Story Review

Links for October 31, 2009:

• Cabinet forum on local news: Lots of Qs looking for As -
• Journalism Flash Forward: Could the Guardian’s ‘beat blogging’ posts be the future of journalism – “The Guardian group announced three new journalism vacancies last week. Headline news in itself these days. But with these new ‘beat blogger’ positions, the Guardian has unveiled what could very well be the future of journalism.”
• No news to report? Are you sure about that? – “In the mid-ninties I was working for the Gloucester Citizen as a senior reporter, somtimes helping out on the newsdesk (…) an unexpected thing happened; the editor’s door opened, a shaft of sunlight appeared and a voice issued forth saying: “I need you to go and relaunch the Forest of Dean edition”. Truly, I was blessed. In the mid-nineties [the Forest of Dean] had one of the most bloody miserable, unhelpful, intransigent police forces that it’s ever been my misfortune to have to ring on an early shift.”
• Online Protests – why do they make me uneasy? – “with anything that’s powerful, there is always a dark side”

Links for October 30, 2009:

• Wordpress themes for designers – .net magazine – “For many designers (including me), the idea of fiddling around with PHP isn’t in the least bit appealing. But don’t be put off! In this tutorial, aimed specifically at designers, I’ll be covering some basics and explaining why it’s not that scary to look under the hood. You’ll learn about the basic structure of a WordPress theme, how to manipulate the files to add your own customisation, how to incorporate some basic plug-ins, and where to take your skills next in order to create your own theme. We’ll even touch on how to use WordPress as a CMS while keeping the PHP to an absolute minimum.”
• Twitter’s Business Model: Brilliant or Non-Existent? – Conversation Starter – HarvardBusiness.org – “It has become a popular game, even among investors who should know better, to dismiss Twitter based on lack of a business model. But there is a difference between not generating income and lack of a business model. I believe that, in just a few short months, Twitter will show the world that not only do they have a business model, but that theirs is the most sophisticated around.”
• cybersoc.com: guide to using social media (in 6500 words) -
• Create a Free Website , Free Flash Website Builder at Wix.com -

Links for October 19, 2009:

• Semantics (and Metadata) at the New York Times « End of Business as Usual – Glenn’s External blog – “Yet another great presentation from the SemTech 2009 conference this past June in San Jose. This presentation is on Semantics at the New York Times.”
• Headlines and Deadlines: Google Wave, transparency* and engagement – “Google Wave is going to be what a journalist wants make it – crowdsourcing, debating, real-time news-gathering, breaking news, image sharing, archived events, live-blogging, polling, asking for feedback – but, I think, the most exciting thing it offers is the opportunity to change the way we think about interaction and engagement.”

Kevin Matthews writes over at his blog:

(…) we know from reader research that readers very rarely get beyond the third paragraph.

What’s more, reader comments are becoming as important to the audience as the story.

So, if reader behaviour surveys are to be believed, most readers will read the start of the story and skip to the comments below.

I commented that this could be seen as a case for journalists to write shorter stories for online and save the meat for the comments where they can truly engage with the readers. The more I think about it, the more things I can come up with for the plus side of such an approach.

Let’s see what it would look like. You’d have a website where every story is no longer than three paragraphs. That seems amply sufficient: you’d have the intro to tell people what the story is and a second paragraph to explain why it should matter to them. You’d also have a third paragraph for those stories where you just can’t go with only two, but those should be the exception not the rule.

Only the stories that attract at least some response from the readers will be pursued and expanded with background and meatier analysis in the comments. This would allow journalists to have a genuine conversation with their readers and would also be very efficient because each story would get minimum resources until proven worthwhile.

It could work, couldn’t it? In fact, I bet it is already working somewhere. I haven’t found where yet, but let me know if something comes to mind.

Links for October 15, 2009:

• Kevin Matthews: Comments and the death of the author: Putting the reader at the start and heart of the story – “… if reader behaviour surveys are to be believed, most readers will read the start of the story and skip to the comments below.”
• Headlines and Deadlines: Using animation to tell a news story – “I made my first cartoon using Xtranormal today; I know it’s a site usually used for making training and presentation tools, but I was interested in whether it might work for journalists. “
• Jo Wadsworth: Warts and all – @timesjoanna: ‘”There’s a man with an otter’s corpse here to see you” The joys of local journalism’
• Kevin Matthews: Twitter: the political tool greater than the party political broadcast? But by God it can bite – “Undoubtedly inspired by the success of the Obama social media campaign who managed to turn tweets to votes, so the Brits have arrived.”
• FREE PowerPoint Twitter Tools | SAP Web 2.0 – A beta version of PowerPoint Twitter Tools is now available for testing. See and react to tweets in real-time, embedded directly within presentations, either as a ticker or refreshable comment page.
• Jo Wadsworth: Advertising moving online – but where? – “… social media allows brands to bypass mass media entirely.”