1What is online journalism? - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

126 Journalism Online
How to separate a story into chunks
Linearity is central to how we build each chunk, but how do we
decide what each chunk should be? Should there be any criteria
for how we segment our stories?
Segmentation can be influenced by:
the characteristics of the story;
the needs and interests of the user; and
the delivery platform being used.
The ‘characteristics of the story’ refers to the way the story itself
can influence how you segment it in the following three ways.
The scale and duration of coverage – is this a major breaking
story which could require many separate pages and constant
updates?
The breadth and depth of coverage – is this a complex story
with many different facets and, thus, many different potential
readerships?
The range of coverage – does this story lend itself to
multimedia, interactive features, etc.?
Now this is hardly rocket science, but it teaches us to take every
story on its merits and give it the appropriate treatment. The story
should drive the segmentation process, rather than dogma, habit
or automated systems.
The second influence on story segmentation, not surprisingly, is
the user. When deconstructing and reconstructing, you need to
consider the following.
The user’s interests – which parts of the story’s subject-matter
will appeal to your target user groups?
The user’s needs – does he or she want constant updates,
detailed breakdown and explanation, personalized interactive
features, raw data, print-offs, etc.?
The final factor is the available delivery platform. Delivering the
same story to multiple platforms (e.g. PCs, mobile phones and