Utilizing ‘The Blogosphere’ For Online Journalism

Q. What is online journalism?

A Book about Online Journalism by James Foust

The simple answer is, of course, journalism as it is practiced online.

Journalism is any non-fiction or documentary narrative that reports or analyzes facts and events firmly rooted in time (either topical or historical) which are selected and arranged by reporters, writers, and editors to tell a story from a particular point of view. Journalism has traditionally been published in print, presented on film, and broadcast on television and radio. "Online" includes many venues. Most prominent is the World Wide Web.

What are the distinguishing characteristics of online journalism as compared to traditional journalism?

Online=realtime
Online journalism can be published in real time, updating breaking news and events as they happen. Nothing new here -- we've had this ability with telegraph, teletype, radio, and TV. Just as we gather around the TV or radio, so we can gather and attend real-time events online in chat rooms and auditorium facilities.

Online=shiftedtime
Online journalism also takes advantage of shifted time. Online publications can publish and archive articles for viewing now or later, just as print, film, or broadcast publications can. WWW articles can be infinitely easier to access, of course.

Online=multimedia
Online journalism can include multimedia elements: text and graphics (newspapers and books), plus sound, music, motion video, and animation (broadcast radio, TV, film), 3D, etc.

Online=interactive
Online journalism is interactive. Hyperlinks represent the primary mechanism for this interactivity on the Web, linking the various elements of a lengthy, complex work, introducing multiple points of view, and adding depth and detail. A work of online journalism can consist of an hyperlinked set of web pages; these pages can themselves include hyperlinks to other web sites.

Q. How has the Internet affected print journalism?

The Internet is a time-saving research resource for journalists and editors, especially for reporters looking for background, if they care to dig and look. You also see a lot of articles, columns, syndicated features now about the Internet in print and broadcast publications. 

Information Technology

Q. What influences do online journalists have on their audiences, in comparison to mass media journalists?

While audiences for online journalism remain smaller than the audiences for mass media journalism, online journalists have the same influence on their audiences that mass media journalists have -- by choosing which stories to report; by choosing which facts, quotes, and other story elements to include and which to exclude; by choosing to tell the story from a particular point of view. A crime story told from the point of view of the victim will elicit a different reaction from the same story told from the point of view of the criminal, for example, whether that story is presented in the morning newspaper, on the 6 o'clock TV news, or on the Web. The Web's interactivity and hyperlinking gives the journalist more opportunities to examine multiple points of view in a particular piece than traditional, analog media. The lack of serious space limitations permits online journalists to develop a story more fully and to publish source documents and background material. 

Q. How much choice do audiences of online publications have about what news and information they receive? Is it really that different to the information we are fed by the mass media?

Many web sites give their customers the option to receive news and information selected according to individual preferences. But the news and information the customer receives may not be any different from what is already available; I can get a custom view of the news that fits my interests at usatoday.com, perhaps, but it's still the same news everybody else can find at usatoday.com. The big web news sites often draw news reports from wire service reports (Reuters, Associated Press, etc.); newspaper sites use editorial material from the newspaper; TV and radio web sites use news reports from their broadcasts.

Many more points of view are represented on the Web than in traditional mass media, and it is more cost-effective to target special-interest publications. It's quite easy to get to journalistic reports from other countries, from groups not well represented in the mass media (ethnic groups, gays and lesbians, a broad range of sub-culture groups, for example), and it's easy to get news directly from news making organizations (space news from NASA's web site, for example, instead of that same news as reported in the daily newspaper).

One of the great things about the Web is how easy it is for individuals and small groups to publish. I expect that personal journalism will continue to blossom and flourish on the Web, as people use it to tell their stories about what they do in their families, communities, work places, churches, schools, etc. 

Q. Will this pressure to turn a profit result in questionable advertising and marketing efforts and a lack of focus on quality journalism?

I don't think the "pressure to turn a profit" will "result in questionable advertising and marketing efforts and a lack of focus on quality journalism", no more than it does in traditional print and broadcast journalism. Web publications that want to publish quality journalism are already doing it, apart from any advertising or marketing or profit questions. 

Q. Even the most respectable news site has the potential to send the unwary surfer to a linked site of less reliable editorial standards and sources. Do you think this situation presents a threat to a well respected site's credibility?

