Abstract
This thesis examines the early period of internet journalism in Britain between 1993 and 2001. By undertaking a qualitative case study of London based newspaper, the Guardian, the thesis explores how newspapers started to consider online journalism as not only a new way of doing business, but as a completely new genre of journalism. In 1998, the Guardian was ranked the ninth biggest among twelve national daily newspapers in terms of circulation, but by 2001 its website was the most popular newspaper website in the country. The Guardian’s venture into online journalism began in 1995, when a team of developer known as the New Media Lab was tasked to develop a strategy for online publishing. Over the next few years, several web projects were launched, with varying level of success before pinnacling in a network of websites, Guardian Unlimited in 1999. The increasingly larger focus on the internet as both a tool and platform for publishing, which did not unfold without discontent and critique from advocates of traditional news making, changed the way the Guardian and other newspapers saw their media product and themselves as a company. In a new millennium news were coming faster, shorter and in larger number. Newspaper also met new competitors in forms of users themselves, who wanted to contribute to journalism to larger extent, and pay for it to less. To the Guardian, the new millennium marked the beginning of a conversion into a transnational news and media organisation.