The internet's informal influence on newspaper writing and presentation

honors thesisCollege of HumanitiesEnglishJanet KaufmanFor over two hundred years, newspapers served as America's primary text based news medium. That began to change in the 1990's with the advent of the internet. Today, newspapers compete with an expanding array of internet based news sources. This competition has caused some newspapers to fail and others to significantly changetheir presentation and writing styles. Internet only news sources like Yahoo!, MSN, and thousands of social media sites often use a unique writing style. Unlike most newspaper journalists, those who write internet news generally express strong opinions, write to a specific audience, and use informal and cliche filled language. These new news sources have gained immense popularity over the past decade because they are entertaining, easy to read, and because they easily target diverse groups of readers. In contrast to the informal internet news sources, newspapers have historically presented the news in a more formal and serious manner. As some newspapers have recently struggled to compete with internet news sources, they have begun to adopt many aspects of their competitors' more informal and entertaining writing styles. This shift in writing is especially prevalent in the arts and entertainment sections of the newspapers but also appears in the more formal political and business sections. These changes in writing style are made by newspapers to attract readers. Newspapers hope to appeal to the increasing number of people who have become comfortable with the style of news found on the internet. This "quick read" and less formal writing style is often easier to read and for many readers, more interesting. As a trade off, however, there is often less substantive content in the news articles and the change of writing style threatens the professionalism and substance that has traditionally been a hallmark of America's great newspapers. As internet news sources continue to attract more readers, newspapers struggle to find a balance between adopting new writing features and maintaining their known professionalism. Ultimately, financial concerns may direct the decisions newspapers make