Online Journalism - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

From Photosetting to XML 71
the online journalist will have tried to ensure appropriate associations
in the links which extend the story, there are many
opportunities for the reader to subvert those and force the lexia into
a personal trajectory that is far removed from the journalist’s intention
or understanding of the story.
It becomes, therefore, an editorial imperative to consider the
structure that would be most appropriate for the story. With the
range of media and sources available to the online editor the
templates produced by earlier news forms, such as the inverted
pyramid, hardly seem adequate. In online journalism there is no
reason why the form should not be determined by the content.
Thom Lieb, in his website on Editing for the Web, suggests that a
‘good starting point in determining structure is to think in terms of
metaphors: could the information be best presented as a novel? a
magazine? a series of “baseball” cards?’ 7 The magazine and card
formula are frequently used and I look forward to the next romance
involving the British royal family presented as an online bodiceripper.
A further device suggested by Lieb, which is employed by most
producers of online news, is layering. The top level of the story gives
readers the essentials with links down to lower levels which give
background, ancillary information and a range of perspectives on the
story. newsUnlimited’s reporting of the genetically modified food
crisis in 1999 gave readers a range of scientific and ethical thinking
on the subject, the government’s view, links to Monsanto, the corporation
which was lobbying to commence trialing of their products,
and the viewpoint of the consumers.
Layering can be applied even to breaking news [with] … a structure
in which a top layer provides the traditional who, what,
when, where and why. The next layer would offer a historical
context. Additional layers would offer analysis, expert commentary,
and reader discussion and feedback. The limitless storage of
computers allows Web producers to archive all previous material,
making such layering an easy task to accomplish. 8
In practice the top layer of a web news story might comprise the
headline, a photograph and enough text to give readers a rough idea
of the directions that the story might go in and links to take them