World Wide Web 2015 and Journalism

$1' -2851$/,60
$ 678'< 21 &217(0325$5< 7(&+1,&$/ 75(1'6
2) :(% -2851$/,60
6XEPLWWHG %
5HJ 1R
6HPHVWHU
6HVVLRQ

WORLD WIDE WEB 2015
AND JOURNALISM
A STUDY ON CONTEMPORARY TECHNICAL TRENDS OF WEB JOURNALISM
SUBMITTED BY
REGISTRATION NUMBER: 002017-2013
SEMESTER: 3 SESSION: 2013-2015
DEPARTMENT OF JOURNALISM MASS COMMUNICATION
WEST BENGAL STATE UNIVERSITY
-: December 2014 :-

i
DECLARATION
I hereby declare that the following dissertation paper has been put together all by
myself and is a creation of my intellect and original research work. The materials
used in this paper from other works or creations are clearly mentioned. All the
external images, graphs, charts and other graphic material are acknowledged
accordingly.
Reg. No. 002017-2013

ii
DEDICATION
Every challenging work needs self-efforts and blessings of elders. I would like to
dedicate this dissertation paper to our Department and its Head Dr. Gopa
Pramanik whose words of encouragement and guidance has illuminated my
intellect. I would also dedicate this to my family and friends who stood by me in
every situation and to all the aspirant web journalists and small media farms who
want to flourish in the field of web journalism.

iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
In the process of completing this, my very first study paper, I have got enormous
help and support from the Department of Journalism Mass Communication of
West Bengal State University. Especially from the Head of Department, Dr. Gopa
Pramanik. I can still remember the day when she cleared all my confusion and
concerns about my paper at once with her own unique way of simplifying and
explaining things. I would like to thank Sri Pallav Mukhopadhyay for giving us
your valuable lectures about research that gave me a clear idea about the structure
and methods of writing a study paper. I must not forget to thank Sri Kanak Karjee,
for withstanding resolving my relentless quarries in classroom, over the
telephone and social media, sometimes even in the midnight.
I cannot but put forward my sincere gratitude to my classmates, friends and other
people who have participated in the surveys and interviews.
Finally I would like to recognize the help I have got from our University library
and from Mr. Bhabani Prasad Panda, a graphic designer, a sports blogger, and a
good friend of mine for explaining me the basic concept of Search Engine
Optimization (SEO) and Digital Marketing.

iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapters Page No.
INTRODUCTION 1
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TOPIC 4
OBJECTIVES 5
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 6
CONTENT ANALYSIS 7
TYPES OF WEBSITES FOR ONLINE JOURNALISM
WRITING FOR THE WEB
PLANNING PACKAGES
PROMOTION
RECENT TRENDS 28
SAMPLE SURVEY 40
SURVEY ANALYSIS
CONCLUSION 48
REFERENCE 49

1
INTRODUCTION
Internet is 21th century’s indispensable information source. It is the most versatile
facility which can help us in completing many tasks easily and conveniently with
just few clicks. Technically, the internet actually is all the computers in the
world that are connected, via the technologies such as routers, servers, etc
(which are also computers actually) as well as the wires and antennas that keep
all the computers talking to each other. It is a gigantic library, as well as a world-
wide message board, a publishing medium, a network that has loosened the
barriers of time space, open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and where we can
find almost anything we want, and express everything we believe. Internet is
continuously satisfying people with services related to different fields.
The rise of the internet has revolutionized the way news and information are
served to the audiences and the way they interact with it. In the age of internet,
stories are published the moment they brake and multiplicity of source (including
contributions from commoners or citizen journalists) made the audience much
more informed about a given topic in comparison to other medium. But the web
is not just another medium of information, with its distinct characteristics and
limited possibilities, web is a place where television, radio and all other new
media forms collide and mixed. This convergence has unlimited possibilities.
Almost every major news outlet regardless of the medium (Print/Broadcast) is
now contributing to this convergence. Some online only news organizations has
achieved excellence and won trust of global citizens only on the basis of their
exclusive web presence.
Prior to the development of online journalism Radio was the most immediate
medium, with news bulletins every thirty minutes or every hour. Then came the
24x7 TV News Channels. However radio or TV both has some technical and
geographical limitations in distributing their programmes worldwide
instantaneously. Whereas the online environment allows for much greater
immediacy and scope. Journalists in this medium have the unique ability to
publish news events as they happen. They can then update the stories to include
subsequent information easily and speedily at any time of the day or night. As
soon as the information is uploaded to the web, it is available around the
globe. The host of information archived in the cyberspace not only illuminates
the mass but also became a time-saving research resource for journalists and
editors, especially for reporters looking for background. The Internet has opened
up new ways of storytelling through different technical components and it is
developing at a rapid pace. Now it is not about publishing a monotonous text or
brief overview, published with one or two related pictures to the story. Web

2
journalists use a variety of media to tell their stories, such as audio, video, digital
photography graphic animations. They create an opportunity for niche
audiences allowing people to have more options as to what to view and read. The
reason behind the growing dominance of online news medium is its technically
superior features. Some of those features are discussed below:
1. Hypertextuality: Hypertextuality is one of the most important feature of
online journalism. Hypertexts are texts with embedded links (Hyperlinks)
written in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) that leads a user to other
internal or external webpages or even audio visual contents, if clicked.
These links can provide more information about the content of the news
stories. So the, the audience can be exposed to huge amount of data and
flow of information.
2. Interactivity: The internet is open and interactive. Online news portals use
many applications and features that helps user to interact with the media
and become active not passive audience.
Interactivity in online journalism is leading to citizen journalism and
participatory journalism because the user participate in posting and
publishing news, video or audio about events.
Online Journalism has three categories of interactivity i.e.
Navigational Interactivity: It allows the audiences to navigate in
the site or in external sites through hyperlinks.
Functional Interactivity: It gives users the opportunity to interact
with the author, other journalists and users and even with the media
organization.
Adaptive Interactivity: It allows the users to customize the website
to their own need and interest.
3. Multimediality: Multimediality is arguably the most attractive feature of
online journalism. It is the use of multimedia in enriching the news by
adding audio, video, photos, graphics, animations and other elements.
4. Immediacy: This may raise issues about the accuracy but in the world of
journalism the news are published as soon they happen as the option of

3
future rectification or entire deletation is in existence in this medium.
Stories can be posted without review in a website and can deleted in
seconds without leaving any trace.
5. Customization: Customization of content is related to the interactivity.
The audience can personalize the news as per their taste and need. They do
not need to follow the order done by the journalists/editors when browsing
for news on a portal.
6. Ample Information: A newspaper is constrained for space, a TV news
channel is constrained of air time hence they are often forced to cut or drop
stories. Web space is unlimited and can accommodate an unlimited number
of stories. Moreover the websites contain an online archive of old materials
and news. Most of them are free to access. Some researchers argue that
this is an overflow of information making the users lose their main
destination and gets confused with junk information.
7. Beyond Geography: Online journalism is global by being accessed and
reached at any place all over the world. It is flexible.
8. Online Community: Entire process of participation and sharing of news
creates a community within no time. Views, opinions and perception are
expressed easily and thus help to socialize and mobilize towards a
constructive direction. Nowadays some news organization rewarding its
reader’s community by introducing point based systems. Points for every
comment, even for every visit. It is also creating a sense of competition
among its readers to win the top prizes.
9. Direct Feedback: The news organizations, blogs and social networks
receives direct feedback through comments, polls and SMSs, which creates
a direct effect unlike in print media where one has to wait a lot to convoy
a feedback.
10. Social Media Interaction: Almost every major news portals now has
profiles in social media websites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ etc.
a user can access stories directly from their feeds without physically typing
(or nowadays literally uttering the keywords in the age of Google voice
search) and searching for the story. This is most useful to remain updated
about breaking news.

