When online news was new: Online technology use and constitution of structures in journalism

I explore the manner in which the internet, when first commercialized, impacted on structural shifts in the journalistic environment. In particular, I consider the changes in and perseverance of established structures, which I label framing, trusting, and timing, as traditional news producers expand their strategies from newspaper publication alone to online news dissemination. Relying on the structuration approach, I describe how the structural shifts identified reflect neither technological necessity nor autonomous managerial schemes, but are constituted in and through the practices of journalists, as shaped by the emerging networked media. Concentrating on Israel’s most popular newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, I demonstrate how journalists’ enactment with the internet altered the structures that threatened this organization yet simultaneously supported those that enhanced its central position in Israel’s journalistic arena.