Case Study of Five Online News Publications in the Los Baños Science Community

Abstract

The widening scope of information technology has invaded even the field of journalism, including the way news is presented. Many organizations that produce newsletters are now into online news as well, either as electronic newsletters or as part of their websites. Some have even abandoned the print in favor of the online.

This study aims to identify reasons for going online, how the online news publications are produced, the general differences between their online and print versions in terms of writing style and design, and the perceived advantages or disadvantages of online over the print.

Writers, editors, web designers and a system administrator were interviewed representing five online news publications produced in the Los Baños Science Community. These five publications were PCARRD News and Events, BIC Chronicle UPOU News Briefs, DevCom M@il and UPLB Horizon.

The most common reasons for going online were (a) it is cheaper to produce and distribute than print: (b) it improves the image of the organization: and (c) it fulfills the function of the office.

The process of producing an online news publication generally followed the same steps as print. For the three publications that had print versions, the online version was produced after the newsletter was printed or was readied for printing. In these publications, too, the writers of the online were also the same writers for the print version.

No difference was observed nor reported in the way the news is written between the online and the printed version. All of the article in the print were included online. While some elements of web writing were evident in the online news, the style of writing was still generally for print. The most common web writing elements used were the inverted pyramid style and the use of hyperlinks.

There was a tendency for two web-based publication (PCARRD New and Events, and BIC Chronicle) to copy the appearance of the print versions. The reason may be so that readers would identify that these are the same publications coming from this particular organization.

The choice to produce an electronic newsletter that was purely text (no pictures) by the UPLB Horizon was more to meet the needs of its online readers based in the UPLB campus. These readers had difficulty accessing e-mails that had pictures or attachments.

The advantages of the online news publication over the print were (a) cheaper to produce and distribute; (b) faster to disseminate news; (c) supplements the coverage of the print version; (d) meets the new preferences for news source of readers, and (e) can be printed.

The disadvantages were: (a) can be ready only by those with Internet access; (b) subject to technical difficulty like power failures and unavailable (or down) server; and (c) technical capacity of e-mail provider.