Investigating Online
journalism in SA
In my attempt to study the use of online platforms as news
service providers, I visited the following websites; The New Age, IOL, 702
Eyewitness News, Looklocal and News 24 to investigate the culture of online
journalism in South Africa.
Allow me to expand of the two websites I found:
The New Age
I discovered that this website has a navigation bar
customised as a slide which it has placed at the top of the homepage as with
many sites. The site is not complicated, it also has a crawling navigation menu
right at the top highlighting top stories which visitors can easily see and are
eye catching. The graphic structure is simple
and draws in the reader even though there may be plenty other
things happening at the corners of your eyes.
Disadvantages
- The videos are on
Youtube which consumes time loading and buffering
- The structure of the website is elongated and tires the eye as one scrolls down
702 Eyewitness News
702 Being a radio station their menu is custom made to
attract visitors/users of the site to tune in conveniently to the station and
keep abreast with whats happening around the world, they have realised that in
order to achieve a bigger they needed to go online to allow access via audio
streaming to allow tuning into the station.
The navigation bar is on the left hand side of the screen and
the navigation menus leading to only the important details of the site are
found here. The rest of the other information is left right at the bottom for
those who care to know more their initiatives.
Advantages
- More interactive than
any newspaper owned websites, listeners have been in synced with the radio station
- Immediate interaction
through twitter, Facebook, Pinterest
- Videos are embedded
directly onto the website and videos play instantly
- Listeners are
involved in news reporting, through polls, reporting crime etc
On the other hand IOL and News 24 service a broader audience,
and IOL was found to be more appealing in bold orange and white, it is unique
and different from the mundane blue and white or white background colours.
The main stories are made to be clear and at the forefront
and home page of the site, this which draws the eye immediately.
The graphic structure is quiet complicated, and very similar
to The New Age structure and is meant for a broader audience, it has crawling
weather updates, hot topics, polls, interactive social media feeds and crawling
world currencies keeping updates on the economy of the world.
Overall I have learnt that a website is established for a
reason, being to share and access information easily, regularly and almost instantly.
It needs to be concise, clean, well structured, easy to use.
The lesson learnt is online forms of reporting are
increasingly on demand and the constant need to scale up the ICT systems,
meaning speed, conciseness and relevance of the content needs careful
consideration. Social Media reporting whether fits the profile of journalism or
not has taken over the style or writing and writing which has given journalism a
new face.
There competition online among companies and one has to bear
in mind that in order for your website to be noticed, it needs to be given
a unique and flexible structure and needs to keep up with the
technologies, to allow for growth.
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