Nairobi — Two unrelated events happened in Nairobi this week that will one day change the face of journalism in this country.

First, the continental Internet Service Provider, UUNET, announced it would begin offering wireless Internet with improved speed. The company was coming in third after Safaricom and Ericonet announced similar ventures last week, hot on the heels the end of Telkom's monopoly of the gateway to the Internet in June.

Second, United States International University registered its first batch of students for a course in Online Journalism. When the university opens for its next academic year in September, it will be the first time Online Journalism is taught in this corner of the globe. The sum total is that the Kenyan media may soon have no reason to drag feet on this new form of journalism that after a decade is still causing ripples even in the West.

'Netizenry'

But what is online journalism? Is it really a different form of journalism? Haven't we seen newspaper stories, TV and radio news segments on websites, which are merely online editions of the traditional media? And how viable would this be in a country like Kenya, where netizenry - "citizenry" of the net - is still basically a pastime for whiz kids?

Yes, this is a new form of journalism, one that employs new storytelling skills. Also taught at an advanced level as New Media, this form of journalism toys with a mix of audio, video, photos, infographics, maps, animation and text to tell a story. Unlike the traditional print and broadcast, this strand of journalism exclusively employs interactivities - discussion forums, newsgroups, chat, email, listservs - in stories. Besides, ethics lands a whole new meaning here.

For this kind of journalism to work in Kenya, we will need fast Internet. Real broadband; not the kind UUNET, Ericonet and Safaricom are boasting - speeds no faster than dialup on a regular 56k modem.

Mousing

Only people who have browsed the net at places like London's Heathrow airport, Frankfurt, and New York will know what fast here really means. When the Telkom monopoly gets truly behind us, competitive gateways enter the market and the country gets into real broadband Internet, netizens will be amazed at the barrage of information that the click of a mouse opens.

And that is when online journalism will really make sense. People logging onto the Nation online or The People online will no longer be content with just reading the story. They will have the alternative choice of watching it on a webcast, tuning in on Web-radio, perusing its accompanying picture slideshow or digging deeper into related graphics - all stemming off one screen.

It is this eventuality that the United States International University has foreseen and prodded its student journalists to pursue. And the University of Nairobi School of Journalism, presently merging with the Kenya Institute of Mass Communication, is considering a brave move toward a full-fledged online journalism (or New Media) concentration.

New Media, this emerging communications forum that combines so many computer technologies, is ordinarily taught in one of two ways: a) student reporters are trained to use all this technology to produce journalism on a converging platform, the focus being on the reporting side of the production, or b) an advanced level of the program is retooled to include stuff like games and movies, interactive TV, and different ways of communicating.

Whichever way the training goes, students enrolling in online journalism soon find out that they are multi-talented because they are required to have solid foundation in the traditional media in the first place - they must be good reporters and writers, passionate broadcasters or photojournalists.

Economics

But what guarantee does this up and coming breed of journalists have that they will find jobs after graduation? The answer, some say, lies in what drives the media industry - economics. "We'll be looked at by people who are saying, 'If I can get somebody who can do three things for the price of one and not have to pay them any more, I'd rather do that," says Prof Sreenath Sreenivasan of the respected Columbia University Journalism in the Online Journalism Review of the University of Southern California. That change is about to hit Kenya.

Kodi Barth teaches journalism at United States International University-Nairobi.