1What is online journalism? - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

Online story construction 127
web television) will become more commonplace because it
makes economic sense. News is an expensive commodity to
generate, so you should get it out to as many people in as many
forms as possible. However, the same story will need different
constructions to make it function effectively on different
platforms.
So, let’s recap. We’ve seen that chunking is usually (but not
always) the best way to construct a story or information for online
consumption. We’ve also looked at criteria that guide the
chunking process. But how do we construct the individual
chunks? The answer is by using clean and direct writing. We may
also apply a pyramid construction to give our chunks a scannable
lead to summarize the content. But are there any other writing or
story construction techniques that specifically suit online? Here
are several to consider.
Make sure each individual chunk can ‘stand alone’. People may
arrive at a section of your story from another site, read it and then
disappear to another corner of the Internet without touching the
rest of your story. They should be able to read a single chunk in
isolation and make sense of it. This means you have to provide
editorial as well as navigational orientation and context for your
reader. This is more difficult than it sounds because you must also
accommodate the user who works through all the chunks of your
story and does not want the same context again and again. It is a
little like the television text writer who writes a story over several
pages but doesn’t know which page will be seen first by any single
viewer. One writer is helping the reader with no control. The other
is helping the reader to have total control. However, the
requirement is the same.
Sometimes your copy must provide more than editorial
context. It must also support inadequate site navigation. As Amy
Gahran points out, 5 you can be hired to provide content for a
site where the framework interface does not provide readers
with enough context or orientation. Your content is going to sit
in the middle of this mess. So, what do you do? She makes three
suggestions:
5 www.contentious.com