Some journalism courses are all about building Web sites. Other courses include exercises in writing for online media along with other forms of journalistic writing. Another kind of course focuses on doing journalism for online outlets. Ward, former BBC newsman and an educator at the University of Central Lancashire in Britain, has written a text well suited for those courses.

Beginning with a clear explanation of how online and print differ, Ward also explains why journalism online is still journalism: Researching and writing form the core, regardless of the medium. He covers research and Internet sources briefly and includes some key search tips that today's students need to master. A short chapter on basic HTML and a substantial chapter on page and site design round out the book.

Two chapters set this text apart: "Writing" and "Online Story Construction" (47 pages total). Relying on BBC News Online practices for many of his rationales, Ward offers advice on how to write for a speeding online reader eager to click: "You have to think hard about the news triggers in your story, be ruthless in your selection but still attempt to hit as many of them as possible in your first 25 words."

He devotes almost three pages to specific tips on writing headlines and subheadings for online copy; unfortunately, only two pages cover writing link text and summaries. Three pages on how to "chunk" a story provide extremely useful instructions on this difficult process.  "[Y]ou will chunk and then write. You can use the hard news style for your latest factual development, then narrative in a separate chunk to 'humanize' the story. This separation allows you to adopt different writing styles tailored to the content" (pages 130-31).

I did not examine the book's companion Web site, which provides additional materials.

Bottom line: An excellent text for a course devoted to reporting and writing for online journalism outlets. Could be a bit meatier in some areas, such as creation of links and overall story structure.

To De Wolk's "Introduction to Online Journalism"