Origin of Hypertext Online Journalism: A Case Study of the Feed Magazine

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Tatiana A. Biryukova

PhD student at the Chair of Foreign Journalism and Literature, Faculty of Journalism, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia

e-mail: dominicata@mail.ru

Section: New Media

The article examines the origin of hypertext journalism in the USA. The 1990s were not only a time of the dot.com boom but also a time of the hypertext theory boom. Branching nonlinear text with hyperlinks, which was initially described by Ted Nelson, seemed to be more appropriate for the computer era than a linear text. It is no wonder that the hypertext theory had an impact on the journalistic theory: in the 1990s there were plenty of theoretical articles, which acclaimed a range of advantages of hypertext over print journalism. The turning point in the development of hypertext journalism came in 1995, when one of the first online magazines, FEED, was founded in New York. The authors of FEED put into practice many of the web-specific features that were described by hypertext theorists. Experiments with the interface, hyperlinks and forms of narrative were in the foreground. The article presents the results of an analysis of experimenting with hypertext in the FEED magazine, which allow to look very differently at hypertext itself as well as at its potential for journalism.

Keywords: hypertext, network hypertext, axial hypertext, online journalism, new media
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