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Abstract
To what extent can we disassociate the technology and economics of newspapers from their political and cultural functions? Many of the latter functions have survived previous eras of technological change, often with a heightened promise of a more democratic engagement with readers and a subsequent amelioration of civic communication. Toolan (Citation1998) has provocatively suggested that, in their narrative conventions, newspapers often literally do not know what they are writing about. This has partly been because of the time constraints on the production of news and the narrative conventions which this economy imposes upon them. Yet this clearly has not prevented newspapers from having a very strong sense of longer narratives and ideological identities, in combination with an ability to tailor these to a highly conventional notion of audience. What happens when newspapers are freed from this diurnal duty, as is increasingly the case in the contemporary world of newspapers, when more and more breaking news is dealt with by “quicker” media? Does this provide newspapers in whatever new formats with the opportunity to reconfigure themselves as spaces more accessible to traditions of communication and civic engagement; ones which draw upon a more discursive space of commentary and opinion on the contemporary rather than being limited to the provision of daily news? This paper sketches an analysis of how the shift of newspapers from news to commentary and identity politics which is already occurring may be informed by previous paradigms of periodical news production. It explores certain aspects of the newspaper's function over time in order to consider what it has to offer in whatever reconfigured technological future.
