2.1 Teletext
The first type of digital journalism comes from the UK, where teletext was invented in the early 70s. It was BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) which originated this smart way of displaying words and numbers on television sets. No pictorial images like charts or illustrations can be broadcasted using teletext. Still widely popular in Europe, it has never caught on in the States.
When BBC first announced the invention, the attention of press and public was high. It quickly became popular with the wider audience, as the tool could be used at no cost additional to owning a TV set with a teletext decoder (Carlson, 2003). Useful information was made available, such as news, weather, sports results or stock quotes. Teletext had no interactive features. One simply punched a number on a remote control, e.g. 101 for the news headlines, and the demanded information appeared. The main drawback was the size limit – information had to be kept short, in order to fit the small teletext pages.
It was a no-no for publishing ground-breaking journalistic reports – maybe a short version instead, with 100 words at maximum. But a good first step in an attempt at digitizing the news.
