1What is online journalism? - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

190 Journalism Online
structure: ‘The growing consensus is that users want the
“broad and shallow”. People don’t trust that, if the site makes
choices for them on the main page, those would be the ones
they would go by if they were clicking through. We’re finding,
rather surprisingly, that they would rather a front page of 100
links.’ And a search engine.
4 The web – this sounds like the structure most suited to the
online medium, as users are allowed to ‘follow their interests in
a unique, heuristic, idiosyncratic pattern’. However, although
this pursuit of the ‘free flow of ideas’ is fine as a model for user
consumption patterns, using it as a structure for your site is
another matter altogether. As Rosenfeld and Morville point out,
this hypertext structural model can be employed at the level of
the story or information chunk, but even then, only with care
and within a more organized primary site structure, such as a
hierarchy. Let the users spin their own intricate web of page
visits but within your clear structure, just like the spider which
needs to attach its creation to something solid.
It is possible for a site to have two organizational structures within
it. You could start off with a hierarchy that could flow into a part
of your site that is, for example, a sequence. A hospital web site
could have a hierarchical structure for the home page with
different sections flowing from it, but if one of those sections was
for young patients, a sequential structure might be the best way to
show what happens when they come to hospital for an examination
– a good use of the web to introduce the idea to this user
group in the re-assuring environment of their home.
The important things to remember are:
have a structure/s that is/are appropriate to your content and
user;
do not offer too much variation within one site; and
signpost any changes clearly and offer clear navigation around
each structure.
But wait a minute, I hear a jeep approaching.
David Siegel tends not to talk much about hierarchies and grids.
Hierarchies were the preserve of what he calls the ‘second