4
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TOPIC
Since the Second World War, people around the world were more or less
dependent on Newspaper, Radio and later on Television for their daily dose of
news. But the paradigm has started shifting from 70s when US Department of
Defence funded ARPANET (Advance Research Project Agency Network)
gradually gave birth to what we now call as the “internet “ in early-90s. The early
Internet was used by computer experts, engineers, scientists, and librarians. There
was nothing friendly about it. There were not much home or office personal
computers in those days, and anyone who used it, had to learn to use a very
complex system. As the technology advanced, the Internet became easy to use
easier to afford. The World Wide Web sites became more intricate and inviting.
Newspapers were started changing from mechanical to computer production
systems. The introduction of computers in the production process is a crucial step
in the evolution of new media and online journalism. As various commercial
non-commercial online services were getting launched. News organizations also
followed the suit. But journalism on web then and journalism on web now is
totally different ball game. It has been through some certain stages with
significant changes in technology like a shift from Character User Interface (CGI)
to Graphic User Interface (GUI), static pages to multimedia content rich
webpages, small screen rendering (mobile web), and change in audience profile
(now the audience is a major source). Being a field sensitive to technological
changes, online journalism is expected to be ever evolving. But the changes are
so rapid in current situation that we have to witness some trends or shifts changing
the very concept of journalism on web in a very short span of time in recent years.
Because of them the field got so many specialization that it has been now regarded
as a separate discipline in several parts of the world under different names i.e.
‘Online Journalism’, ‘Electronic Journalism’, ‘Digital Journalism’ etc.
Be it an academic scholar or a professional aspirant, anybody who want to be
successful or achieve excellence in this field should keep track of the changing
processes and practices that online journalism is going through. Through this
dissertation paper I am trying to sketch out the whole idea and process of Online
Journalism in current context, and shed light on some contemporary technological
trends in the field. With this I am also going to explore the online media habits of
the audience. I feel this work of mine will help those scholars to conduct more
detailed research on emerging issues of web journalism also expect aspiring
web journalists to get benefitted from this.

5
OBJECTIVES
Web Journalism has seen a massive growth in last few years due to the growing
reach of internet. As the Internet and new technological devices advances,
methods and the way of reporting also keep changing. To understand the
contemporary concept of web journalism outline its trends the following
objectives have been identified for this paper.
1. What are the types of online news websites?
2. How the writing style differs in web than that of print media?
3. How stories are packaged and promoted online?
4. What are the current trends online?
5. How audience use internet for news?

6
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Based on the objectives of this study paper, the following steps have been taken
to conduct the research work on Web Journalism:
1. Content Analysis
It includes evaluation of information and facts with respect to the
objectives identified.
I closely observed the field and studied the technological trends from
various sources from last 6 months or so. I have also surveyed different
people either in person or over telephone, social media other electronic
communication methods. According to these I have made my conclusion.
2. Interview
Views on different aspects of the topic of the study paper have been
presented here through public expert interviews.
3. Sample Survey
Public opinion has been collected through sample survey using
questionnaire on the topic of the study paper and the result of the same
has been presented using pie diagram.

7
CONTENT ANALYSIS
TYPES OF WEBSITES FOR ONLINE JOURNALISM
As internet journalism is growing at a rapid space, print and other forms of
journalism becoming less popular in number. So journalists are adapting
themselves to the new medium. It is true that web journalism covers a vast variety
of things, thus making a wider scope for Beat Journalists or Specialist Journalists
to show their expertise. But it is also true that one should not have to be a certified
journalist to contribute to this form of media. All combined I am defining some
major types of online journalism websites. But we have to keep in mind that all
these types of websites are interrelated or interconnected and built on almost same
technology. So these web sites can introduce same functionality if required and
can be loosely disassociated only in terms of the nature of the posted contents.
1. Blogs: the word ‘blog’ refers to online logs or journals, often maintained
by individuals but most recently by corporate bodies, media and other
organizations. The entries on these sites carry date lines and usually
arranged in reverse chronological order. Not all blogs are news oriented,
but some are, and these serve up analyses and opinion pieces in a format
annotative reporting. Blogs sometimes can be anonymous in nature and
used often to post breaking or sensational news or scandals. Blog like
Drudgereport (www.drudgereport.com) broke the Clinton-Lewinsky
scandal. Though the strength of blog mainly lies on opinion and analysis
but they have become a force to reckon with in the advanced industrial
countries, so much so that nearly every news organization today carry blog
entries by their reporters or editors on their online editions. Blogs
proliferated over last six to eight years and was once thought to be only an
American phenomena but in report published in sysomomos.com by 2010
India had a share of 2.14% in blogosphere holding the 12th
position overall.
If I add microblogging website’s members to this equation the number can
go way over as India has more than 33 million Twitter (http://twitter.com)
users.

8
Journalist Tim Wood notes that blogs appeared mainly because of people’s
frustration with the arrogance of ‘big media’, on one hand, and nature of
internet technology, on the other. He feels “Bloggers quickly discovered
that they could compete with and contest establishment reporting and
commentary through the internet. The publishing medium is inexpensive
and it provides access to facts and an audience not previously available.”
There are several free blog building and hosting services are available
today like Blogger (www.blogger.com), Blog (www.blog.com),
Wordpress (www.wordpress.com), and Tumblr (www.tumblr.com) etc.
With these free blog sites people are challenging traditional media and
making a path for citizen journalism. Its effects are both futile and
destructive.
2. Video Sites: The impact of video is universal. Older news websites use
only text, audio bites or slideshows to showcase their stories due to high
bandwidth cost and lack of availability of technology then. But People get
bored after – what is it? Eleven, twelve seconds of an image being on
screen? 80% of information is not from the words people hear but from the
images they are seeing. So movement or action of the subject was needed
and hence online Video Journalism was born. And it can be categorized
into four types as follows:
Editing A Blog Post in Blogger.com

9
i) The “Moving Pictures”: here video is added to a story as an
illustration, without narration but in the same way as a still image might
be used.
ii) The Video Diary: Same as blog but the concentration and focus remain
on video content rather than text. It has two sub-categories:
a. The Video Blog/Vlog: In it a person speaks into the camera
mounted on tripods about their thoughts/opinion/experiences.
b. The Personal Account: Person with a story to tell is filmed by
another person about their thoughts/opinions/experiences. This
may be combined with others to form a video feature.
iii) Edited Narrative: This is essentially a replication of the TV
documentary or package, but generally in shorter form. It’s like going
into the streets and talk and acquire opinion or experiences from random
people on any topic.
iv) TV Show/Web Cast/Vod Cast: this is replicating broadcast techniques
and is generally the most redundant type of online video. More or less
every television news channel upload their video on their own website
or on other popular video sharing websites like YouTube
(www.youtube.com), DailyMotion (www.dailmotion.com), and Vimeo
(www.vimeo.com). And sites like CNN iReport (ireport.cnn.com) or
ABC (www.abc.net.au/news/upload/) enables people around the world
to send newsworthy footage to these two media giants. Not only TV or
Print network we can see online only news sources and citizen
journalists are contributing through this genre of reporting. For news
websites it’s a useful way of tapping into TV advertising budgets, but
for readers it’s redundant compared to searchable, scannable web text.
Because very few site allows downloading of news videos they force

10
users to stream it, but it’s technically a pain for slower internet
connection users.
3. Audio Websites: Same as video websites audio websites provide audio
only streamable or downloadable blogs, podcasts and live radio streams.
These websites sometimes use text or slideshows to give depth to their
stories. Sites like Podbean (http://www.podbean.com/) free podcast
hosting service whereas services like BBC’s iPlayerRadio
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/) enable us to listen to their radio broadcasts
from any part of the world. Currently 18 radio streams are available on
iPlayerRadio.
Headlines Today’s YouTube Channel
BBC’S iPlayer Radio Service

