michele Norris?

    Please show me a news service with international coverage that is reliably more fair and accurate than NPR. Skip the political hyperbole while you're at it. Just the facts.

    Or even just show examples of how NPR is consistently unfair or inaccurate. It's funny -- read the article comments at and you'll find both accusations of chronic left- and right-leaning editorial bias, depending on the article. I have to think somebody's paying people to write half of that shit...
    505 posts | registered
  3. Former newspaper newsroom employee here. Not as journalist however. I can tell you they loved the big stories for both jounalisric and sales/site hits reasons but that there will never be enough of them to sustain the business.

    Newsrooms are run by humans who don't typically have agendas as often as detractors assume; they're real selves are more boring than conniving. But do continue to write letters to the Editor. It helps keep them guessing as to the readership's sanity.

    I've said this before, but there's a legitimate need for news curation. That's journalism's main role, not carefully crafted "fairness." Trouble is, many people confuse it with cherry-picking simply because a selection was made for them.

    And of course, it's intended to be participatory. Step one is to trust. Step two is, if and when that breaks down, you let the news org know and/or find another. It ain't difficult. Rinse and repeat.
    943 posts | registered
  4. FoolishOwl wrote:
    Well before Internet media began seriously challenging the economic viability of traditional journalism, there was a serious problem of journalists rushing stories to press that were simply rehashed press releases. This reached a crisis point with the invasion of Afghanistan, when most media outlets were uncritically repeating the White House talking points. The traditional media's loss of credibility preceded the explosion of alternative media.

    Your point about journalism's economic viability is critical, but it began long before the Internet. The transition from Walter Cronkite to Dan Rather was the onset of monster-paycheck celebrity journalism. In addition to increased cost from pressmen's unions, insurance, and raw materials, news organizations had no money to pay the large number of journalists and army of editors that made for the great journalism (even if leftist) in the mid-20th Century.
    4 posts | registered
  5. YES

    this site as w/ many others - gizmodo - macnn - wired - engadet - slash dot - and more have all gotten to a point where they regurgitate much of the same content. Additionally - there is a greater degree if posting a small write up about an "article" (if you want to call them that) that was posted on another site. For example - some articles here at ARS might have a paragraph or 2 - then basically reprint an article from wired ( having citation - but nonetheless). if I wanted to read an article from wired I would fucking goto wired and read it.
    2777 posts | registered
  6. Until the owners and publishers and operators of news sites stop thinking solely about advertising dollars and profits, the news will be, as it mostly has become, strictly superficial. It used to be, as late as the 70s, that newspaper publishers could be satisfied with 10 to 15 percent profit margins. Today they want all that they can get. This eliminates the news business title: The Fourth Estate which made all of us in the news biz responsible for watching corruption be it government or corporate or just plain human ugliness and exposing it. Where is the leadership to bring back responsible news and to allow editors and reporters the time to work on three and four dimensional pieces? GONE!!!!! Sincerely, Dennie Williams, former investigative reporter
    1 post | registered
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