Journalism has assumed a variety of forms across numerous media since its birth. It has adapted to print, radio, and television throughout the course of history.
In spite of this, newspapers are now effectively competing against themselves by trying to maintain readership in their print editions while drawing readership to the online editions, meanwhile forced to financially sustain both.
How Medium Changes an Article’s Message
Print and online forms, while having similar content, are inherently different. This point is clarified in Marshall McLuhan’s theory of media ecology, in which he explained that the medium, not the content, is the message. In his book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, McLuhan wrote that “the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.” The message that people receive is a direct result of the medium through which the content is delivered.
McLuhan drew a distinction between the medium and the content presented by it. He theorized that the content is only a portion of the final message. Content plays a subordinate role to the medium that conveys it. The medium and content combined create the message, though the bulk of the message is conveyed by the medium. McLuhan likened the medium to a form of transport, writing:
- "Each form of transport not only carries, but translates and transforms, the sender, the receiver, and the message. The use of any kind of medium or extension of man alters the patterns of interdependence among people, as it alters the ratios among our senses."
This concept can be illustrated within the newspaper industry. If a journalist writes an article and the same text appears in both print and online editions, with no additional photographs, audio clips, or visual clips in the web version, the two media will still convey a different message. Even if the layout is essentially the same, the message carries a different meaning to its consumer.
In this case, the form of transport (either the print newspaper or the website) changes the message sent to the reader. The interactivity of the online version sends a message of greater reader involvement and symmetrical interaction. The print version, on the other hand, translates into a message of greater distance and establishes a stronger professional boundary between the journalist and consumer.
In his book Digital McLuhan: A guide to the information millennium, Paul Levinson expanded on McLuhan’s adage of “the medium is the message.” Levinson explained that the medium is essentially the vehicle for the content, and each different medium conveys a different message. As in the newspaper example above, the medium plays a stronger role in the message because both media can have the same content (meaning the exact same words and information), whereas the medium itself repackages the content to send a different message.
In Layman’s Terms
In abstract, McLuhan’s theory can be difficult to comprehend. To break the theory down further, compare the content to a 20-year-old male in jeans and a striped button-up shirt, and compare the medium to the vehicle that he drives.
Like print or online media – which contains and carries content like photographs, words, video clips or sound clips – the vehicle contains and carries the 20-year-old man. He is the same man no matter which vehicle he drives, just as a story printed in a newspaper is the same story published online.
However, if the man drives a pick-up truck versus a BMW, viewers receive different messages based upon the vehicle that carries him. In the former vehicle, viewers could receive the message of a well-dressed farm boy. In the second vehicle, viewers could receive the message of a dressed-down young entrepreneur. In one case, he looks dressed up, while in the other case he looks overly casual.
The change in medium changes the message. Simply changing the vehicle that carries that content – in this case, changing the automobile that carries a young man – gives new meaning to the content even though it has not changed.
