1What is online journalism? - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

168 Journalism Online
aware of the importance of these and other skills in web design. It
will inform the skills audit you should undertake when developing
your web resource. What can you do and what do you need help
with? (Decide on this at the outset as it will avoid bottlenecks and
delays later when you reach the limit of your abilities.) It will also
point you in the right direction to find out more. And hopefully, it
will demonstrate how your journalistic perspective can inform the
whole process.
Language problems
Talk of information architects brings us to our next obstacle – a
language barrier. The locals in our jungle may not get on, but they
are familiar with the terrain. They would make invaluable guides,
if you could just understand what they are taking about.
My flippant jungle image runs the risks of trivializing the work
and thoughts of established web designers. It is not meant to.
There are excellent books and web resources on this subject,
some of which will be used for the framework of this chapter.
Some are even paragons of clarity, but, again, there is the issue of
the top-down verses bottom-up (as explored in Chapter 3). If you
are offered terms such as ‘information architecture’, ‘navigation’
and ‘user interface’ at the bottom of your learning curve, it can
feel like a steep climb. The problem is exacerbated by a tendency
for these terms to be used in an interchangeable way because
many of the activities they describe do overlap.
As Robin Williams and John Tollett (2000) note:
The interface and the navigation are generally inseparable
elements: if people say ‘The interface is great’, it probably
means your site is easy to navigate; if people say ‘It’s so easy
to navigate’, they probably feel comfortable with the
interface.
This is fine if you are an accomplished designer, and, as Williams
and Tollett point out, it does not really matter if you are a user. The
user just wants the site to work for him or her. However, if you are