JOUR 384 Online Journalism Lesson 6: Online Story Construction Metin Ersoy FCMS

Online Story Construction In newspapers and broadcasting this usually means producing a single story with a carefully constructed beginning, middle and end. This is linear construction. The beginnings leads to the middle, which leads to the end. If you break this relationship, for example by starting to read, views or hear the piece halfway through, you cannot expect to understand fully what they follows.

Online Story Construction Quite simply the essence of a story should be placed at the top of the pyramid, with further development and amplification (genişletme) of the main points below, before finally tapering out (sivri) to a base of background material. The invert pyramid shape, (ters piramit) from the top down, reflects both the importance and the amount that will be written.

Online Story Construction The pyramid shape offers two benefits. First, the reader can get the essence of the story by reading just the introduction. Second, newspaper sub-editors, pressed for space and time, can cut pyramid shaped stories from the bottom up and not destroy their sense.

Online Story Construction How should we write news for the Web?  Linear and nonlinear defined The distinguishing characteristic of the World Wide Web is hypertext, clickable links to other information on the same or other Web pages. Hypermedia adds audio, visual and video. The result is nonlinear information, a format that allows users to read and access information in any order they choose. In contrast, linear information is presented in a set order from beginning to end like a straight line. If readers want to understand the story, they must read it in the order it is presented. 

Online Story Construction How should we write news for the Web? Useful links needed George Landow, a Brown University professor and scholar of hypermedia, says hyperlinks must be useful, coherent and purposeful.  "When users follow links and encounter materials that do not appear to possess a significant relation to the document from which the link pathway originated, they feel confused and resentful," he writes in Hypermedia and Literary Studies. 

Online Story Construction How should we write news for the Web? Reader/writer relationship changing Using these principles, an online news story becomes more like a Sunday package with related sidebars than a simple news story. Whether the story contains links to other Web pages or links to topics within the same page, nonlinear structure changes the writer-reader relationship. The writer relinquishes control over the information to the reader. 

Online Story Construction Writing for Online… Jakob Nielsen (1999) offers three rules for writing on the Web. Be succinct (özlü olmak) – use no more than 50% of the text you would have written for the same story in print; Write for scannability – use short paragraphs, subheadings, and bulleted lists instead of long blocks of text; and Use hypertext - to split up long blocks of information into multiple pages.

Online Story Construction For example: The core journalistic skills of spotting, sourcing and developing a story are still essential, but the methods of constructing a story, say for television, can be different. Television demands the primacy of pictures and has a linear process of dissemination.

Online Story Construction İnternet haberciliğinde ters piramit modeli öne çıkmaktadır. Ters piramit yöntemi, gazetecilerin 1850’lerde telgrafla haber geçmek için geliştirdikleri bir tekniktir. O yıllarda telgraf hatlarındaki kesilmeler dolayısıyla, haberle ilgili en önemli unsurlar ilk başta geçiliyordu. Daha sonra bu yöntem, önemli haber yazım tekniklerinden biri olmuştur.  

Online Story Construction Ters piramit yönteminde haber iki kısımdan oluşur. Birinci bölüm olan giriş paragrafında olayın ne olduğu ve sonucu özetlenmiş olarak verilir.  Bu paragrafta, 5N+1K’yı oluşturan “ne”, “ne zaman”, “nerede” ve “kim” sorularının yanıtları verilir. ikinci bölüm ise haberin gövdesidir. Burada olayın “neden” ve “nasıl” olduğu kronolojik olarak açıklanır.

Online Story Construction Haberle ilgili en önemli unsurların ve sonucu içeren birkaç cümlenin girişte yer alması ve bundan sonra haberin detaylarına geçilmesinden dolayı ters piramit, İnternet gazeteciliğinde en çok tercih edilen haber yazın tekniklerinden birisidir. Çünkü İnternet kullanıcılarının web sayfalarını kelime kelime okumadığı, sayfaya sadece göz attığı bilinmektedir. Haberi monitörden okumanın güçlükleri de eklendiğinde, ters piramit modelinin İnternet gazeteleri için önemi ortaya çıkar.