Now that I have explained why journalism is needed and why I do not believe that it will become redundant, I will briefly discuss a few aspects of journalism in the new medium.
   Dahlgren mentions the trend toward more self-referential media (Dahlgren 1996: 62-63). This brings to mind a note on copyright law. "Some [court] rulings have recognized that the growth of scholarship depends on using previous works, particularly in writing biographies or history." (Crews 1998) Reference is thus an important feature of knowledge. But the use of previous works can actually be changed with an increasing amount of information. Copyright can be enforced in more effective ways with more effective technologies, and thereby prevent the use of certain works. But journalism and science alike also run the risk of having so much new information that they have difficulties connecting it to the old information, in spite of the improved technology. The gathered knowledge of mankind is said to have doubled since 1980, compared to all of history before that year.
   And history itself is at risk. When an article is written electronically, it can be changed at any time, often without traces that are visible to the surfer. Soon this will also apply to radio and television recordings. The fact that archives already have problems with electromagnetically stored information that is deteriorating can be countered by re-saving it or putting it on Internet servers that keep copying the information around the world, so the biggest problem is then to make sure that the information is not changed.
   "At the speed of news"? Wallis and Baran also discuss the problem of continuous in-depth coverage. One breaking story blots out the follow-up of the previous one, and so on (Wallis & Baran 1990: 226-227). This is less of a problem in electronic journalism, where the subscribed electronic news about that first event will keep coming, but what is to say that the audience does not lose interest too? "The life of public issues is shortened as the publicity process speeds up. This whirling communication carousel of immediate action and reaction within the publicity process decreases rather than increases the scope for journalistic signification." (Bardoel 1996: 286) The problem of public issues having a shorter life span nowadays is very real, and most likely studies will be made on that subject. But does this new speed reduce journalistic signification? If people form their opinions of an event based on less coverage now, the existing coverage is actually more important. Of course, to constantly change topics may have as a result that an issue can "deserve" more coverage than it gets. However, since the Internet makes it possible to access any information whenever one likes, one can examine news events more closely than before, even though their media life span may be shorter.
   Stevenson states that "the historical development of a particular field of media should be related to other fields of cultural production. The technical hybridisation of media forms has produced radical effects, restructuring related fields of production." (Stevenson 1995: 124) The Internet will definitely continue in this tradition, blending the different media even more. Some have difficulties grasping this new situation. "On the other hand, the rate of growth of the home-based PC market is everywhere slowing down, so it may not be that the PC will ever achieve the high level of penetration of, for example, the television set." (Sparks 1996: 53) Is it not rather likely that the PC will be the television set, or vice versa? Time will tell.
   Finally, many enjoy the fact that hyperlinks offer the prospect of "a bottomless news hole" (i.e. the space where news had to fit after the advertisements were placed on the paper page). I agree that this is one of the greatest benefits that the Internet brings to journalism.