Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
ASSIGNMENT
ONLINE JOURNALISM
Contents
INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................2
What is Online Journalism?..................................................................................................2
Branches of Online Journalism.............................................................................................3
ONLINE NEWS.......................................................................................................................3
History of Online News........................................................................................................3
Differences between the Print and the Online Version of Newspapers....................................6
Competition between Online Newspaper and Print Newspaper..........................................6
ONLINE JOURNALISM AND THE SOCIETY.....................................................................7
Advantage and Disadvantage of Online Journalism.............................................................7
CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................9
INTRODUCTION
Print journalism has existed in our lives hundred of years already and some people would
always prefer the traditional than what is innovative. Analysts once said that Television
would end the popularity of radio and kill it sooner or later but Radio never left its
broadcast. Would this also happen to print? Well never know for other factors would affect
whether print will exist or online will prevail.
According to wikipedia.org, Interne or simply the Net is the publicly available worldwide
system of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using a
standardized Internet Protocol (IP) and many other protocols. It is made up of thousands of
smaller commercial, academic, domestic and government networks. It carries various
information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat and the interlinked web pages
and other documents of the World Wide Web.
ONLINE NEWS
History of Online News
According to Online Journalism Review(OJR), the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois released a beta version of Web browser
Mosaic in September 1993. Within a month, the University of Florida's journalism school
launched the first journalism site on the Web. Around the same time, O'Reilly launched the
Global Network Navigator as the first e-zine to map the Web, and the White House launched
a Web site. By 1994, Wired magazine's online arm, HotWired, was running the first banner
ads, and newspapers started to post content on Web.
Inky newsprint papers with its 10-point Times Roman Font were the center of every kitchen
table and an integral part of everybodys morning routine. The newspaper industry
revolutionized us for hundreds of years. Readers learned to trust certain bylines and to
understand signs of importance, such as the screaming banner headline. Most people believe
the newspaper will never be replaced by a computer screen. After all, you can't take it with
you on the Metro or spill your coffee on it.
However, online newspapers are starting to popularize their own, especially among the news
hounds, the computer savvy, and the young, who see the Internet as a viable medium for
information and news. Online is a medium perfectly suited for people who have gone
beyond MTV, beyond Entertainment Tonight, and even beyond Wired magazine. With its
tendency to blur and blend media, the online newspaper is not as straightforward as its ink
counterpart, even if it contains all of the news and information that is in the newspaper.
According to Thiel (1998) when they first created an online presence in the early to middle
1990s, editors were not worried about the day-to-day message of a newspaper -- the content.
They had content down pat; the difference online was the time scale, not the content itself.
But they did not realize that the time scale imposed its own message, which going from a
daily to an hourly publication made it different, not just faster.
Because the online newspaper is never "put to bed" and never completely finished so long as
there is news to report, or readers to receive that news for the first time as they log on at
various hours of the day and night, the individual stories are not the message of the online
paper. Instead the message is in the overall "look and feel." The news has to be presented in
an accessible way, an attractive way. Readers have to be sold on the content by the general
look and feel of the site rather than the news itself.
Online newspapers splash their headlines and sometimes their lead paragraphs on their front
"page." Bylines are relegated to the full story. Readers who click to the home page of
washingtonpost.com might scan the stories that are presented up front (presumably the most
important), and not know whether they will be getting an AP story (which is likely, since the
site uses the AP wire to update breaking news throughout the day), an in-depth political
analysis by senior Post reporter David Broder, or a lighter, written-for-the-Web piece by a
post.com producer with very little journalism experience. Some readers (and even
journalists) might argue that is an improvement in an age where top reporters are household
names and "McLaughlin Group" celebrities -- it brings equality to news and features and
allows fresh voices to emerge. Others might argue that it muddies the news because it does
not provide readers with a clear distinction between hard news, features, and canned articles.
