1What is online journalism? - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

The core journalism 63
Present
The final stage is the presentation. It is a fundamental element of
the core journalistic process, but it is the one most tied into the
medium within which you are working. Television demands
pictures. Radio must be accessible. Online has its own distinctive
qualities and demands.
As a result of this, there are few rules for presentation that can
be applied across all media. You must make sure you work with
the medium to tell your story most effectively and usefully to your
readers/audience/users. Obviously, this directs how you structure
your stories and use your editorial raw material. As we will
see later in the book, online is no different in this respect.
However, online is unusual in that, as yet, there is little
standardization of either product or delivery platform. In comparison,
one television bulletin or news show looks similar to
another. Convention drives presentation. 4
There is a convention forming in the online community, but it is
early days. In comparison to most other news media, web sites
look and sometimes behave differently. Just when a consensus
starts to form, along comes another level of technology, such as
wireless or broadband, to raise more questions without answers
and refuel the debate on how best to present information
online.
This consensus vacuum is both unsettling and invigorating. It
can stimulate innovation, but it can also lead to bad practice.
Doing your own thing is not always a suitable spectator sport. And
that’s bad news if the purpose of ‘your thing’ is to communicate to
others by presenting information online.
So what do people turn to in the absence of conventions? Often,
it is core values – the stuff they know they can sign up to and still
be free to find their own expression. ‘We are still experimenting
with how exactly we are going to do it, but this is what we want to
do. This is our purpose.’ That’s why this book aims to extend the
4 If there was ever doubt about this, it was put aside when Channel 5 news was
launched in the UK (in 1997) with presenters walking the floor and leaning
against desks. The resultant media stir said more about the conventional nature
of British television than any revolutionary initiative on Channel 5’s part.