Comments on: Timeline of online journalism milestones

By: Chavez

Chavez — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:23:35 +0000

I worked at Microsoft Network News, the predecessor to MSNBC.com, in the mid-90s and I remember “The Russian Chronicles” as being one of the first strong attempts at Web-based photojournalism.
http://www.f8.com/FP/Russia/index.html

By: Mindy McAdams

Mindy McAdams — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 03:56:51 +0000

I would argue that the Internet did not constitute a mass medium — or a medium with a mass audience, if you prefer — until the late 1990s. The earliest I would go is October 1994 (the Netscape public beta).

Usenet and Listservs (and some communities such as The WeLL and LambdaMOO) were influential in small circles, but those circles were in fact SMALL and in many ways specialized.

By: Gina Maranto

Gina Maranto — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 02:25:07 +0000

If “journalism” is now redefined as synchronous commentary on local/regional events, then probably one would need to go back to usenet groups and listserves, which predate blogs, wikis, and other social media as fora in which immediacy factor, and include key events on this timeline. For example, when Canter and Spiegel spammed usenet in ‘94, the collective response to same effectively constituted a form of citizen media.