Online Journalism - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

28 Online Journalism
rapidly after the blast, ISPs and other news services provided maps,
links to news agency reports and graphics depicting the type of
bombs used and their effects. All of this comprised a range and a
depth of comment and information on the disaster that no single
news provider or medium had ever been able to assemble so rapidly
before. Many providers of news, particularly, although not exclusively,
those with their roots in traditional media, did not at first
grasp the significance of this potential.
Shovelware and ‘Getting’ the Web
Printed periodicals … came onto the Web by the thousands.
Many of these simply sprayed all or parts of their printed editions
onto the Web with a few Net-native distractions to liven them up.
Newspapers seemed to be particularly averse to the old Wired – No
shovelware! – edict. This leads Andrew [Anker of HotWired] to
view most newspaper sites as ‘wonderful archives; there’s nothing
more than that to it’ … newspaper publishers embraced the web
more than any other group. 16
The development of news on the web followed two paths. One was
employed largely by an old media, both print and broadcast, which
did not really seem to understand the principles of interactive media
and Net culture or even how contemporary media corporations profit
from their media assets – very few magazines and fewer newspapers
show a profit before their advertising revenues. The traditional press
tried to apply old models of the market to the web. These were
models which, while they had been well proven and had produced
some of the most profitable businesses in Europe and North America,
by no means always worked, as is evidenced by the high failure rate
for new print publishing ventures. Their primary model of journalism
reconstructed stories from mostly undisclosed sources for a
readership that was expected to accept them unquestioningly.
These providers took yesterday’s print news and transcribed it
wholesale for their online editions. The short-sighted terror for
editors of scooping their own print edition with their online news,
coupled with owners’ attempts to minimise a risky outlay in a new
medium, was often cited as the rationale for the strategy. While the
question of whether the new media should be allowed to cannibalise