By not making a distinction between different kinds of news articles, an online newspaper
turns its articles into commodities, to be sold by the brilliance of the headline and its
placement on the front page, rather than by the content. Such commoditization cuts the
reader off from the process of news gathering and dissemination by blurring one of the links
-- the byline. And making news a commodity makes it less personal, more alien.
Online newspaper seems to emphasize style over substance, and has found a medium and an
audience perversely receptive to that emphasis, producing today's postmodern journalism.
In the postmodern newspaper there are fewer boundaries, either within the publication, or in
its relationship with the rest of the world. Online newspapers may have "sections," but going
from one to another is seamless: no need to lick forefinger and thumb and turn pages.
Seamlessness is more insidious, too, as information is added to an article as it is revealed to
the reporter, or the placement or headline (size and content) is changed throughout the day
as other stories wane and wax. Such practices are not possible on a one-edition-a-day paper,
and they happen so rarely on multi-edition big-city daily papers that no one thinks about the
effect of moving a story. In the postmodern medium of an online newspaper, however, it
happens a lot. So the online newspaper in subtle ways forces the reader to become
postmodern.
Competition
Newspaper
between
Online
Newspaper
and
A number of questions dealt with the comparison of the information content of online
newspapers compared with print newspapers. Compared with the print version, the online
newspaper provides more "breadth" of information. The often very much smaller size of
online newspapers compared with the print newspaper may be the reason that the print
Staring too long at computer screens and monitor for some are tiring. Than in print, the plain
black and white and universal fonts dont hurt the eye.
CONCLUSION
There has been a proliferation of online newspapers over recent years. Despite this, factors
affecting the quality of online newspapers remain only partially understood. Even if online
journalism is easily available and updated regularly, credibility and news sense has always
been a question on whatever that is uploaded and published online.
The question of content in the published news material online will always affect its reader.
Whether they will believe or not, online journalists should always be responsible in the
information they are uploading.
Online gives everyone a world wide freedom and a world wide freedom deserves a world
wide responsibility. Not only to its regular readers and subscribers but also to people who
are just curious what news online is all about.
We are in the information age. It is the age where information is freely accessible to
everybody. We want the news in other countries and we get it right away.
Since we are in this age, it also gives the researcher the conclusion that news, whether online
or offline, people would always want to chase what is new within its society. And the future
would not kill traditional print journalism.
The newer form, online journalism, will emerge but the older form would not die for they
will continue to evolve and adapt to what the society needs.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agnew, B. (1994, June). Writing for the third millennium. Writers' Retreat on Interactive
Technology & Equipment Conference. University of Vancouver, Vancouver, British
Columbia.
Frankel, M. (1995). The Daily Digital. The New York Times Magazine. 9 April 1995: 38.
Gilder, G. F. (1994). Fidler's Electronic News Panel is a better bet for the future than home
shopping." ASNE Bulletin.
Hall, J. (2004). Online Journalism: A Critical Primer.
Hooker, M. (1994). Interview. Come the millennium: Interviews on the shape of our future.
Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel.
http://belowthefold.typepad.com
http://en.wikipedia.org
http://home.comcast.net
http://people-press.org
http://www.firstmonday.org
http://www.ojr.org
http://www.poynterextra.org
http://www.press.umich.edu
Johnson, J.T. and Markoff, J. (1994). What skills does the journalist require to take
advantage of new technology? Neiman Report.
Katz, J. (1994, September). Online or not, newspapers suck. Wired.
Lapham, C. (1995). CMC Magazine.
McCarthy, K. (2003) Internet and Society.
McLuhan, M. (1994). Understanding media: The extensions of man. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Moeller, P. (1994) The age of convergence. American Journalism Review, 22-28.
Ong, W. (1982). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen.
Ramirez, J. (2004). Philippine Journalism Handbook.
Reingold, H. (1994, June). The electronic landscape: A writer's perspective. Writers' Retreat
on Interactive Technology & Equipment Conference. University of Vancouver, Vancouver,
British Columbia.
Rutkowski, A. (1995, May). Statistics on the growth of the Internet. Web Week.
Thiel, S. (1995). Washington Post.