Page 81 - Convergent Journalism an Introduction Writing and Producing Across Media

Traditional News Writing and the Web

Text is the easiest content to produce for the Web. It’s easier to
distribute words via the Web than it is via the printed page. Therefore,
it’s not surprising that most news on the Web comes in the form of the
printed word.
The first efforts by newspapers and television stations to put their
content on the Web resulted in the faithful reproduction of their
printed news stories and TV scripts on a Web page. This is what is
derisively known as “shovelware.” Shoveling something already pro-
duced for one medium into the new form of the Web is easy and cheap.
Today most people in the news industry agree the Web is capable of
standing on its own as a platform for news creation and delivery. The
only question left to answer is “How?”
The first answer to that question is by sharpening of already famil-
iar skills. Take everything you’ve learned about writing the most basic
story for print and hold on tight to those rules. Nielsen has often stated
that Web users aren’t readers. They scan. Thus, you want to put
multiple entry points into a story. The use of headlines, decks, sub-
heads, and other “breakout” formats can give your readers the chance
they need to latch on to your story and stick with it. You need to 71
cut out flowery or promotional language and stick to the bare bones,
adding detail where it makes sense.
If this sounds familiar, it might be because you’ve read it earlier in
this book. The inverted pyramid remains one of Nielsen’s preferred
styles of Web writing and was a large portion of Chapter 3. To aid you
here, we will review the structure of an inverted pyramid story, taking
into account the special considerations you need to keep in mind when
you write it for the Web.

Headline
Writing a headline is a specialized skill that most reporters are not
expected to master. It’s the copy editor’s job in most news shops, but
it is a good place to start thinking about writing for the Web. When
writing a headline, less is more and the same is true of the stories
themselves.
The headline is tricky because it has to do several things all at once
and in a very short space. The headline must be attention grabbing and
make it clear to any reader what the story is about. It also must not
repeat the lead.
You must distill a story and its headline into its two most important
parts. The first part of any story you need to capture is what is new.