Abstract:

With the opportunities it provides to reach and disseminate information, the Internet, which entered our lives towards the end of the 20th century and developed in a great speed due to fast globalization, has become an indispensable tool for the field of journalism. This study examines the influence of the Internet on the traditional journalism especially in the context of sports journalism. We emphasized the following: the development process of the Internet based journalism since the second half of the 1990s, the rate of the Internet usage in Turkey and abroad, and the rate of reading newspapers online which is a clear indication of changing attitude of readers from traditional to digital. In addition, we examined four daily sport newspapers, Fanatik, Pas Fotomaç, Efsane Fotospor and Fotogol, between 2007 and 2011 in terms of content analysis, yearly circulation figures and their Internet pages. As a result of the developments of newspapers and their Internet sites, the Internet has enjoyed priority in transmitting the news and reversed the process of news production. As the young generation switches its news reading habit in favor of the Internet, print journalism will lose its traditional ground to the Internet. It will be useful, especially for the field of sports journalism, that it would focus on in depth qualitative analysis, whose focus goes beyond soccer

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