11
4. Social Media Integration: Social media are internet sites where people
interact freely, sharing and discussing information about each other and
their lives, using a multimedia mix of personal words, pictures, videos and
audio. At these Web sites, individuals and groups create and exchange
content and engage in person-to-person conversations. Facebook, Twitter
and Google+ these three social media websites has over 2 billion active
and growing members worldwide. To utilize such humongous mass, to
promote a positive brand identity and awareness, to increase website traffic
and to start conversation with key audiences most media organization has
joined these sites like any other business organization.
Now when we browse our social media account not only we remain
updated about our friends and family members whereabouts but also get
informed about the news around the world by just subscribing to our
favourite media outlets profile.
A View From Times of India’s Twitter Account

12
5. Multiplatform Apps (Applications): According to Oxford dictionary an
App is a self-contained program or piece of software designed to fulfil a
particular purpose; an application, especially as downloaded by a user to a
mobile device. These self-contained” programs are now being heavily
adapted by major news outlets as well as news aggregators around the
world to serve its audience with personalised news contents. Not only for
mobile devices, with time and demand some of them now also available
for desktop computers.
And as they say last but definitely not the least,
6. Traditional News Websites/Online Newspapers: It is the most
traditional medium in the world of online journalism. At the present
scenario it can be defined as the most complete and the purest news source
on web; as it is virtually the confluence of every other types of website I
mentioned here. These sites are primarily run by globally or nationally
recognized print, broadcast or online only news outlets like The New York
Times, The Times Group, BBC, CNN (Time Warner), NBC, FOX (21st
Century Fox), NDTV and Yahoo! News. It’s worth mentioning that news
agencies like Reuters, UPI, PTI etc. also share news with public on their
websites. Print media share their online version of their newspaper in the
same way as Broadcast media share their full length programmes and live
streams along with other text or graphic contents on these sites. Going
Some News Apps Listed on Google Play Store

13
ponline creates more opportunities for newspapers, such as competing
with broadcast journalism in presenting breaking news in a more timely
fashion. In addition to these major traditional news websites we can see
certain type of sites are contributing to this digital news distributing
system. It can be categorized as follows:
i) Independent News Websites: These sites, usually cover hard-news
related national and international politics, government and its agencies,
law and order. They also tend to be found in larger cities, and are
generally non-profit in nature. They get their money from donations.
They are known for their hard-core investigation, which is done by full
time reporters.
Example: The Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/), The
Real News (http://therealnews.com/t2/) AlterNet
(http://www.alternet.org/) etc. Collaborative journalism website like
Wikinews (https://www.wikinews.org/) also fall under this genre.
ii) Hyper-Local News Sites: They focus on small communities or a city
and its administration. These sites tend to be independent or ran by their
local newspapers.
Example: DNA (http://www.iamin.in/) and India’s first mobile news
service, Gaon Ki Awaz - (http://gaonkiawaaz.wordpress.com/)
iii) Citizen Journalism Sites: These sites are usually very diverse and is a
place where people usually post things such as pictures and videos, and
some can be targeted to a specific geographic area. Some of these are
edited, while others are not.
Example: Littera Report (http://www.litterareport.com/), Global
Voices (http://globalvoicesonline.org/), The Viewspaper
(http://theviewspaper.net/) and IBN Live CJ (http://cj.ibnlive.in.com/)
etc.

14
While discussing the type of websites used for serving news online, no one can
ignore the importance of search engines and news aggregators. Search engines
are the single largest source of web traffic. When people are looking for
something online they go to a search engine first. Unless of course they know the
site they want to go to and navigate directly to it by typing their domain into the
browser address bar. The same goes for news search. Other than search engines
there is another way of keeping track of your favourite subject of interest that is
news aggregators. News Aggregator which can also be termed as feed
aggregator, feed reader, news reader, RSS reader or simply aggregator, is a client
software or a web application which aggregates syndicated web content such
as online newspapers, blogs, podcasts, and video blogs (vlogs) in one location for
easy viewing. Visiting several websites a day for updates is a pain. Aggregator
technology helps to consolidate many websites into one page that can show the
new or updated information from many sites. Aggregation features are frequently
built into web portal sites, in the web browsers themselves, in email applications
or in application software designed specifically for reading feeds.
WRITING FOR THE WEB
The Internet is open and free. Anyone can add information to cyberspace at
his/her own will, but a web journalist follow some basic rules to maintain the
Homepage of The Independent

15
journalistic essence of the stories. With the advancement of technology the stories
are getting more appealing. Application of graphics and special effects (SFX) is
now make articles more vivid. But still the success story behind a ‘trending’ (a
term used to define a popular thing on the web now) article on the web is text part
of it, which gives life to an article, make or break a web journalist’s career. A
web journalist knows his/her audience and their reading habits. This is a
traditional rule in print media also but internet audiences are not traditional
readers, they don't necessarily read top to bottom or even from word to word.
They also tend to be more proactive than print readers or TV viewers, hunting for
information rather than passively taking in what you present to them. Hence
writing for the web is distinctly different than writing for print media.
Surprisingly by the time the average child is 9 years old, they can skip up to 30%
of words on a web page and still accurately predict the text. That's not just reading
online. If there's enough context, the mind fills in the gaps. Most of the time there
will be several other web pages running with the similar story and just few clicks
away from a user. Once a reader gets bored or failed to understand the context of
the story due to complexity on a certain page, probability is that he/she would
either quit following the topic or search other resources for better understanding.
This is nothing less than a moral defeat of the author of the article. And this is
why context building is an important job of online journalists. Now I will discuss
some important rules followed by a web journalist while writing an article to give
a clear idea about the basic composition of an online news article.
• A DIFFERENT APPROACH
Before writing a report journalists think about what the best ways are to
tell the story, whether through audio, video, clickable graphics, text, links,
etc. — or some combination. They develop a plan that can guide them
throughout the news gathering and production process, rather than just
reporting a story and then adding various elements later as an afterthought.
They also look for stories that lend themselves to the Web — stories that
they can tell differently from or better than in any other medium.
• CRAFTED NEWS GATHERING
Just as print and TV reporters interview differently because they are
looking for different things, so must online journalists tailor their
interviewing and information gathering specifically to their needs.
Print reporters usually look for fact. TV reporters look for emotions to
showcase of screen, sounds and pictures to go with words. Online

16
journalists has to think incessantly in terms of different elements and how
they complement and supplement each other. They has to look for words
to go with images, audio and video to go with words, data that will lend
itself to interactives etc.
A web journalist should be aware of every technicalities. Photos look better
online when shot or cropped narrowly, and streaming video is easier to
watch when backgrounds are plain and zooming minimal, a web journalist
takes care of these. They always look for personalities who could be
interesting chat guests and never stops the tape till the very end. And they
always keep an eye out for information that can be conveyed more
effectively using interactive tools.
• LIVELY BUT WITH A TIGHTER SPIRIT
Writing for the web is a cross between broadcast and print — tighter and
punchier than print, but more literate and detailed than broadcast writing.
A web journalist write actively, not passively.
A good web article contains primarily tight, simple declarative sentences
and gives one idea per sentence. It avoids the long clauses and passive
writing of print. Every expressed idea maintains a logical flow. Generally
inverted pyramid structure is followed. A web journalist try to inject his/her
writings with a distinctive voice, in a breezy style, sometimes using
humour to help differentiate them from the multitude of content on the
Web. These concepts in online writing makes the writing easier to
understand and better holds readers attention.
• PROPER EXPLANATION
A web journalist does not get caught up in the 24x7 wire-service mentality
and think he/she must publish any news as fast as possible no matter how
little details are available then just to beat other rival websites in terms of
pace. As readers rarely notice, or care who was first. People want to know
not just what happened, but why it matters. And with all the information
sources out there now, in the end it will be the sites that explain the news
the best that succeed.
A common problem with online writing occurs in breaking news stories.
In an effort to seem as current as possible, sites will often put the latest
development in a story at the top — no matter how incremental the
development. Then, they’ll pile the next development on the top, and the
next — creating an ugly mish-mash of a story that makes sense only to

