1What is online journalism? - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

166 Journalism Online
the buttoned-down control freaks and the designers as the free
spirits. In fact, it is David Siegel who talks of reaching out to
users, enticing them, leading them into sites. It is Jakob Nielsen
who says the user must roam where he or she wishes and if the
user is controlled, it will feel ‘harsh and dominating’.
So everything is not always as it seems. Jakob Nielsen would no
more countenance a ‘perilous browser implication’ than fly to the
Moon. Yet they do share a common view on design. They both see
it as the way to communicate. It is just that they believe in
communicating in different ways and sometimes even different
things.
So remember that both views have value. Avoid stereotypes and
do not close your mind. It is poor journalistic practice, particularly
when working within the online medium, because:
The Web is an immature medium. Dogma is always unhealthy,
but here it is particularly suspect. Designers offer ‘solutions’,
but it is easier to be certain about bad practice than good. You
can measure the bad (i.e. user disenchantment), whereas
satisfaction is not so quantifiable.
The Internet can deliver an enormous diversity of web content
to an unparalleled range of audience. Is there one design
solution for this rich mix? Is it not a contradiction of the
medium to demand just one way to design web resources?
Web design engages with a wide range of disciplines, skills and
processes. A flexible outlook about the end product from such
a process is surely helpful.
So let’s skirt around the natives and plot our own course through
the jungle. Let’s focus on design as a means of communication.
Why? Because it is. But also because, as such, it is a continuation
of the journalistic process we are examining in this book.
Just as we identify and gather news and other content and then
select it, we must also present it online. We have looked at how to
maximize the power of the medium when we construct a single
story, now we must continue that process through to delivery. In
other words, we must consider how to communicate our story
through the online design.