Sur viving the Web 101
Becoming a new journalist isn’t as easy as it may seem. Online
news pioneer Bill Mitchell points out the dangers of writing for the
Web: “Because of the additional tools at the reporter’s disposal, there
are at least a couple of dangers: (1) failure to focus hard enough at
the reporting stage to get the details that might—or might not—be
conveyed by the streaming video or audio accompanying the story,
and (2) an imprecision and incompleteness in the writing, based on
the assumption that these other tools will deliver those parts of the
story left out of the narrative. This will be a challenge for the jour-
nalist of the future, who will be expected to work simultaneously in
several media. Not impossible and not necessarily detrimental to the
story, but clearly an undertaking that will require extraordinary focus
as well as skill.”
In order to survive on the Web and in the future, journalists have
to approach their stories and their audiences differently. First and
foremost, journalists must recognize the fact that online readers
aren’t passive—they know what information they want, and they go
find it—and they have access to hundreds of thousands of stories.
While it’s tempting to want to break a story first, if you don’t have all
the facts or your writing is sloppy, being first won’t save you. Readers
will simply go to a different site, and they may never come back.
Second, you need to consider all the ways you can tell a story online
and figure out which way is best. Sometimes the best way to tell a
story is the old-fashioned way—in prose. However, some stories may
be better told through audio, video, or graphics. Consider all of your
options first, and then tell your story in the best way. Like Mitchell
says, don’t simply write a story and then throw in some techno bells
and whistles. Make a plan, and tell your story that way.
Finally, adjust your style for the Web. Your sentences need to be
detailed, but they should be short and conversational. According
to a former writer for the Wa shing t o n Post ’s Web site, “People aren’t
looking for a block of text; they want to know what’s going on. And
they want to know it quickly. A news story might have to be con-
densed into three sentences... and people are on the lookout for the
link, which is usually tied to the noun of the sentence.” Remember
though, short doesn’t mean light on information. Get it right, or risk
losing readers.
NEW MEDIA IN JOURNALISM 467
THE WORLD, Summer 1991—
British software engineer
consultant Tim Berners-Lee
invented the World Wide Web
in 1989 in Geneva, Switzerland.
Two years later, it was made
available on the Internet and
to the world.
He came up with the idea
for a document-linking system
when he was working at CERN,
the European Laboratory for
Particle Physics, because he
needed a way to organize his
notes. He created the software
Enquire, which, as he put it,
kept “track of all the random
associations one comes across
in real life and brains are sup-
posed to be so good at remem-
bering but sometimes mine
wouldn’t.” The program was a
sort of “hypertext” notebook
that linked words in one docu-
ment to words in another doc-
ument. The words were linked
by number, and the related
document would automatically
be retrieved.
The program was a suc-
cess, but it was limited only
to Berners-Lee’s computer. So
he began to think about how
he could link documents from
anyone’s computer. He created
a coding system (HTML), an
addressing scheme (URLs), a set
of rules (HTTP) and a browser
and called it the World Wide
Web. Its debut suddenly made
the Internet accessible and
understandable to the average
person, and the two became
nearly synonymous. Within
five years, 40 million people
were logging on—up from
600,000 in 1991—and for a
time, the number of users dou-
bled every 53 days. Who would
think that one man’s method
of organization would change
the world?