"Journalism Next" Chapter 1

Understanding the Internet

In the first chapter of Journalism Next, Mark Briggs discusses the vital role of the Internet in modern journalism and outlines some of the concepts most central to 21st-century media:

• Bytes: The byte is the basic unit of computer information storage, with one byte being the equivalent of a single typed character. A kilobyte comes out to roughly 1,000 bytes, a megabyte to 1 million bytes, a gigabyte to 1 billion bytes, and so on.
• Web server: Web servers are the storage facilities from which sites are uploaded onto the wider Internet.
• RSS: RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, is a service wherein a person is regularly sent a series of updates from pre-selected websites.
• File Transfer Protocol: When files are too big to be transferred by e-mail, they are transferred via FTP.

The Language of Cyberspace

The Internet has a language all its own that, once mastered, gives the user the ability to express himself in multiple forms across the world's most far-reching medium. Here are some of the different dialects:

• HTML: HTML tells your web browser how to display information uploaded from a web server. It is the architectural blueprint of most web pages.
• CSS: CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, allows designers to enhance the aesthetic appeal of websites constructed with HTML. Rather than altering the essential structure established with HTML, CSS can be used to alter font, text size, color, and other stylistic aspects of a web site.
• XML: Used in conjunction with HTML, primarily to standardize the appearance of RSS feeds.