1What is online journalism? - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

Online story construction 145
The two-way model
This, as it suggests, not only allows the journalist to send
something, but also allows something to come back from the user.
This is the beginning of interaction. However, there can be two
levels of interaction within the two-way model.
At the first level, something is coming back from the user. It is
the choices the users make about what they want to see and
hear based on the non-linear consumption model. They are
taking control of what they consume, but they are still only
consuming.
At the second level, the user starts to contribute as well as
consume. The interaction is still two way – between journalist
and user – but the user becomes the provider as well as the
consumer. Most journalists, including those working on hard
copy newspapers, have now embraced e-mail. Some provide
their e-mail address at the end of by-lined articles. This is
because journalists are above all pragmatists and will embrace
any new technology if they can see the benefit. It only takes a
couple of journalists to mention the great lead they got on a
story from a reader’s e-mail to have the rest clamouring at the
news editor’s desk for the same opportunity. Feedback and
story ideas from readers are a primary example of the second
level of interaction within the two-way communication model.
Bob Eggington has frequently seen those effects at first hand and
believes that such interactivity is ‘changing the face of
journalism’:
When something happens in any part of the world we found
on BBC News that you could rely on people from the area
concerned to get in touch with you almost immediately. The
old way of operating in journalism was that whenever
anything happened, you struggled immediately to find
witnesses, corroboration and contributions from people on
the scene. You were hitting the phones and you were looking
up telephone books for addresses and generally scrabbling