Book Review: Online Journalism — A Basic Text

Internet Journalism made simple
Online Journalism — A Basic Text by Tapas Ray; Foundation Books; Price: Rs.250 ($5); 266 pp.

With over 1.2 billion people surfing on the world wide web everyday, it is only a matter of time before news reporting and journalism also go online. Widely acknowledged as the future of the news media worldwide, online journalism is the most interactive news medium ever invented; that’s its USP (unique selling proposition). According to one school of thought as internet access prices fall, the decline of newspapers and television news media is inevitable. Youth, especially in technologically advanced countries, are increasingly ditching conventional news media and logging onto the world wide web to surf online news portals, because they want more than news. They want interactivity, to respond immediately.

According to a survey report of the Paris-based World Association of Newspapers (WAN), during 1995-2003 the annual circulation of print newspapers fell by 5 percent in America, 3 percent in Europe and 2 percent in Japan. According to WAN projections, if this decline continues, by the year 2040 daily newspapers will cease to exist in the print form. WAN also estimates that in the not too distant future, online operations of global news corporations will be more important than print.

In India the scenario is slightly different. Though the internet as a news medium is relatively new and untested, almost all major newspapers have started providing downloadable versions of newspapers. This is because conventional wisdom in the country is that journalism on the net is the same as in print, differing only in presentation. In short, online journalism is nascent — if not unknown — in India.

Against this backdrop of the growing popularity of the internet as the new news medium, Tapas Ray’s Online Journalism — A Basic Text, which introduces the internet to journalists and advises them on how to use it proficiently, is timely and welcome. The 12-chapter compendium introduces the reader to the mind-boggling possibilities of net journalism. Starting with the history of the net which took shape from ARPAnet in 1961-62 in the Massachussetts Institute of Technology and the Pentagon, this textbook morphs into a how-to manual covering web authoring and publishing, revenue generation within the law, ethics and a peek into the future as media converge and broadband access is universalised.

"In this book I discuss, among other things, what news organisations are doing in practice as against the things that can be accomplished with the internet, since this medium has unique characteristics that take it beyond the print and broadcast media in certain ways," writes Ray, an electronics engineering graduate of IIT-Kharagpur who pressed on to acquire a Masters degree and doctorate in communications at Ohio University. Ray is currently the director of Umeschandra College, Kolkata and also visiting faculty at Jadavpur University.

For print journalists aspiring to go online, the most interesting chapters are ‘Annotative Reporting and Open-source Journalism’, and ‘Computer Assisted Journalism or Reeporting (CAJ/ CAR)’. In these chapters Ray details ways and means to use the net as an effective medium of communication for the mass media. Likewise the chapter titled ‘Preparing Online Packages’ will prove useful for journalists who wish to plan, code, write programs and design their own webpages with the objective of broadening their readership base.

The chapter titled ‘Revenue, Ethics and Law’ is a must-read for all those who are currently managing online news sites as also those who want to promote new ones. Ray discusses in detail the various subscription revenue models of news publications such as the Albuqurque Journal, Business 2.0, Winnipeg, and the Times, London. In terms of advertising revenue, the author predicts that by the year 2007, 4.4 percent of all global advertising revenue will be generated from online space sales. The book also provides an overview of advertising and marketing techniques being successfully used to generate all important revenue.

Summing up, Online Journalism is recommended reading for media entrepreneurs, traditional media publishers anxious to get onto the internet as also for journalists aspiring to careers in web publishing enterprises which are recording a 22 percent rate of annual growth.