Digital transformation and journalistic quality: The case of elpais.com

Abstract

Newspapers have gone through major changes since they began digitalisation more than two decades ago in Spain. This study aims at analysing the evolution of journalistic quality of feature stories published in the most consulted digital newspaper in Spanish in the world, elpais.com, from 1996 until 2019, and at verifying if such quality could have been affected by technological development. The technique used was a content analysis of 72 feature stories based on 20 quality parameters. Findings show a global upward evolution after which most parameters reach a grade of good, but also weaknesses in the use of textual support elements, data analysis, or the presence of practical information, as well as in digitalisation, that remains to be improved in spite of its great evolution.