- 1: Sit Down and Write
- 2: Basic Tools of Writing
- 3: Style and the Stylebook
- 4: Writing in the Media Environment
- 5: Writing for Print
- 6: Writing for the Web
- 7: Writing for Broadcast
- 8: Writing Advertising Copy
- 9: Writing for Public Relations
- 10: The Writer and the Law
Chapter notes
Writing for the World Wide Web is likely to provoke much excitement among today’s students. Not every generation is fortunate enough to see the development of a new medium, but this one has grown up with the web, and much of its concepts about the media and the presentation of information are likely to have been formed by its use of the web.
The web is a word medium. Many people think of the World Wide Web as something akin to broadcasting – probably because we use the web (“surf” is the term) on a computer terminal that looks like a television screen. But that isn’t the way to think of the web. Unlike their use of traditional television, users of the web read. Unlike their use of newspapers and magazines, they write. The web requires its users to be more physically involved -- interactive – than any other medium.
Because the web is a word medium, for many users it has become in information source. People go to web sites to find things out. A web site’s ability to provide information that people want helps the producers of that site sell advertising and make money. Many sites are dependent on the quality – not the amount – of information they provide for their users. Consequently, information must be good -- it must be well written and (have you heard this before?) accurate, complete, efficient and precise. In other words, writing for the web demands all of the same qualities that we have learned so far in this course about media writing.
Key terms and concepts
The following are some key terms and concepts that the student should understand.
Immediacy – The web has the immediacy of broadcasting but with more substance because it relies on the written, not spoken, word. When a news event occurs, most people turn to broadcasting, but increasingly they are also turning to the web for immediate information. This information is of a different nature, however. Information on the Web has to be written, not spoken. Consequently, it is more likely to have gone through an editing process than live broadcasting.
Permanency – The web has a permanency that broadcasting does not have. In broadcasting, once the words are spoken and pictures shown, they cannot be easily recalled by the viewer (unless the viewer is videotaping). When words or pictures are put onto a web site, they are there for as long as the server exists, and they are easily duplicated onto another server. (In fact, on many web site, that duplication is routine.) These words and pictures are also easily retrievable by the user, if the site is searchable. They are also retrievable by the journalists, who may want to establish links for the user to previously posted information.
Capacity – The web is not limited by time, as is broadcasting, and it is not (at least theoretically) limited by space, as is print. Consequently, people who are involved with the web do not face the two most enduring frustrations of journalists who work in the more established media. This nearly infinite capacity for posting information is having profound effects on how we view the web as in information medium, and those effects are not fully realized yet.
Flexibility – By flexibility, we are referring to the web’s ability to use almost any current form available for presenting information, such as words, pictures, graphics, video, and audio. The web writer needs to understand that this medium is not limited to words, but rather it can handle all of these forms and combinations that we might not yet have developed.
Interactivity – Individual users are far more prominent and important in the web environment than they are with any other medium. Developers of web sites have established a variety of ways that individuals can interact, such as designing their own versions of a web site, chat rooms, polls, immediate responses to information, etc. This interactivity will continue to develop, and it too will have a profound effect on how people write for the web.
Chapter notes
The book on web journalism.
The author of Writing for the Mass Media has also written a book about journalism on the web titled Web Journalism: Practice and Promise of a New Medium. You can find out more about this book at the Allyn and Bacon publishers web site. You can also order the book from Amazon (where the title is incorrectly listed) or Barnes and Noble.Sources for web journalism. Three of the best sources for keeping up with the rapidly changing world of web journalism are Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits, Cyberjournalist.net and Online Journalism Review. E-Media Tidbits is a weblog with about two dozen contributors and is edited by Steve Outing, a columnist for Editor and Publisher magazine and a true expert in online journalism. Cyberjournalist.net is the work of Jonathan Dube, the managing producer at MSNBC.com, and is distributed by the American Press Institute’s Media Center. Dube has fantastic understanding of the web and a wide range of sources. Online Journalism Review has an excellent stable of writers who go into depth about relevant issues surrounding web journalism. Each of these sites offers an email newsletter.
Growth in blogging. A few years ago, the vast majority of Internet users didn't know what a web log was or what blogging meant. That has changed -- dramatically, according to a study by the Pew Internet Project. Most of the nation's 120 million Internet users (62 percent) still don't know what a blog is, but among those who do, it's becoming increasingly important. The study says that 7 percent of all Internet users have created a web log (which translates to about 8 million people), and 27 percent of all users say they read blogs. Web logs grew in importance during the 2004 election campaign, but they were growing in numbers before that as people has discovered that they are a good way to share information. The Pew report is available at JPROF.com as a PDF file. (It's four pages long.)
Teaching online journalism resources. Mindy McAdams, who is quickly reaching the status of a guru of online journalism, has put together an exceptional list of teaching resources for those who want to conduct courses or units on online journalism. She did this for the Online Journalism Review.
Additional resources from
JPROF.com
• Writing summaries
• What journalists and bloggers can learn from each other
• Writing with verbs
• And check out the Web Journalism section of JPROF.com
1: Sit Down and Write | 2: Basic Tools of Writing | 3: Style and the Stylebook |
4: Writing in the Media Environment | 5: Writing for Print | 6: Writing for the Web |
7: Writing for Broadcast | 8: Writing Advertising Copy |
9: Writing for Public Relations | 10: The Writer and the Law |
Instructors | Students | Author | Contact | JPROF.com | Home