What journalism has to offer (in both senses: what it does offer and what it must offer) is a range of aspects of information gathering and information handling that non-journalists cannot easily attain for themselves, partially due to lack of training and partially due to lack of time. People have other things to do, so they turn to journalists to get a compressed version of the most important events (how such events are journalistically chosen I will return to later).
   The most important journalistic features can be summarised thus:

• objectivity (to provide trustworthy information)
  
• collecting and compressing (to gather and edit information)
  
• research (to have time to look deeper)
  
• background (what caused an event, who the people involved are)
  
• perspective (what an event might lead to)
  
• language (to provide a common language)
  
• reference point (to create a common knowledge that can help individuals be critical)
  
• critique (to find things that are important but not publicly known)
  
• diversity (to show many different aspects of society)
  
• forum (to further debate by audience participation)

I will explore some of these features further in my discussion.

Trends interrelated with globalization are deregulation and digitalization (Hamelink, quoted in Dahlgren 1996: 61). It is mostly the latter which has prompted Jo Bardoel to theorize about the redundance of "classical journalism".
   Bardoel rather provocatively says: "Over the past years, it has often been stated that the traditional function of journalism will erode with the advance of the 'information society'. Direct news supply by satellite television and computer networks, the explosion of information and the increasing communication autonomy of citizens, less public service and more commercial exploitation of the media all suggest that critical journalism is becoming redundant." (Bardoel 1996: 283; my emphasis) What is then the traditional function of journalism, and why would it erode? As I have defined journalism above, there will always be a need for it.
   Redundant means "unnecessary". How could information gathering and editing become unnecessary when the information flow is increasing? The "explosion of information" and "less public service and more commercial exploitation of the media" may perhaps make critical journalism scarce, but that does not mean redundant. This is rather an argument for more of critical journalism--to point to which information is important, to make the "commercial exploitation of the media" less of a threat to intelligent thought and debate, and even to be the "direct news supply by satellite television and computer networks". Or does Bardoel mean that such journalism is not critical?
   Bardoel then asks the question that I am trying to answer: "Is journalism becoming redundant?" (Bardoel 1996: 283) No, I would say, it is not. In my view, the Internet is proof of that. Among the first personal web pages in the 1990s boom were collections of links to interesting sites. There still is a journalistic value in sifting through information and presenting it to others. In that sense, some of even the simplest Internet pages can be a form of journalism.
   In addition, there will never be an Internet search engine that can do what journalists do. Such a program would have to take into consideration what is kept secret and why, and whether it can be disclosed without legal consequences. The program would also have to interact with informants in order to gather facts, and then edit the information. I am not saying that it can not be done, but on that day no other human will be needed either, so the demise of journalism will be one of the lesser problems.
   Some find the new medium hard to define, and even suggest that electronic newspapers will replace the paper editions. But, as Nick Stevenson says: "Print supplements oral culture rather than replacing it." (Stevenson 1995: 129) That is the way all media have worked so far, complementing each other rather than eliminating each other. Why would the Internet be an exception? One who finds it more problematic is Colin Sparks: "to the extent that the electronic version of the newspaper draws readers away from its printed parent, it presumably reduces the readership of the latter." (Sparks 1996: 52) I definitely lean more toward Stevenson's theory, mostly because it is proven by history. Of course, Sparks is right if one reads him as describing probable changes in audience sizes--and even media functions--since that has taken place in the past.
   Sparks seems to believe firmly that electronic newspapers are out to get the paper tabloids: "It is, however, difficult to see how the electronic newspaper can easily replace the existential functionality of the printed tabloid for the mass market." (Sparks 1996: 55) In my view, it is not meant to replace the tabloid. If the electronic newspaper indeed replaces anything, it will be the TV news--and even then it is more a matter of merging.
   Bardoel draws a parallel on electronic newspapers (of 1996, n.b.): "In the beginning, new services are apt to resemble the old and it will take some time before they are applied according to their own functionality. The first automobiles were coaches without horses and for a long time, television was regarded--and still is by some--as a mixture of radio, cinema, and theatre." (Bardoel 1996: 295) But still, journalism is not so different in newspapers, on the radio, or on TV, that you cannot work in all three formats. It is important not to confuse format with thought process. Internet journalism will still have to follow journalistic principles.
   "More than ever, the task of journalism will lie in filtering relevant issues from an increasing supply of information in a crowded public domain and its fragmented segments. Journalism evolves from the provision of facts to the provision of meaning." (Bardoel 1996: 297) That is what journalism has been doing all along, and it is also the reason why journalism will not become redundant--and why I think that Bardoel is being provocative and not plain stupid. The provision of facts is closely linked with the provision of meaning; it is the facts that receive meaning through the explanations and discussions that journalism provides. (And the public domain can not become crowded, since it is an immaterial area which grows as new communicators join in.)