Computers in Journalism

John Pavlik

Computers and computing technologies have fundamentally shaped the practice and nature of journalism both in the United States and around the world. Aside from some scattered pioneers, news media have employed computers as a tool in news reporting and storytelling since the 1970s, and especially since the introduction of the personal computer around 1980. In covering the 1952 U.S. presidential election, CBS News used an early UNIVAC mainframe computer to process election night returns and make predictions on their outcome. In the decades since, computers and computing technology have altered the media landscape in many ways, from the advent of precision journalism to the Internet and online journalism. Digital or computer-based technologies have exerted subtle and not-so-subtle influences on the craft of journalism, for both better and worse. This is not to argue a technologically deterministic viewpoint regarding the role of computers in journalism. Rather, computers and computing technology have ...

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