Internet helps journalists

JAKARTA: In this competitive information age, the Internet has become one of the most complete sources for journalists, authors of a book on the Internet said yesterday.

"Journalists could gather information from the other side of the world more quickly, efficiently, and completely by working with Internet," said Elliot King, a co-author of The On-Line Journalist, as quoted by Antara.

King was speaking in a tele-panel discussion on the book he co-wrote with Randy Reddick, which has been translated to Indonesian under the title Internet Untuk Wartawan: Internet Untuk Semua Orang. The discussion was co-organized by the United States Information Service and the Indonesian Obor Foundation.

King was talking from Washington. His correspondents here were academician Onno W. Purwo from the Bandung Institute of Technology, journalist Ninok Leksono of the Kompas daily, Alexander Irwan from the Bisnis Indonesia daily in Jakarta, and Asjhar Imron of Radnet and Herman Basuki of the Surabaya Post in Surabaya.

King said journalists could communicate with many novel news sources at home and abroad and probe issues which would help them to write more complete news stories.

Another journalist participating in the discussion, Kemala Atmojo, said Internet provides only general information, rather than in-depth information, which he believed would be more beneficial for investigative reporting.

"Investigative journalists would be better off not to rely on the Internet as their source of reports, because no classified information can be found there," Kemala was quoted by Antara as saying.

Alexander Irwan agreed with Kemala, but asserted that Internet could help journalists a lot in writing their reports and articles. (08)