1What is online journalism? - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

24 Journalism Online
and reconstruct it for an online audience and their non-linear
consumption patterns. If, instead, you continue to present the
central events, issues and opinions surrounding a story as a
single homogeneous digest, as a newspaper journalist usually
would, you will end up with a single block of on-screen text.
This may require a lot of scrolling (which people do not like to
do). It also limits entry points for the other complementary
elements of the online medium, such as multimedia and links to
other sites.
You will also have excluded perhaps 50% of your potential
readership. When reading a story, people do not want to wade
through A, B, C, D and E to get to F, the section that interests them.
Indeed, they may not know that F exists. However, if F is offered as
a separate story, able to stand alone, but also linked to A, B, C, D, E,
G, H, and I, you will attract the F readers. In other words, having
gathered the information, if you are able to construct it as a series of
related stories which together provide the total coverage, but which
could also be read in isolation, you are likely to attract and keep a
larger and more varied readership.
Interactivity
This audience-driven consumption is an important element of
interactivity. It allows the consumer to interact with the product.
However, there are other levels:
the consumer interacting with the provider, the most obvious
example of which are the readers who e-mail journalists with
their views on what has been written or to give further
information;
the consumer interacting with the consumer, for example the
use of message boards on web sites allows readers to exchange
views and information; this can provide different textures and
perspective to a story; and
the consumer can also become the provider – as the online
medium matures, some of the voices from ‘out there’ are
becoming more authoritative and confident, making a contribution
to the main content.