1What is online journalism? - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

18 Journalism Online
acquiring further information and views to develop the initial
idea and to verify its accuracy and relevance to your
readership;
selecting from what you have gathered, the material of most
value and interest to the readership; and
ordering and presenting the material with total accuracy and
truthfulness and as much style and wit as you can muster in
order to inform, stimulate and/or entertain your readership.
This description holds good for journalism within any medium, not
just online. However, when you operate this journalism within the
online medium, some very interesting things start to happen.
The digital dimension explained earlier has an impact on each
of the stages in the journalistic process. It allows both the
journalist and reader to do what they did before (e.g. access
information), only more extensively and quickly. It also lets them
do brand new things. For example, readers can contribute to the
storytelling by submitting their own experiences. Just as with
banking and financial services, the old certainties start to be
challenged.
What makes online journalism distinctive?
So what is so special about online journalism? What does it mean
when those two words are put together. Do one and one make
three? Is something new and distinctive being created?
The four stages of the journalistic process listed above can
crudely be aggregated into two sections. The first is researching
and reporting – that is what you ‘gather in’ as a journalist. The
second is story construction and publishing – that is what you
‘send out’. Of course, there are cross-overs in this simple division.
If you report ‘live from the scene’, you are sending out
information. However, most reporting is used for information and
opinion gathering, and that is where it sits in the model used for
this book.
The detailed application of online journalism techniques will be
explained in subsequent chapters, but it is useful here to outline