17
someone who has been following the story closely all day. Many big Indian
media brand has been doing this mistake now
• A STRAIGHTFORWARD HEADLINE
People often don’t know what they’re going to get when they click on stuff.
And people are not going to click on something unless they know what
they’re getting. When they click on something that’s not worth it, they lose
trust in that as a source and are less likely to come back and click on things
in the future. A web journalist make sure to give the article a proper
headline that tell people what they are going to get.
Studies show online news users preferred straightforward headlines to
funny or cute ones. But nowadays even some mainstream media outlets try
to tempt people to visit their websites by writing misleading or incomplete
headlines. It is prominent on those outlets’ social media pages.
• AN ADDICTIVE BODY TEXT
Reading from a computer screen is slower than reading from a paper. So if
newspaper stories need to be short, online stories need to be even shorter.
A general rule of thumb: Web content should have about half as many
words as its printed equivalent. But this can be taken rather as a guideline
than rule, because the Poynter eyetrack study showed that about 75 percent
of article text was read online — far more than in print, where 20 to 25
percent of an article’s text gets read, on average. Print readers have less
vested in any given story, because they haven¹t done anything proactive to
get the article. If someone has clicked to get to a page, it¹s generally
because they want to read the story, and thus chances are high that they
will.
• BREAKING IT UP
If a journalist do have an article that’s on the longish side, he/she generally
do not cram it into one web page. If site policy permits the journalist breaks
it up into several pages, using a clearly visible “continued on next page”
link at the bottom.

18
• USING SUBHEADS
Subheads are another way to highlight points and break up text into user-
friendly chunks.
• USING BULLETED NUMBERRED LIST
This is another way of highlighting important information and breaking up
chunks of text that may be getting too long.
• HIGHLIGHTING KEYWORDS
Sometimes a web journalist use boldface text to highlight especially
important words and phrases. But one should this sparingly; if too much
text is highlighted, nothing will stand out.
• WISE USE OF HYPERLINKS
Web journalists use hyperlinks to connect readers to other web pages that
enhance the value of the story by helping readers get additional information
from the people behind the news. Some site may have policy against
sharing hyperlinks to external web pages because of a paranoid fear that if
they include links to other sites, readers will surf away and never return.
But it is not true. As a matter of fact people prefer to go to sites that do a
good job of compiling click-worthy links. If the reader is loyal he/she will
definitely comeback. But At the same time, journalists have a
responsibility to apply news judgment and editorial standards to the links
they choose. They delicately avoid linking to sites with blatantly false
information or offensive content.

19
PLANNING PACKAGES
Like the vibrant style of writing, web news stories needed to be packaged well by
the journalists to reach a broader set of target audience. Web news content
packaging is an art. An art that every budding web journalist should learn.
Basically there are some certain packages, through which stories are categorized.
Such packages are discussed below:
1. Print Plus: This is the most common and cheap format available for web.
These are not necessarily items written for web rather prepared contents
for/by newspaper, news agency or other traditional medium. Other
elements like photographs, links or video clips are added to the existing
material prior to the final publication. This maybe the easiest way to create
content online but Dubes pointed out that this method does not utilize
web’s full potential.
2. Multimedia Interactives: This is the interactive version of traditional
newspaper and TV programmes via using graphics, maps, chart or other
multimedia elements that guides the reader to understand or unfold a story.
Such packages usually contain both linear and non-linear storytelling.
Stories under these format need more time to get prepared but they set the
examples of most innovative web journalism.
3. Slideshows: Under this package a whole story is presented only by
sequentially presenting images with proper captions (generally longer than
regular caption length). These stories make bigger impact on reader minds
than text based stories as they carry the advantages of visual
communication. Sometimes slideshows can contain audio-visual elements.
The corresponding audio or video start playing automatically in sequence
with the altering images.
4. Audio Stories: people sometimes say things in such a way that their
manner of speaking adds meaning which the words themselves do not
convoy. Such sounds can make interesting stories. Thus the use of audio
can be very effective when something cannot be described in words. It is

20
suggested that one or more photographs of the speaker should be added to
the story to incur a bigger effect or reaction.
5. Interactive Live Chat: When moderated properly chat can used as a useful
tool for conveying information. In interactive web chat readers ask
question and journalists or experts replies to them. The chat can be started
on a page related to the discussed topic and the page can be text only or
loaded with multimedia contents like audio, video, images or streaming
media.
6. Quizzes and Surveys: with this format stories are told by organising the
information as a set of question and answer or asking the reader to fill up
survey forms. Dubes notes that this format engages more audience by
letting their opinion heard and making them a part of the story.
7. Animated Stories: This is an effective visual method when photographs
or video clips are not available or their use is unacceptable. Professional
animators can create lively cartoons or characters filled with humour or
any other emotion as required by the story. Animation can make
infographics more lively, can make explain a situation with motion or
action.

21
PROMOTION
Now when a web journalist is ready with his/her well written, well packaged
article it is the time to publish it online and show the world some serious skills
efforts. But the problem is the prepared article may not be a scoop. Chances are
hundreds of sites will be already out there on the web related to the same topic.
So how could anyone make people prefer his/her article over others? These days,
it’s not enough to be just a good writer online. One have to be a smart marketer
and a shrewd publicist. If one can do it all alone, it is perfect but If he/she cannot,
then professional help (SEO/SMO experts) should be called in, else the article
will stay their lost in the midst of well promoted ones. This is the common
problem faced by relatively new or independent news websites or blogs because
search engines regardless of quality pics up the articles from the mainstream
sources first. To avoid this disappointing situation some simple (not related to
programming or coding) steps are followed and check page visits and audience
reaction before calling any pro for complete resurrection.
• INSTALL CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CMS)
Major online publishers nowadays use a Content Management System
(CMS). A CMS allows the publication to post stories and make changes to
published articles without having to rely on a third party. On the Internet,
time is measured in minutes and hours, not in days.
A content management system also makes it possible and feasible to
organise the thousands of news stories that a publication have.
• AN OPEN FOR ALL WEBSITE
The web is built on openness and linking, and moreover in this competitive
market where free and crowed sourced news sources, blogs social media
making big guns in the field of journalism run for their money, an open
accessible to anyone website is highly solicited. This is how a brand build
a trusted and acquire readers now. So we are seeing a cut off in registration
needed paid subscription model news websites. Registration doesn’t
work like before, people won’t pay for it when they can find the news
elsewhere.

22
• ARCHIVE
It is regarded as a great move in web to preserve old articles. Old content
is does a lot to help achieve a high ranking. Keeping all articles on the
site, no matter how old is preferred by web publications. It will continue
to have readers days or weeks after publication. It will also appear in
search engine results.
• USING STANDARD FONTS
Due to technical reasons, there are a limited number of fonts which can
be safely used online. Just because the news editor like a font that exists on
his/her computer, doesn't mean that everyone will also have that font
installed. That’s why a font is used which is likely to be available to the
vast majority of visitors.
• PROPORTIONED IMAGES
The images uploaded to newspaper or magazine websites more or less use
the same proportions. This results in a cleaner and more consistent
appearance. For example, if all images to be uploaded in 3x2 proportion
i.e. the width should be 1.5 times more than the height. 4x3 which is
another common format (due to its prevalence in digital cameras).
• AVOID REDIRECTS
While redirects are OK, they can complicate things, and in my experience
they cause problems. If a webmaster currently redirecting visitors from
‘www.xyzabc.com’ to ‘www.xyzabc.com/abc.html’ or some such, why not
just let them stay at ‘www.xyzabc.com’? That’ll concentrate link votes and
improve position in search engines results.
• ADDING WEBSITE TO NEWS AGGREGATORS
I have already mentioned what news aggregators actually does for the
audiences’ convenience. But it holds an equally important opportunity for
the news outlets as it help to reach more public. Hence every major or
minor publication try to add their feeds to these aggregators. These feeds
can be accesed via online websites like Google
News, ExpooNews, Drudge Report, Huffington Post, Zero Hedge,
Reddit, Newslookup, Wire-News, Newsvine, World News (WN)