Some of the bigger news sites are careful to say clearly that the links go to sites with which they have no relationship and over which they exercise no editorial control. A better practice would be for the writers and editors of the article to cite material from a linked site and put it in context, to say whether or not the material in the linked site is credible or not and why, providing some editorial filter for the sites they link to. Linking to unreliable or incredible sites could be truly confusing, and could have a negative impact on a news site's credibility, if the linked sites are viewed in a frame within the original site and it's not clear which site has editorial control over the material being viewed in the frame. 

Q. Will online journalism lead to the demise of some traditional publications?

Some web publications will do a better job of creating profitable relationships with customers than print publications, especially those that do a good job of identifying audiences who are on the Web. Print publications may lose customers to Web publications if they don't find ways to deliver news and information and services to those Web-savvy customers in print as well as on the Web. 

Q. How reliable is online information?

It's a mixed bag, and should be treated the same way that professional journalists treat any other information that they find in the course of reporting a story. Good, reliable editing and filtering of information becomes ever more important on the Web, where anybody can publish anything and make it look substantial. Editorial "branding" becomes crucial.

Q. What is the future of online journalism?

Traditional news gathering organizations, publishers, and broadcasters will continue to enlarge their efforts on the Web, and this big money journalism will take advantage of higher Internet bandwidth and new technologies (streaming audio and video, "push", etc.) to recreate the traditional broadcast approach on the Web. Blogs have also become a popular venue for ordinary people to engage in online journalism. Meanwhile, both within those big organizations and outside them, journalists will continue to experiment and discover how best to use the native capabilities of the Web -- hyperlinks, interactivity, personalization, community, threaded discussions, etc. -- to create new, hybrid editorial environments in which readers become "co-creators" along with the journalist, bringing their responses, questions, experience, to add to the story threads that the professional journalist launches.

Q. How can I develop a career as an online journalist?

I don't know much about the academic route, where you might get a university journalism degree and pursue a job as a journalist at an online publication. This is not the route I followed to my journalism career. Journalism remains a field that is open to newcomers and outsiders -- all you really have to do is write the kinds of articles that publications want to publish.

You can help yourself by learning the basics of journalism. Find and read the books that are currently used in beginning journalism courses, to learn about the basic kinds of articles that journa

lists produce, and the techniques they use to produce them. Online journalists may also want to learn a few Web basics: how to use the Internet for research (you'll want to learn how to do library research, too, plus basic investigative and reporting techniques); basic HTML coding to produce Web pages; digital audio and video production and related Web programming techniques if you want to add multimedia elements to your online journalism works.

Obviously, you need to develop good, basic writing skills. The best way to do this is to practice writing the kinds of articles you like, and find an editor (or somebody with appropriate editorial skills) to give you feedback and show you how to improve your articles.I also suggest that you learn about the history of journalism in order to appreciate the power and privileges that journalists enjoy, and I strongly recommend that you read classic journalistic works to get a deep understanding of what journalists have done.

Once you've developed an understanding of journalism practice and a basic repetoire of skills, it's time to start work. Here's the process I recommend:

1. Choose the subject material and type of article (feature, news, interview, etc. -- a journalism textbook will show you all the basic types) you want to write.

2. Find publications that publish the kinds of articles (type and subject matter) you want to write.

3. Write some sample articles that you think will fit into this publication's profile. Create a professional-looking Web site of your own where you can publish your sample articles. It's very easy to do this with a blog (short for "Web log", a Web-based journal), if you're lacking Web design and coding skills.

4. Once you've located publications that publish the kind of articles you want to write, identify the editor (or editors) responsible for assigning articles to freelance writers.

5. Send a letter to this editor, introducing yourself and asking if he or she would be interested in giving you story assignments to work on. Contact the editors (by telephone, email, or snail mail) and propose specific story ideas, suggesting articles that you would like to write. Send along copies of your sample articles, and provide the url of your web site where the editor can see your work published on the Web.

6. Continue to find other publications that may be interested in the articles you want to write, identify the editors who assign freelance work, and contact them to see if they'll give you a chance. At the same time, continue to research and write articles that you can publish in your Web site -- you'll be sharpening your journalistic skills while developing a body of work that will demonstrate what you can do.

You will have to be persistent in order to find editors who will give you assignments, but if you persist, and if you develop the ability to research and write the kinds of articles that editors want to publish, eventually you will get work. 

Online Journalism

“Journalism can never be silent: That is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.”
– Henry Anatole Grunwald