by Pieter Jansegers

Created on: April 17, 2008

Four points of difference that make all the difference of the world...

1 availability of space

The printed press has limitations due to its format and the necessity of inserting commercials within these limits.

Hence, the journalistic articles are often shortened by editors.

On the internet the journalist could be completely free of any pressure to contain his investigational tendency towards nuancing the news and giving background information.

2 intertextuality

On the net it's even possible to link directly to other digital information or even to all the resources used for putting together the article. (Books can be scanned, audio or video of interviews can be brought online, radio and television information can be digitalized, things, people and situation can be visualized by images or pics.)

It's even possible to put the notes of the journalist online as well as his stream of consciousness during the creation of the journalistic piece in question ( via online notebooks and microblogs ).

Any article could contain the links to all the materials needed to make the article, the article could even provide a wikibased history of it's own writing history.

3 adaptability

An electronic article can be corrected online, updated and discussed.

This is at the same time a quite negative site of e-journalism; if you don't have at least the history from the published version as well. A printed article appears in at least some 2000 copies and is definitely defined for once and ever, though the newspaper can correct the content publishing an other article or apologies for mistakes.

All printed versions normally are exactly the same and you can refer to it in a permanent way, making it possible to others to check the quotations or viewpoints you're referring to.

Electronical versions of texts, but also images, photos and videos can be altered at any time. They can disappear completely from one moment to the next.

Therefore printed versions are preferable for transmitting knowledge from generation to generation: not all the copies can disappear at once. And preferable to in the search of the truth: they can't alter that easily.

On the other hand, a printed version of information isn't as up-to-date as an electronic version can be: in modern societies more laws are changing then anyone can follow and at least once a year the law codexes are published in an up-dated form.

[BTW, these are already imperfect at the moment of their appearance in print, because from the day the editor changed the

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