23
Network, and Daily Beast, web based feed readers like Bloglines, Feedly,
FrescaNews, Feedspot, Flipboard, Digg, News360, My
Yahoo!, NewsBlur, and Netvibes or apps specially developed for reading
feeds like NetNewsWire, Flipboard, Prismatic, and Zite. Software
aggregators can also take the form of news tickers which scroll feeds
like ticker tape, and can integrate feeds into the operating system or
software applications such as a web browser.
In all of the news aggregators Google News still remain the first choice for
the web publishers due to its global exposer. The recent closer of Google
News in Spain due to a Spanish intellectual-property law requiring news
publishers to receive payment from Google for their content even if they
are willing to give it away for free and the following plea from several
Spanish publication to stop Google from exiting shows the importance or
influence it has on web journalism. In order to make Google News crawl
the correct titles for the articles, one has to make sure the title he/she want
appears in both the title tag and as the headline on the article page. In
addition, hyperlinking the headline on the article page is forbidden.
Google News Presenting Related Stories From Various Sources Against A Single Search

24
• USING KEY WORDS
While Google will include articles that contain multimedia content, if
Google’s crawler cannot find accompanying text content, it won’t include
the article. The bottom line here is that Google’s crawler is looking for text
articles, so if some of your content isn’t text-based, it won’t be included in
Google News.
To avoid this situation a publication needs Search Engine Optimization
(SEO). And the basis of good search engine optimization is to find the
right keyword phrase. Keywords form the essence of SEO writing. One
cannot ignore that. Without keywords search engine locate cannot websites
and list it too. So proper usage of keywords is a must.
There are several free research tools to help pick a keyword phrase readers
are looking for while being relevant to the story's content. Achalu
Narayanan, vice president, Internet Marketing recommends the
free Google Keyword Planner (AdWords) tool, which can be used to
input a website’s home page URL and review the keyword ideas Google
provides.
Apart from these tools a publicist concentrate on the primary keywords –
the main keywords that the website intends to be listed for needs to be
incorporated in the article. Like the length of the article, striking a balance
in the keyword density is much important. Over use the keywords can lead
search engines to label an article as spam and if not adequately used, it may
not even get registered on the search engines.
Images don't just help tell the story. They are also a key component in SEO.
Search engines spider also haunt for image alt tags and captions when they
visit a site. So using descriptive img alt tags increases visits. Using Meta
tags can also drastically boost the hits.
An example of img alt tags:
img src=www.xyz.com/images/smiley.gif alt=Smiley
face height=42 width=42

25
Before publishing an article text only browser like Lynx is used. It shows
how search engines view a website.
• SOCIAL MEDIA SHARING
After publishing, posts are usually shared on all social media platforms and
connections are built continuously. In addition to having a social media
presence, a publisher now actually interact with their connections. The key
to success in social media is to give people a reason to talk about the
published stuff. At a fundamental level, if a publisher is not doing this, then
no one will share their content.
• FOLLOW THE CONVERSATION
Salon’s communications director Liam O’Donoghue writes, “When I’m
writing a tweet to promote a new article on Salon, I try to pick out the
nugget from that article that I think is most likely to make people click
through and read the article . . . However, I’m constantly using social
listening tools like ChartBeat and Topsy to see what other people are
saying when they tweet our articles, as well. If I plan on tweeting an article
from the morning again later in the day, I’ll often use this awareness of
what our audience finds most interesting about the article to inform the
content of that follow-up tweet.”
• RESPOND TO COMMENTS
“Your readers appreciate knowing that you care about their opinions,” said
Andrew Schrage, co-owner of Money Crashers, a popular finance blog.
“Even if it’s just thanking them for commenting on your social media page
or website, your readers will know that there’s an actual human being who
can provide feedback and interaction.” And Brad Hines, a digital marketing
strategist, agrees and said “Based on the reciprocity principle, if you
like/+1/favourite etc. someone’s content . . . not only do they feel goodwill
toward you, but also that they owe you one. This isn’t as smarmy as seems
on the face of it. Think about the times someone likes your article but

26
doesn’t say so. Unfortunately it will always partially be a popularity
contest.”
• STARTING E-NEWSLETTER SERVICE
Email as an important way to bring people to your website. So we often
see sits aggressively asking for Email Newsletter Sign-ups. Those
newsletters usually contain “Signature” a common note mentioning
company name, address, phone number, URL, email address etc. to help
potential customers get in touch.
• PROMOTING ON OPTIMAL TIME
Promoting contents when the audience is genuinely in a mood to view
those is a thing that a publisher should be aware of. Generally early
morning and after office hours are best for promoting news contents.
• SENDING OUT PRESS RELEASES
Jaslin Marian Dsouza of Godot Media, a content marketing and social
media agency, says a press release will increase traffic to the piece by
mentioning the article and providing a link to it. An article may even get
picked up or republished by a publication as such. A breaking news story,
a trending topic, a controversial issue, and just a well packaged story will
invariably receive more engagement.
• VIRAL MARKETING
Viral marketing is a strategy by which a marketer creates a campaign
focused around the goal of causing viewers of that promotion to
spontaneously spread it by sending it to friends. It is purposely produced
to create brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such
as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes. The ultimate goal
of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is
to create viral messages that appeal to individuals with high Social

27
Networking Potential (SNP), a quality of an individual to influence others
on his network and that have a high probability of being presented and
spread by these individuals and their competitors in their communications
with others in a short period of time. Generally a concept for product
services advertiser but in this competitive market news outlets are also
utilizing social media for marketing often by launching contests or
campaigns producing viral contents.
• ASKING PEOPLE TO BOOKMARK
Asking the audience to bookmark the site could make sure possible re-
visits in future. If the site has good content that people want to bookmark,
this can generate hundreds of links to the site and significantly raise
rankings.

28
RECENT TECHONOLOGICAL TRENDS
• JOURNALISTS USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO SOURCE NEWS
A report from the Indiana University School of Journalism sheds light on
how U.S. journalists use social media to report the news. 40 percent of
journalists said social media networks are very important to their work
and over a third said they spend between 30 and 60 minutes each day on
social networking sites. The following charts from the study describe the
strong relation between journalists and social media.

29
• SMARTPHONE MOBILE INTERNET BOOM
In the third quarter of 2012, one billion smartphones were in use
worldwide. Global smartphone sales surpassed the sales figures for
features phones in early 2013. The following diagram sourced from
Statista - The Statistics Portal (http://www.statista.com/ ) shows the
smartphone sales since 2007 to 2013.
From a Morgan Stanley research it has been discovered that the number
of desktop internet users would have already surpassed by mobile internet
users. A diagram sourced from Hanger17 (http://www.hangar17.com/)
depicts the growth rate of mobile web since 2007.

