1What is online journalism? - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

What is online journalism? 9
Online
Internet
buy your jeans on the Web, you do not need a retail outlet (a
twentieth-century totem to the world of atoms, if ever there was
one). The manufacturer of the jeans can use e-commerce to
purchase the raw materials direct from the supplier. Thus, the
traditional wholesale distributor may not be needed – another
atomic structure under threat.
If this is the impact on the world of atoms, imagine the shock
waves in the world of information. The banking and financial
services sector is one part of this world and is currently being
ravaged by the digital revolution. High Street branches are
closing. Online banking is established and expanding. All the old
certainties are evaporating.
Journalism is another sector in the information world. Unsurprisingly,
it too faces fundamental changes, as will be seen
throughout this book. As Nicholas Negroponte (1996) puts it, ‘the
change from atoms to bits is irrevocable and unstoppable’. And
that was said five long years ago.
This is a generic term often used loosely to describe digital
information access, retrieval or dissemination.
If you sit at home and access the Internet via your modem and
telephone line, you are going ‘online’. Similarly, if a newspaper has
a web site to complement its published paper editions, this is seen
as an ‘online’ version of the paper.
‘Online’ is used in the title of this book because it has a
conceptual value, referring to the philosophy underlying this form
of journalism (e.g. the new thinking on the role of the reader) as
well as a descriptive value for which a term such as ‘digital
journalism’ would probably suffice. It covers research and
reporting (access and retrieval) as well as publishing (dissemination)
and is not restricted to the Web, as is explained below.
The Internet is not just the World Wide Web. There has been
confusion in the past between the Web and the Internet. They are
not the same thing. At the risk of oversimplification, the Internet