Journalism in the modern age

Bill Thompson writing for the BBC, discusses teaching journalism and studying news consumption in the modern age.

A worrying/challenging/exciting time depending on how you look at it.

"The writing is on the wall for journalism and journalists says regular columnist Bill Thompson."

Meanwhile Paul Bradshaw lists tools and resources for the modern journalist to source and keep tabs on news online, including RSS readers, social networks, news alerts and related content.

"Here are a few tools and tricks that might improve your hunt for stories."

Meanwhile Jeff Jarvis talks about how the press itself is portrayed in reported news.

"One problem I’ve had with much discussion about the future of news lately is that it’s too press-centric."

Also worth checking out: The Telegraph Tech blog scans Ofcom's findings on how we use the media:

"the Government Office of Communications, began its review of the future of public service broadcasting today with the publication of Ofcom’s Second Public Service Broadcasting Review."

Writing (upside down) for the web

Print journalism has its own established method of drawing readers into stories with cunning, witty headlines, leading to longer in-depth articles and reports, but online the method is turned on its head.

Online, less time and energy is spent reading long passages or articles, thus headlines and opening paragraphs should bring to the front the facts; the who, what, when, where of the story.

Inverted Pyramid

The inverted pyramid is a writing style where the summary of the article is presented in the beginning of the article. This approach makes use of the “waterfall effect” well-known in journalism where writers try to give their readers an instant idea about the topic they’re reporting. The article begins with a conclusion, followed by key points and finally the minor details such as background information. Since web users want instant gratification, the inverted pyramid style, as supported by Nielsen, is important for web writing and for better user experience. From Smashing Magazine, Usability tips

Writing for the web

When creating, editing and designing content for the web, get the message across as quickly as possible.

To do that, say as little as possible, and put the most useful and relevant content first.

Speak plainly and openly and use a tone of voice that's appropriate to the audience. From Web design from scratch

Effective writing for page titles

Page titles should be such a simple aspect of Web page production. Yet a bit of thought, and broad understanding of a potential audience will go a long way to getting content more widely read.

Short, clean, meaningful and relevant. A title of the actual page your are on is what your are striving for. Not the name of the site, that can come afterwards, but when people are reading links, RSS feeds, and search engine results, the first half dozen words need to convey the purpose and benefits of the user visiting a page.

Don't try to be too clever, cryptic or pretend the content is something better than it actually is (visitors might be enticed once, but probably never again, and they might tell their friends, or the Web community!)

Nothing too long, but a brief and succint description of what the page is about. This may seem like more hard work than at first sight, but it will benefit the sites popularity among users and search engines alike.