30
Comprehending this growth news outlets now started to target there mobile
audience. And they are really getting positive results. For an instance on 2010
US elections night, NPR (formerly National Public Radio), saw their web
traffic were up about 23 percent that night versus a typical night. The usage
of their iPhone app was up about 11 percent. And the usage of their mobile
website was up 83 percent. This reflects the importance of mobile web now.
• THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL MEDIA
PHOTOGRAPHY GETTING STRONGER
Using social media to bring traffic to a website — whether it’s a
newspaper, blog or small business — isn’t new. In 2012, social media
experts preached a photo-centric strategy on Facebook. The rise of
Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest in recent years further strengthened the
relationship between social media and photography. Alexis Mainland,
social media editor at The New York Times spoke with Photo Shelter
Blog about the relationship, saying “The cliche that a picture is worth 1,000
words rings especially true on social media sites.”
As social media positions at online publications continue to increase,
they’ll drag photographers along for the ride. You can’t have a good social
media presence without a strong backing in photography, something major
newspapers are discovering.
BBC News: Instafax
A new 'experimental' project called Instafax was launched by BBC News
which aims to compress the news item down to 15 seconds of video.
The Guardian: #GuardianCam
Journalists using the hashtag on their own accounts on Instagram and other
networks, to help those communities engage around a story and gain an
added perspective, as well as share in the journalist's own experience of
covering it.
While the use of #GuardianCam means journalists and photographers are
encouraged to produce content for the Instagram audience, and even acts
as an alternative front page' for the Instagram community, the content
does not only live on that platform, they bring the images and video back
onto the Guardian's own digital platforms to complement other coverage.
As well as also linking to the Instagram material from the main Guardian
website keeping the following points in mind:

31
1. To let the crowd tell their own story
2. To take the audience behind-the-scenes
3. To share news snippets
The growth in mobile and social audiences is driving a desire to innovate
in this area and produce products specifically designed for these platforms.
Marc Settle, a trainer in smartphone journalism at the BBC College of
Journalism feels Designed for the smartphone generation, they (video
snippets) seem to be working very well. You're going to see much more of
that, particularly with the growth of 4G networks when more people can
access video more quickly, wherever they are.
• PRIVATE SOCIAL MEDIA
It would be interesting to see how news organisations might respond to
private social media.
Mark Settle said You've got things like Snapchat and Instagram Direct
and Twitter can now share direct message with photos – how do news
organisations get content onto those platforms?
He noted that news outlets had done a very good job at getting content out
through public social media, but now this is a much more private way of
sharing information.
There are already lots of stats about teenagers moving away from
Facebook, because that's where their parents now are, and instead spending
a lot of time on Snapchat, Are news organisations going to be able to tap
into where teenagers are now? he added. Not only the teenagers even
middle aged man and women are now prominent in private social media
messaging apps like Whatsapp, Line, WeChat etc. News organizations
are now trying several ways to enter this ‘virtual’ ultra-private world. Short
mobile videos, link sharing are some of the tools they are using.
• GEO TAGGING
Geo tagging is marking a video, photo or other media with a location and
posting it on the internet. This can not only help people find images and
information based on a location, but it can also be used to create location-
based news and media feeds by combining an application like Google

32
Maps with geotagged blogs, news articles and Flickr photos. It has been
part of online journalism practice from last few years. For an instance in
2011 a reporter at The Guardian, produced an interesting report on the
royal wedding day of Price William Kate Middleton. He tweeted and
posted picture, video and audio as he met people along the way. His
journey was mapped out as he went. This is mobile news gathering using
smartphone and social media. As the reporter took a picture and sent it out
using the smartphone, the location of that picture was also recorded and
plotted onto the map.
This type of Geo Tagged reporting is pretty much common now. The
following is a screenshot from Al Jazeera’s website (preserved by
http://mediamapping.wikischolars.columbia.edu/) taken in 2010 during
Gaza-Israel conflict. The map had contained some interactive dots,
containing location based stories.
• SEMANTIC WEB
The World Wide Web is an interesting paradox -- it's made with computers
but for people. The sites we visit every day use natural language, images
and page layout to present information in a way that's easy for us to
understand. Even though they are central to creating and maintaining the

33
Web, the computers themselves really can't make sense of all this
information. They can't read, see relationships or make decisions like we
can.
The Semantic Web proposes to help computers read and use the Web.
The big idea is pretty simple -- metadata added to Web pages can make the
existing World Wide Web machine readable. This won't bestow artificial
intelligence or make computers self-aware, but it will give machines tools
to find, exchange and, to a limited extent, interpret information. It's an
extension of, not a replacement for, the World Wide Web. It has full
potential and many application. With this people can be served with more
relevant news according to their preferences. Journalists have leveraged
this user-generated content (UGC) to find stories and support their work.
Semantic web technologies and Linked Data has been especially helpful to
them when it’s too dangerous or expensive for a news organization to send
reporters to a region, or when it’s impossible to gain access to an area due
to conflicts there, or when a natural disaster occurs in a place where the
media generally lacks a presence. It starts off with data ingestion and
known and unknown event detection that leads to filtering,
contextualization and categorization. Linked Data can help a lot with
contextualization and bringing in other relevant structured information
available on the web. Other things that can come into play include helping
journalists verify the bias or authenticity of social media postings and
sources through semantic analysis, including what posters’ social networks
might indicate about who the poster is – whether they really live in the area
where the event has taken place, or are they traveling there, or live abroad
but still have strong ties to the area.
Google has famously announced that semantic search is the transition of
search and the web from strings to things and websites to people
respectively. To quantify this change, consider that the web is being
transformed from a place where anonymity and unaccountability were
virtually synonymous and practically guaranteed, to a place where trust,
authority and reputation are the only attributes that really matter. Semantic
search, essentially a transformation of the largely unstructured data that's
found on the web into highly structured data inside its search index, is
going to change the way we consume information.
To achieve this, Google uses a detailed mapping of the social signal that's
generated by individuals across the social web to create a very granular

34
picture of who they are, what they do and their level of expertise. Search
engine applies on the web criteria of trust, authority and reputation similar
to the ones that we have long applied in the offline world, using the social
signature of personal profiles as a veracity filter for its search results.
This 'simple' move, however, also removes authority from websites and
places it squarely upon their users. For instance a Times of India article,
carry way more influence and authority than a local news paper’s article,
even if the latter was well-written, researched and argued as the former.
That's because the TOI website carried all the trust, authority and
reputation in search – based on a variety of signals including traffic and
audience reach. It’s all in the algorithm.
• ANTICIPATORY NEWS
News organisations doing more with the user data that's available to them,
something Cory Haik, executive producer and senior editor for digital news
at The Washington Post calls the anticipatory news.
It's news that's built around the data you're sharing, for example your
calendar or your location, she explained. Anticipating where folks will
be and what they're doing based on the information they're building up. If
a news organisation pays attention to personal data and preferences that
users are opting into there's a lot that [they] can offer up. she added.
News organizations have long hoped for meaningful personalization — the
more directly a news product can be tailored for each individual. But our
interests are temporal, as is the news cycle. Old technologies were not
capable of these mood swings. But at present technologies vested in
services like Google Now allow them to anticipate what content might
interest us next. As a result, news organizations have seen thrilling
opportunities ahead to supercharge the reporting process and to personalize
content in ways we have never seen before. The future of news is
anticipatory.
• A SHIFT IN GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS
A significant shift in Google results can be seen recently. There seems to
be a growing level of frustration with the quality of Google search results

35
now. If we just try and find information about a hotel we would end up
finding pages after pages of junk review sites and other irrelevant
materials, every one of which has done a very good job of gaming the
system through the dark arts of SEO. The same goes for when searching
for a news topic. We may well be welcomed with phoney news websites.
There are many other fields for which Google has really just become really
difficult to use. Or at the very least, very frustrating to use.
• RSS FILTERING
While RSS feeds are crafted to make our life easier many RSS users
complain of information overload with too many RSS feeds cluttering their
inbox. Thus a number of RSS organization tools came into existence that
can tame even the wildest of feed collections. Some of the most effective
methods include using “folders” and “views” in aggregators like Feedly,
filtering web apps, and prioritization tools. Some famous feed filters are
Yahoo! Pipes, Feed Rinse FeedSift. IFTTT is a widely used
prioritization tool. Apparently the key to any good RSS collection is
brevity; reading a small amount of highly useful information beats reading
a large volume of largely useless information.
• CHURNALISM
According to a Cardiff University research that informed Davies’ book,
54% of news articles have some form of PR in them. ‘Churnalism’ is a
news article that is published as journalism, but is essentially a press release
without much added info. In his landmark book, Flat Earth News, Nick
Davies wrote how ‘churnalism’ is produced:
“Journalists who are no longer gathering news but are reduced instead to
passive processors of whatever material comes their way, churning out
stories, whether real event or PR artifice, important or trivial, true or false”
(p.59).
Nick found that 80% of the stories in Britain's quality press were not
original and that only 12% of stories were generated by reporters
The neologism churnalism has been credited to BBC journalist Waseem
Zakir who coined the term in 2008.
In their book, No Time to Think, authors Howard Rosenberg and Charles
S. Feldman, emphasised the role of speed in degrading the quality of

