The quest to identify the ‘new’ in new media has led to recognition of an historical continuity in the technological and cultural circumstances surrounding the introduction of new media forms. A newer area of research is the identification of a similar patterning in the adaptation of content delivery. This article examines news content through a snapshot of two periods in Australian news media history: the arrival of television news in 1956, and the advent of online news in 1995. It finds a repetitive familiarity in the response of newspaper publishers on both occasions in terms of the organisation of news divisions and news delivery, which raises questions about the ability of new media to offer greater diversity of mainstream news content.
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