Book review: handy guide to online journalism
Book review: handy guide to online journalism
Ward says there is no place for a false hierarchy between news and information imposed by the journalist, when it is the user who defines what is news.
Jyothi Kiran
Journalism Online
By Mike WardFocal Press, 2002
www.journalismonline.co.uk
Journalism Online is a fairly simple book which makes easy reading. The 209-page book broken down into seven chapters tell you almost everything you would want to know about getting started in online journalism.
The first chapter introduces the reader to what is online journalism, the ‘Dot coms, dot bombs, dot rot and roll’. Writing under the shadow of the dot gloom, Mike Ward says that the ‘digital revolution’ with all the attendant hype is a child of its time. He believes that the Internet and its applications such as the World Wide Web have not enjoyed the freedom of other earlier media. Unlike the radio and the television, which were allowed to experience the growing pains, the digital revolution is constantly under the ‘glare of intense expectation on a global scale’. Furthermore, he feels that the marketing machinery of the late twentieth century capitalism is another monstrous hurdle the new media has to grapple with.
After establishing the background of online journalism, Ward goes on to distinguish between this new user driven online medium and the traditional media. He believes that online journalism is a broad church that embraces content across a wide range of types and settings, which includes news, information and commercial content. The chapter cites many examples from the net as to how news, commercial organizations, and alternative voices have found their niche on the World Wide Web.
The second and third chapters devote to core journalism and online research and reporting skills. Describing the journalistic process, he maintains that though online medium is essentially non linear, where readers can choose what they want to read, the process of identifying interesting news, gathering information and presenting material as effectively as possible, is common to all media. At this point, Ward says there is no place for a false hierarchy between news and information imposed by the journalist when it is the user who defines what is news. This is perhaps the most important difference between online and other traditional media.
The third chapter gives a detailed picture of how to find and analyze the available information on the web. He tells you the difference between the commercial and the non-commercial websites, explains how different search engines function and gives valuable tips for searching information, faster and accurately.
Chapters four and five deal with the story structure and the art of telling a non-linear story. Apart from the usual emphasis on the importance of keeping a story concise and clear, Ward stresses on the story structure, which is crucial to online writing. Since people scan the web rather than read the page, it is necessary to tell the story with a simple structure. He advocates the ‘4 par rule’ as followed by the BBC News online. The BBC’s handbook states that, as much vital information as possible should go into the first four paragraphs of the story, including the context and its background. There is also a suggested word limit of 400-500 words for main stories and 250-350 for other stories. Describing the non-linear structure of story telling, Ward tells you how to separate a story into chunks. Why chunk? Because "it increases the number of entry points for the distinctive elements of online".
’Who’s afraid of HTML?’ is the sixth chapter, which explains what it is all about in very simple language. He explains what tags are and how to create a simple HTML page that includes
headlines, text, breaks, background and links. This chapter will get you started but it will not make you an expert. There are further reading references at the end of the chapter for those interested to explore further. The last chapter deals with designing the web resource. It tells you how to do information architecture. User interface, navigation, graphic design, layout and usability testing are some of the aspects discussed in this chapter.
New online trends such as weblogs and deep link controversies are not included, nor will you find any information on cyber ethics. Don’t expect to find any information beyond that of a primer, and you will not be disappointed, in fact it is the best guide to getting started in online journalism.
Jyothi Kiran teaches online journalism at the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media,