36
modern journalism. An example is given of the BBC guide for online staff
which gives advice to ensure good quality but also the contradictory
advice, Get the story up as fast as you can… We encourage a sense of
urgency—we want to be first. Actually Online publications doing more
with the data available online than to investigate further. This is giving
birth to churnalism.
• CROSS SHARING
A lot of traditional news organizations really view their content as
something that shouldn’t be shared with other news organizations. They’re
very defensive of anyone who would try to think about doing something
like that. But a lot of new online news organizations thinking instead of
content as a marketing opportunity. As an example let’s think there are
probably lots of people who are regular to ‘abcde.com’ but who’ve never
heard of ‘wxyz.com’. There are lots of people who ‘wxyz.com’ but who’ve
never heard of ‘abcde.com’. Every time that they cross-pollinate on content
— which cost neither organization any money but they get more visits
mostly from new and potentially permanent audience. This cross
promotion strategy is prominent on web now.
• GIF – OXFORD DICTIONARY USA WORD OF THE YEAR 2012
Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) continues to gain respect as a
legitimate news source. GIFs are small file formats that can be easily
downloaded on mobile devices and consumed in rapid sequence, perfect
for the exploding mobile market. GIF according to its creator
CompuServe, is correctly pronounced jif and the three letters stand for
Graphics Interchange Format. And although GIFs can be both static and
animated, the word most commonly refers to this kind of looped sequence
made up of multiple frames
GIFs have gained wide popularity on the social network Tumblr, the easy-
to-make looping animations are only starting to gain popularity with
traditional media outlets. Many people say GIFs aren’t news, partly
because of the usual convention for GIFs: comedy. From 2013, news
organizations using GIFs for legitimate news purposes.

37
• DUAL SCREEN EXPERIENCE IMAGE
According to the latest research by Thinkbox 37% of people claim to go
online while watching television on a daily basis. That’s right, consumers
are watching television, then having conversations and looking for ways to
share that experience with social media. Brands have the opportunity to
directly be part of that dual-screen experience. That’s why Television
companies and news companies with a share in the television market cater
more to dual screening.
As per a survey conducted by Pew Research Centre, in 2011, 11% of the
live viewers of the first US presidential debate followed the coverage on
more than one screen. Many watched the debate on television and followed
the conversation on their social media feeds at the same time. Television
has become an incredibly social experience. News channels have also
started picking up on this market by including hashtags particular to a story
or programme on the screen alongside the show just like entertainment
channels. Moreover audience are encouraged to take part on polls or
surveys going online on the corresponding news channel's website.
• RAPID EVOLUTION OF WEB PAGES
From static pages we had rapidly moved to a stream, and from there we are
moving to cards, tiles and pins as our basic unit of information reference.
Cards are simple and contain the essential information of a post. After
Twitter, Facebook Google+ several other social media websites,
messengers even Operating Systems (OS) are moving to cards i.e.
Windows 8 with its Metro Interface.

38
• MOBILE RESPONSIVE DESIGN
Jason Mills, online editor at ITV News, believes that mobile is clearly the
growth space for news providers, and potentially for advertisers as well.
It is a view shared by Cory Haik, executive producer and senior editor for
digital news at The Washington Post, who predicts that: Small screens
have the biggest gifts to offer.
Haik insists that newsrooms should always consider the device when
creating content and predicts a trend for what she calls adaptive
journalism.
It is an undeniable fact news outlets are now creating content designed
specifically for different devices, whether users are at home using a tablet
or perhaps at the airport using a smartphone.
Peter Bale, general manager and vice president of digital at CNN
International, believes responsive design will be a key area in future.
There will be some beautiful mobile sites that are in fact the full website,
he explained.
Google+ Cards View

39
• INVISIBLE USER INTERFACE (UI)
It can safely be said now that just-in-time interface controls are the future.
The time of multiple toolbars with tens of buttons and icons, is definitely
over. The new UI is basically invisible until we really need it.
• DESIGN INTELLIGENCE
Still the web design and publishing ecosystem presently doesn't allow
non-technical people to create and maintain professional-looking
websites without having to heavily depend on a web design studio or
agency. This is now changing rapidly. The internet is full of How-to
tutorials and easy professional looking website creation tools are also
there. Websites can now be created with just a few clicks, drag drops,
the software (E.g. Adobe Muse) does the coding part.
• FUTURE IS WEARABLE
The commercial launch of Google Glass may just radically transform
everything in web journalism
While Mark Settle notes potential issues around cost, privacy and safety,
he adds that Google Glass could transform not only how news is gathered
by journalists… but also how members of the public get news. This could
be as big for journalism as the smartphone was.
Nic Newman predicts that In technology [we can] expect more hype
around wearable computing (iWatch), smart home appliances and the
coming of age of 3D printing and virtual reality headsets (Oculus Rift).
Since the emergence of these devices, media is looking into publishing for
“glance” journalism where people consume news stories in bite-sized
glances. ‘Glance Optimized Headlines’ (GOH) are a thing of the future and
by 2015, devices will be intended for biometric reporting and as mobile
second screens. By 2018, Webb predicts that devices will have more cross-
functionality and full of behavioural contents that will be used more
widely.

40
SAMPLE SURVEY
As I have mentioned earlier in the objective methodology section, to have an
idea about the online media habits of the audience and their preferences I have
conducted a sample survey on the topic. They survey has been done on two levels,
i.e. online (social media, electronic mail) offline (one-to-one session). The total
number of participants were 68 (57 online responses 11 offline). They were
presented with the following form:
WORLD WIDE WEB 2015 JOURNALISM
Sample Survey
Name:
Age:
Occupation:
1. What is the main source of your web news appetite?
A. Social Media
B. Search Engines
C. Dedicated News Websites
D. Not Interested In Online Reports
2. What do you consume more when you browse news online?
A. Plain Text
B. Multimedia Content
3. Does design make any difference in attracting audience to a
website?
A. Yes, It Does
B. No, Content Is What That Matters
4. Where do you mostly browse the internet?
A. PC/Laptop
A. Handheld Portables
(Continue)

41
5. How many hours on average do you spend online each day?
A. Less Than 1
B. 1 to 2
C. More Than 2 But Less Than 5
D. More Than 5
6. Do you have any news related app installed in your phone or
tablet?
A. Yes
B. No
7. Have you ever subscribed to any Email Newsletter, RSS Feed or
news services online?
A. Yes
B. No
8. What is the most comprehensive source of news in current
scenario?
A. Print Media
B. Broadcast Media (TV/Radio)
C. Online Media

42
• Survey Analysis
From the sample survey results and follow up interviews I have understood the
following:
Social media has really emerged as the pivotal source of news online. People
really liking the idea of getting connected with friends remain updated about
the world affairs or the news that matters to them most. It also provides a platform
to the public to express their views about the national and international stories
and events sometimes a platform to add more depth to the story by providing
additional information. And that makes journalists to spend more time in social
media as I have discussed before. It is surprising to see that people are less
interested in going to a specific website directly, social media and search engine
are their primary source of visitors. Another thing is noticeable that every
participant has more or less interest in online news. It is a very good sign for
aspiring web journalists.
Pie Chart: 1
71%
12%
17% 0%
What is the main source of your web news
appetite?
A. Social Media
B. Search Engines
C. Dedicated News Websites
D. Not Interested In Online Reports

