1What is online journalism? - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

Design your web resource 167
To do this, we must step back and look at the site as a whole.
web design cannot be decided on a chunk-by-chunk or story-bystory
basis. You will face interesting questions about how the
construction of each single story relates to the organization of the
whole site, but first you must have an organizational structure for
your site. This and other fundamentals should lead your content
presentation, not be led by it. So we have to look at design at the
site level.
Unfortunately, this perspective often removes the process from
the orbit of the journalist or content provider, despite the fact that
design is an integral part of communicating your message. As
online content specialist Amy Gahran remarks:
Web content still gets treated as an afterthought much of the
time. Sometimes, development teams perceive content as a
kind of lump that magically appears and then must be
packaged in the best possible way, regardless of its condition
or value. Other times development teams view content as
filler that will be poured in after they have created the perfect
site design. 2
So if it does not seem ‘real world’ to devote part of a book on
journalism online to site design and development, let me suggest
that:
this view will have to change because of the importance of
content;
change will be assisted by journalists and content providers
understanding the process of site development and making
positive contributions/asking awkward questions, and so
engaging in/forcing their way into the process; and
content providers for small-scale web resources are already site
developers without necessarily knowing the underlying principles
of site design.
This is not to suggest that what follows will turn you into an
information architect or graphic designer, but it will make you
2 www.contentious.com