WHAT IS ONLINE JOURNALISM? FUTURE OF ONLINE JOURNALISM

Q. What is online journalism?
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, plus commercial online information services like America Online. Simple Internet email also plays a big role. Also important are CD-ROMs (often included with a book) linked to a web site or other online venue, plus intranets and private dial-up bulletin board systems.

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.
The Web will continue to enable publications for smaller, more specialized audiences. The ultimate outcome of this trend will be publications for audiences of one, completely personalized according to individual preferences, served out of large editorial databases or assembled on the fly by intelligent agent software that scans the Web for news and information that meet the individual's profile of interests.
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 journalists 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.

(POSTED BY NIDA KHAN)