WHAT IS ONLINE JOURNALISM?

Online journalism is a process that has been in use for the past few years to report facts produced and distributed through the internet. It has been noticed that our new generation no longer buy the printed out newspapers except they want to keep it for reference purposes but the internet users sees it has a readily available and less costly network. But some of them preferred printed newspaper for some reason.

The internet makes news more interesting because of the interactivity and multimedia like videos, audios that are used. Furthermore, readers are actively involved in searching, chatting, reading, and clicking on links that web site offers. It can be as simple as providing a discussion question at the end of a story.  Writing for an interactive audience requires a different way of planning, reporting, organizing and writing stories.

The internet has challenged traditional news industries in several ways to say that there is the fear that it might lose its contents to websites. Online users are expecting current content from news sites and the deadlines are demanding. Most of the organizing now used their web sites to post breaking news or updates major stories.  News that has been reported on web sites must be updated next day for the print edition.

To write a good online news, they must draft a simple outline to plan elements if the story.  The story must me timeliness and does the story lend itself to background created as a timeline. Besides that, the data of story need to be full coverage. Other than that, we also can add related link that lead people to read other stories.  

The interactive nature of the web makes it nonlinear. Users may access information in any order they choose. However, printed and broadcast stories are written in linear order from beginning to end. It’s offering readers no choice except to stop reading. At this point, related link are needed for reader to go to other stories.

However, there is also online journalist who writes through blogs and don’t get any paid from that. Usually they have ethics problem such as libel. Stories that damage a person’s reputation can be libelous unless the story can be proven to be true. Libel is legal offense of publishing and broadcasting a story that damage a person’s reputation by holding him or her up to public ridicule, hatred or scorn. Material that is obscene, vulgar or profane can also offend readers. But it can be informative and sometimes the reporter risk offending to tell the truth but it is depend on context, nature of the audience and prominence of those involve.