Estará o jornalismo on-line a atingir o seu potencial? 'New News' retrospective: Is online news reaching its potential? A pergunta é de Nora Paul, num texto de referência na Online Journalism Review, no qual a directora do Institute for New Media Studies da Universidade do Minnesota (EUA) procura fazer um balanço de dez anos de jornalismo on-line. Até onde se avançou nas promessas enunciadas há uma década, nos planos da ausência de limitações de espaço/tempo, do aprofundamento e contextualização, da hipertextualidade, da interactividade entre o repórter e o leitor, novos estilos expressivos. follow-up das estórias, novas relações entre as palavras e o grafismo? Eis como introduz o problema: "Many of the predictions were based on the idea of the 'limitless newshole', an endless space for providing deep context and satisfying the 'give me more' that reporters thought news seekers were craving. The promise of hyperlinking and easier communication between readers and reporters were all high on the list of ways this new news space would change news. Creating new expressive forms of reporting, providing better follow-up on reported stories and crafting new relationships between words and graphics were noted as new potentials for online news. Ten years later, just how far have we come in realizing these predictions? How much have we truly leveraged the possibilities of new forms of news writing and reporting online? " Sobre este texto, eis o comentário de Ami Garhan, no E-Media Tidbits: "Personally, I suspect that one of the unacknowledged reasons behind the news industry's lack of vigor in pursuing these opportunities lies in the nature of what is deemed 'news'. The era of mass media yielded a rather dictatorial approach to the dissemination of current information that seems largely contrary to the nature of human communication, psychology, and society. The internet seems to resonate more with human nature - how we are as individuals and in groups. It's intensely, fundamentally interconnected - not top-down. It works best if actively explored rather than passively absorbed. And, I think, it's exposing just how artificial the mass-media approach to news can be". (Mais do mesmo comentador aqui).