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Af Väliaho Tuomo, Helsingin
Sanomat
At the moment the web is much too silent, text based, motionless
and visually poor. The reason is obvious, of course: money. It's
cheaper and easier for publishers and mediahouses to move their
core contents to the web. This means text articles from the newspapers
and radio or television feed from the broadcasters.
Skabt til nettet
All this easily disregards the fact internet is a medium of
it's own right: active, interactive, visual. There should be content
in the web that are designed only for it -- true web contents
and true web journalism.
Most of the journalistic material of the net is textual regardless
the fact that the web is not the text medium. Jacob
Nielsen's usability tests show that only 16 percent of the
web surfers read the text, 79 percent only browse it. Reading
from the web is 25 percent slower than reading from the paper.
Computer screen stresses the eyes. Web surfers are also impatient
and click away from the pages easily. Back-button is the most
used button in browsers. And of course surfing with the modem
costs money.
Designing the web contents needs task analysis (where people
surf, why, when, how) and deeper thinking on the tools that internet
has to offer. So what is the web like as a medium? What is characteristic
for it?
Karakteristika
Here are some features:
- Private: people usually surf the web alone. TV is more social
medium
- On-demand: not dependent of date or hour
- Active: Surfing, not watching: web is 'lean forward', TV
'lean back'
- Interactive: reader can control the content, feedback, games
- Electric: sounds, music, motion, computer programming
- Visual: almost limitless space for the photos, photo stories
and galleries = new opportunity for the photo journalism
- Online: instant feedback, online news
- Community: newsgroups, chat, email, weblogs
- Storage: data bases, archives, search engines
And perhaps the most important feature: individual EXPERIENCE,
emotional or intellectual, that is created keeping the tools mentioned
above in mind and in use.
The experience could be explained with the comparison of going
to the movies or watching the television. The amount of concentration
is much higher in the movies, it is a lot more intimate experience
than watching the television. Experience -- much similar to the
one at the movies -- can also be obtained with the web although
there are no THX or dolby surround systems (yet).
Gør en forskel
There are hundreds of millions web pages and hundreds of different
news sites in the web. Readers have to click to your web site
but why do you think that they will? Is your site different from
the others or better, do people remember it? This is why it is
important to leave mark in the reader's brain that »this
site was cool, I want to come back again«. It is important
to differ from the rivalries. It is also important that readers
remain on your pages and your stories without clicking immediately
away.
What people seek from the internet? Facts and news of course
but I still think that entertainment, games, chats etc. are more
important for the most of the people. It is important to realize
that you can combine both sides. It is possible to do content
that tell about important issues with more visual, interactive
-- and entertaining -- ways.
At Helsingin Sanomat (the biggest daily newspaper in Scandinavia)
these kind of thoughts led to dropping off the text based articles.
If the article were published in the paper it would have hundred
times more readers than if it was published in the internet. In
addition there are 300 journalist in HS. already writing the text
on every subject possible. So our web page was full of text (morning
paper, online news). It certainly needed something different,
'something alive', so we decided to concentrate in multimedia.
Perhaps the innovative journalism in the web is possible only
if the internet proves to be profitable. Perhaps. Some day.
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