1What is online journalism? - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

146 Journalism Online
around to get information that would help you understand
what had happened. . . . The Internet is beginning to turn that
around. When something happens, you start to get a flurry of
information in, you don’t have to go looking for it. The task
becomes different, to filter and check it. But that is changing
journalism and the sites that make the most advantage of this
will be the best and most successful in the end. 13
Such user input can extend beyond simply reacting to events.
Steve Yelvington believes that journalists can use readers as a
sounding board and test bed for ideas before stories are
written:
There is an opportunity for the reporter to use a web log
environment and say ‘Here are some facts that look to me as
though they mean this . . . what do you guys think?’ And then
you can start a conversation with people. Some may be well
informed and some may be idiots, but the journalist can then
participate in that conversation, and learn more, and out of
that write a piece. I think that’s a wonderful model. 14
Such user input is a step apart from the one-way model. However,
the journalist is still acting as the filter. The user’s contribution is
being channelled through him or her. This is not the case with the
three-way model.
The three-way model
This is the model that makes some journalists twitchy. They can
feel the onset of virtual redundancy and they fear it will be swiftly
followed by the more tangible kind.
In the three-way model, users contribute to users as well as the
journalist. The triangular motif can be multiplied ad infinitum, like
the model of a molecular structure. However, if we see the third
point of the triangle as any other user, the three-way model
suffices.
13 Producer Guidelines ref.
14 Interview with author, June 2000.