Journalists have used scrapers to collect data that rooted out extremist cops, tracked lobbyists, and uncovered an underground market for adopted children. The Markup recently made the case for web scraping in an amicus brief before the United States Supreme Court that threatens to make the practice illegal. Here’s why they did it.
It has only been 26 years since the world’s first website and server went live. Since then, digital journalism has evolved quickly through the portal era, the search era, and the social era. At present, digital journalism has entered a new phase — the Stories as a Service (SaaS) era — where journalism is paid for by readers, for readers, which will likely result in quality journalism, trustworthiness, and the building of new communities.
