Online Journalism - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

80 Online Journalism
Not least of these is the problem that there is no way of knowing
what the most carefully designed page will look like to the reader.
HTML and its derivatives, which by no means all meet the same
standards, are interpreted differently by different browsers, even
Netscape and Internet Explorer. They also look different on every
computer and that is before we account for the fact that users can all
set both browsers and computers to their own sets of preferences
over a huge range of variables. Since browsers are regularly
augmented and improved, often automatically, pages can look quite
different even if they are viewed on the same browser and computer
before and after a browser update. It becomes crucial, therefore, for
news producers to know what their output looks like on a extensive
range of browsers and computers and to offer readers a range of
viewing formats. Frames, for example, which allow pages to be
segmented into a number of windows, are completely invisible to
many pre-1996 browsers. In addition to offering fast-loading
versions of their pages, many news providers also offer non-framed
versions.
The Virtual Newsroom
While there are many news providers, the Guardian in the UK being
a case in point, who, for a range of reasons, remove their online journalists
from their print or broadcast newsrooms, in many instances
the newsroom has now become an integrated multimedia affair. The
multimedia desk, which allows web producers to work alongside
print and broadcast journalists, while it can be an expensive option
for owners and is often seen as a drain on resources that are already
hard-pressed, ultimately allows them to compete effectively with
broadcast news providers and the emerging super-aggregators. For
broadcast journalists that convergence is not seen as such a threat
since many multimedia newsrooms are set up on a model not far
removed from television and radio. The 1999 ‘Media in Cyberspace’
survey found that, certainly in the USA, there was a general trend
towards integrated newsrooms.
There are, however, quite fundamental differences between
online journalism and both print and some broadcast news media
which have a direct impact on working practices. Many print journalists,
for instance, work to the principle that news stories can