She starts with Jonathan McCarthy, editor of Newsday.com. Highlights:
- Many copy editors are already doing the work that helps make web sites go; they just may not realize it. Good web sites rely on good headlines and tight copy. In our case here at Newsday we have asked copy editors to think a little differently about how headlines work and what might make a good web story. Aside from the copy, anyone in the newsroom should take some time to find out as much as possible about their site’s audience. That will aid them in understanding what works and what doesn’t.
- By relying on the Web for breaking news, stories for the print edition should be more analytical, longer and useful. In its best model, a good web site makes a good paper better.
- The best thing anyone can do to take control of his or her work on the web is to become engaged with the Internet. See what your competitors are doing. Think about who might want to read your work and how they might find it. Promote your work on the web by getting it linked in blogs and message boards. Suggest multimedia ideas (videos, audio, photo galleries).
2 comments:
"The best thing anyone can do to take control of his or her work on the web is to become engaged with the Internet. See what your competitors are doing. Think about who might want to read your work and how they might find it. Promote your work on the web by getting it linked in blogs and message boards."
So should this blog leave stealth mode? Should we promote it and seek traffic and links here? Certainly there are some folks that should be reading and aren't. If we try to create broader open buzz, would that change? Would it help journalism as a whole? Would it limit too much what we feel we can post?
Two thoughts:
1. Writing headlines for the web. We've talked about the need for a 'webhead' in CCI that would post to those little one liners. It's not technically very doable at the moment. But, certainly on my list for an upgrade. I think the concept of writing that web head also applies to things like, oh, say the lede of the story. If the readers and crawlers aren't picking up your data in the first couple lines, your lede is buried and readers pass you by.
2. As for shedding our invisibility cloak... Are we getting more and more interest from readers around the newsroom?
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