Internet helps journalists

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)