Why publishers need to innovate
Posted on | January 28, 2009 |
How effectively are we using digital media in our reporting?
I write regularly for some large news organisations. Some embrace suggestions for including new digital assets within stories. I’ve asked others for the opportunity to do basic stuff like provide extra links at the bottom of a story, and been told by some that it’s not doable because the IT guys don’t know how to format it properly. That makes embedding, say, a Google Street View of a specific site that you’re reporting about a total non-starter. As a journalist who has invested time and effort in the story, it frustrates me that I’m occasionally not allowed to add extras to the text, to achieve things that would be difficult or impossible in print.
A friend of mine who teaches writing at a prestigious university has also run into this problem. He is organising a group of students to write a column, as part of an experiment in collaborative journalism. But he can’t even produce a publicly facing web site for the class without back-flipping through several hoops, let alone start innovating with the things he puts online.
Here’s some of the stuff that I want to be able to insert into my stories:
- Timelines that put the story in context.
- Google Maps that lend a geographic element to a feature.
- Semantic networks that show how elements of the story are connected.
- Audio files with OPML links that let the reader listen to recorded interviews and jump to certain parts of them using hyperlinks within the text.
One of the great advantages of the web is also one of its downfalls: people have too much to read, and too little time to read it in. This is why hypertext was such a good idea in the first place. The truly innovative digital news story or feature should give you the story in an easily digestible and enjoyable form, but should then give you the tools to drill down and find more information. And readers should be able to extract that information from the digital assets that you collected while you were researching the story.
Mostly, what I see in online stories these days are links to stories from the same publication that are related, and the occasional photo slideshow. Useful and occasionally evocative, but at this stage in the game, not exactly innovative. Some newspapers only just seem to be getting the hang of reader comments.
This is an area where larger publishers need to watch out.
It worries me that while some larger sites enmired in bureaucracy resist this stuff, smaller, lone guns can go ahead and try it, unencumbered by needing the go-ahead from multiple layers of management. It means that as we transition to digital reporting, some of the larger players are going to miss out on some innovation that would enable them to further engage their audience.
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Word Herder is a site for writers and readers of both fiction and non-fiction. Surf here to read more about useful tools to help you organise your writing and optimise your research. I'm Danny Bradbury and I'm a freelance technology writer writing for the Guardian , the Financial Times, the National Post, Backbone magazine, MSN Canada, and the trade press. Here's a feed showing some of my work.
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February 9th, 2009 @ 9:00 am
Good day…..
First off, I am very glad that I found your blog. By day, I am a mild mannered marketer for a start up tech company, but at night, I pull a reverse Clark Kent, dress up like a journalist and help publish a small publication called “The Regina Streets Magazine”.
The magazine (which has been in existence for ten months) has run into one major problem. It does not matter what we write about - the print side gets zero feedback. Inflammatory articles that we ran solely to get someone to write a ‘letter to the editor’ are completely ignored.
So, long story short, we have decided to build a website, start hosting our articles and give people the option to comment as soon as they read something. This site is really an experiment in social media - are people more prone to comment when they read something online as opposed to in print? Is this a timing issue, or is it merely a sign that information consumers participate differently in the information game than they did ten years ago? Or, are my partner in the publication immune to criticism because of our age and horrific lack of experience?
Either way, it will make for some interesting times - I’ll most certainly be following your blog for any more advice you have for ‘wannabe journalists’….:-)
June 13th, 2009 @ 1:39 pm
Greg,
My own dirty little secret: I once edited a print-only mag (before the days of Web 2.0) where we used to get no letters at all. I had to get my mates to send them in, or even, in one or two cases, make them up. I think people are much more likely to comment online than in print because it’s so easy, and doesn’t require the steps of writing, getting and envelope and a stamp, and posting. Of course, it can also lead to less-considered replies, but that goes with the territory, I guess. I’m eager to see how your socmed experiment goes. Pls report in!