43
Pie Chart: 2
Pie Chart: 3
It is quite evident from the above diagram that the need for media rich content is
extremely high. Every web news editors should now concentrate on giving more
than texts to the respective website’s audience otherwise it will tougher for them
to survive in this competitive market.
People like decent looking websites, and the figures above in diagram shows it
35%
65%
What do you consume more when you
browse news online?
A. Plain Text
B. Multimedia Content
82%
18%
Does design make any difference in
attracting audience to a website?
A. Yes, It Does
B. No, Content Is What That
Matters

44
Pie Chart: 4
clearly. But to find out that the liking is reached to such a level now that they are
choosing it over content quality is truly a thing that needs to be researched more.
And for the graphic designers it is the high time to brush up things.
What I have mentioned about the smartphone boom while discussing the recent
trends is reflected in the above diagram. People are turning mobile but not only
for calls or texts, but also for staying connected to the internet on the go. And that
is why web developers are now making device friendly websites. This move
resulting in good looking uncluttered websites for computers as well as mobile
phones. Moreover news outlets are developing contents now keeping these small
screens devices in mind.
47%
53%
Where do you mostly browse the internet?
A. PC/Laptop
B. Handheld Portables

45
Pie Chart: 5
Pie Chart: 6
From the above diagram if we add the percentages of option B, C D we can
see that a massive 96% of the participants replied that they stay online for more
than 1 hour a day. 34% replied that they remain online more than 5 hours. Truly
the world is shifting to online gradually. News outlets are no exception. Hence
they are also busy to make best out of their audiences’ online visits.
4%
41%
21%
34%
How many hours on avarage do you spend
online each day?
A. Less Than 1
B. 1 to 2
C. More Than 2 But Less Than 5
D. More Than 5
41%
59%
Do you have any news related app installed
in your phone or tablet?
Yes
No

46
Pie Chart: 7
From Pie Chart: 6 we could see that 41% of the respondents has news apps
installed on their mobile devices. When asked about why they use app(s) if the
same stories can be accessed fusing mobile’s web browser, majority of them
replied that they use it for more personalised content and interactive features.
Although many participants replied a web browser is enough for them still we
cannot dismiss the growing popularity of apps. Especially after seeing the
download count of those apps on respective OS’s App markets.
Distributing e-newsletters, providing RSS feeds is indeed a good move for a news
publication is proved by the above diagram. Although 52% people have replied
in affirmative, the type of services they have subscribed to are free. That means
only site promotion through this mode is beneficial. A publication cannot accept
much monetary gain from these services. The other 48% were asked why they
didn’t feel the need to subscribe to one, at least free ones. The majority of them
replied that they do it to keep their email inboxes neat ad free from spams. I would
like to mention that some respondents told me that they once subscribed to such
services but due to high frequency of mails that made their inboxes a mess. So I
think news outlets should now concentrate on quality rather than frequency while
preparing these contents. Some good PR would also do wonders to draw public
to subscribe these services.
52%48%
Have you ever subscribed to any Email
Newsletter, RSS Feed or any news related
service online?
A. Yes
B. No

47
Pie Chart: 8
Pie Chart: 8 clearly shows that the downfall of print media would continue. The
reason is not quality or objectivity or anything but the growing popularity of other
medium, specifically of online medium where people can cross check facts with
other sources, share or express views almost instantaneously. Yes, the broadcast
media still has the upper hand on its two competitors but still the growing
popularity of online media is undeniable. Even broadcast media is utilizing the
web by introducing several dual screen campaign. Print media is not far behind,
Times of India’s concept ALIVE! where newspaper articles becomes interactive
upon using a smartphone camera app is a great example of how print media is
also using the web in a well-planned way. This type of experiments will be done
in the future as well. After all online media is a media where all other mediums
are mixed and collide. And these collusions will end up in inventions one day.
12%
47%
41%
What is the most comprehensive news
source in current scenario?
A. Print Media
B. Broadcast Media (TV/Radio)
C. Online Media

48
CONLUSION
At the end of my research work I found out that in current situation the demand
of web journalism is remarkably high. And it’s natural because the proliferation
online news outlets enables audience to read or watch news that intrigues them
on various websites at their preferred time now on preferred places also, thanks
to the smart portables. No longer does an overwhelming number of audience
(especially teens young adults) feel the need of watching news channels just to
remain updated about the news stories. Popularity of newspaper is also fast
declining. The situation is at its worst in the western countries. Some described
this internet demographic as impatient “remote control audience” who want the
information without any delay or additional unsought news. The same audience
also favours design and multimediality of the contents they are consuming as
figured out in the sample survey. To cater this audience and making sure that
their content reaches to a wider mass news editors, web developer, graphic
designers publicists all are working unitedly.
Online journalism is fast evolving and as it is being mixed with other forms of
media to re-assemble the fragmented audience across various platforms. This
convergence is making online media more powerful. Growing popularity of
social media and presence of citizen journalism websites are adding new
dimensions to it. Hence, it is safe to say that web journalism with all its advanced
methods of disseminating information, is the future of journalism and that future
looks pretty bright.

49
REFERENCE
• TEXTBOOK REFERENCE
1. Ray, T. (2009) Online Journalism – A Basic Text.
• WEB REFERENCE
1. http://about.thenewsmarket.com/top-10-tech-trends-journalism-keep-eye/
2. http://churnalism.com/faq
3. http://computer.howstuffworks.com/semantic-web.htm
4. http://danzarrella.com/what-is-viral-marketing.html
5. http://en.wikipedia.org
6. http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/893/802
7. http://jazaka.blogspot.in/2010/08/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-
online.html
8. http://journalism.about.com/od/writing/a/webwriting.htm
9. http://news.indiana.edu/releases/iu/2014/05/2013-american-journalist-
key-findings.pdf
10.http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2007/03/09/four-types-of-online-video-
journalism/
11.http://semanticweb.com/a-semantic-lift-for-social-journalism_b38496
12.http://thenewsaboutthenews.blogspot.in/2011/03/types-of-online-
journalism-websites.html
13.http://thesocialmediamonthly.com/how-to-promote-your-article-online/
14.http://webmarketingtoday.com/articles/checklist/
15.http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/000118.php/
16.http://www.digitize-me-captain.com/ten-online-journalism-trends-for-
2013/
17.http://www.google.co.in
18.http://www.journalismethics.info/online_journalism_ethics/new_media_tr
ends.htm
19.http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/too-many-rss-feeds-use-these-tools-to-
make-reading-easier/
20.http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-5-world-news-websites-guaranteed-
free-censorship/
21.http://www.masternewmedia.org/future-webpublishing-trends-beyond-
2014/

50
22.http://www.movavi.com/support/how-to/where-to-upload-video.html#2
23.http://www.mulinblog.com/geotagged-tweeting-of-a-royal-wedding-
combing-geotagging-news-story-with-social-media/
24.http://www.ngopulse.org/article/top-10-current-trends-online-journalism
25.http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/02/eight-trends-for-journalism-in-2011-
a-nieman-lab-talk-in-toronto/
26.http://www.portent.com/blog/seo/30_seo_tips_for_newpaper_and_m.htm
27.http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=List_of_citizen_journalism_
websites
28.https://storify.com/sohee/trends-in-online-journalism
29.https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/10-digital-trends-for-journalists-to-
track-in-2014/s2/a555509/
30.https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/10-digital-trends-for-journalists-to-
track-in-2014/s2/a555509/
31.https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/-how-bbc-guardian-innovating-
instagram/s2/a555771/
32.https://www.journalism.co.uk/news-commentary/-role-of-journalist-is-
changing-in-semantic-web-/s6/a554326/
________________

World Wide Web 2015 and Journalism

World Wide Web 2015 and Journalism

Empfohlen

Empfohlen

Weitere ähnliche Inhalte

Was ist angesagt?

Was ist angesagt? (20)

Andere mochten auch

Andere mochten auch (7)

Ähnlich wie World Wide Web 2015 and Journalism

Ähnlich wie World Wide Web 2015 and Journalism (20)

Kürzlich hochgeladen

Kürzlich hochgeladen (20)

World Wide Web 2015 and Journalism