The Top 10 Developments in Journalism in the 2000s

At the end of the 1990s the Internet was still something of a novelty. No more. In the last 10 years the web has changed the way news is gathered, delivered and consumed. It has fundamentally altered the economics of the news business and led to the creation of entirely new types of journalism. The changes have been both good and bad: The web democratized journalism by enabling anyone to become a citizen reporter, but it also helped hasten the demise of newspapers. It offered a myriad of multimedia news-gathering opportunities, but led to a blogosphere culture in which opinions came before facts. In short, the web became the game-changer in the news business, and the industry is still wrestling with the changes it has wrought.

Newspaper circulation had been dropping long before the 21st century, but in the 2000s the one-two punch of the Internet and the Great Recession combined to bring print journalism to its knees. The web drew away readers, sites like Craigslist siphoned off classified ad revenue and the recession drained profits from display advertising. Billions in revenue were lost, thousands of employees were laid off, many papers closed and many more faced bankruptcy. Some heralded the death of print as the dawn of a new era in which all news would be online, and free. Problem was, online advertising wasn't very lucrative. Some advocated paywalls for news websites, while others said the genie was out of the bottle. The debate still raged as 2010 began.

Armed with Blackberrys and digital video cameras, using Twitter and Facebook, reporters everywhere are employing the new tools of the Internet age to change they way they gather and deliver the news. No longer is it enough for a reporter to simply cover, say, a city council meeting as a single story, using a pen and notebook. Chances are he'll post Tweets about the meeting while it's going on, and shoot video that will be posted to his paper's website. And after his story is written, he'll probably blog about it and post some questions to his readers on Facebook for a followup story. It's multimedia journalism for the new century.

In the 2000s the web democratized journalism in a way that few could have imagined a decade earlier. It enabled anyone to start a blog or website, then post articles, pictures and videos online to a potential audience of billions. And while much of the so-called citizen journalism ended up being bloggers spewing half-baked opinions, some citizen reporters helped pick up the slack in towns where newspapers had closed. Globally, citizen journalism gained prominence when amateur reporters proved crucial to coverage of the Mumbai terror attacks and the Iranian uprising. Indeed, it was a grainy video shot by a citizen journalist, of a young woman dying from a bullet wound on the streets of Tehran, that became the iconic image of that struggle.

If journalism at the end of the 20th century was symbolized by the investigative duo of Woodward and Bernstein, the 2000s will be remembered as the decade of talking heads (no, not the band.) Inspired by the example of conservative talk radio, Fox News dominated cable news in the 2000s with pugnacious right-wing punditry as exemplified by Bill O'Reilly. When MSNBC revved up the liberal response, a battle royal was on. Columnists who appeared on the cable news shows became celebs in their own right, and the blogosphere spawned millions of op-ed writer wannabes. And whether it was Fox News hosts cheering on the tea parties or "objective" military analysts promoting the Iraq war, the line between hard news and opinion was blurred everywhere.

Tabloid journalism certainly didn't begin in the 21st century, but with the advent of the Internet it reached new highs, or lows, depending on your perspective. Blogs and websites dedicated to celebrity gossip and sex scandals spread like wildfire during the decade. And when supermarket tabloids like the National Enquirer started digging up real scoops - such as Sen. John Edwards' affair - the mainstream media were forced to sit up and take notice. The bright clear line that might once have existed between "respectable" news outlets and their tabloid cousins was obliterated once and for all in the 2000s, which, fittingly enough, went out with a bang with yet another celebrity sex scandal - the Tiger Woods affair. Make that affairs.

Rupert Murdoch was already a media titan when the 21st century began, but by 2009 he had solidified his position as the most powerful and influential mogul in the news business. As the decade started it was clear he was intent on extending his reach in America: News Corp., the company he leads, moved its headquarters from Australia to New York, and his Fox News channel established its dominance in the U.S. cable news market. But the biggest prize was yet to come: News Corp's 2007 purchase of the storied Wall St. Journal. At decade's end Murdoch was as outspoken as ever, threatening to remove News Corp. stories from Google search results and advocating paywalls for online news sites, a position deemed absurd by some and visionary by others.

There were plenty of journalism scandals in the 2000s, the biggest among them involving The New York Times' Jayson Blair. Blair was a young rising star at the Times until, in 2003, the paper discovered he had systematically plagiarized or fabricated information for dozens of articles. In an article detailing Blair's actions, the Times called the scandal "a profound betrayal of trust and a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper." Blair got the boot, but his misdeeds and those of other journalists took their toll: A survey in late 2009 found the public’s view of the accuracy of news stories was at its lowest level in more than 20 years.

The Iraq war was one of the most lethal conflicts ever for journalists - 140 had been killed there at last count. But that was just one conflict, in one country, during a decade in which hundreds of journalists were killed, imprisoned, tortured or harassed just for doing their jobs. Whether it was the massacre of 30 media workers in the Philippines, the beatings of reporters in Sudan, Roxana Saberi being jailed in Iran or Euna Lee and Laura Ling being captured in North Korea, it was hard to escape the sense that the first decade of the 21st century had ushered in a dangerous new era for reporters. And the decade ended on an ominous note: 2009 was the deadliest year ever for journalists.

The 9/11 attacks were the biggest news story of the decade, but they also represented a signal moment for print journalism. Newspapers were still in their primacy and their coverage of that horrific day and its long aftermath exemplified newsgathering at its best. Indeed, The New York Times the next year won a record seven Pulitzer Prizes for its 9/11 coverage, an unprecedented recognition of the power of great reporting. But that power was fleeting: The Times would soon be rocked by the Jayson Blair scandal, public confidence in the news would plunge, and many storied newspapers were forced to close bureaus and pare back coverage as the recession forced the layoffs of thousands of journalists.