Ian Reeves

Which readers most likely read to end of story?  Online, tabloid or broadsheet?

How readers consume news online  Red line is online, yellow is tabloids, blue is broadsheets  From Poynter’s Eyetrack study (eyetrack.poynter.org) – fascinating insight into how readers’ eyes move across page and screen

Eyetrack findings  Online users most likely to read to end of story once they’ve started  Two types of reader – methodical and scanners. 50/50 split between types online.  Text very important for online readers  Readers tend to focus on headlines first, often almost ignoring pictures  Navigation touchpoints read first - navigation bars, teasers and story lists that get primary attention  Focus on top left corner is decreasing  Scrolling no longer a no-no  “Voice of the reader” items – comments, polls etc - important

Eyetrack findings  In both the print and online, readers who retained most information about a story had read the version with the most ‘alternative’ structure – i.e not using traditional narrative.

Writing for the web  The basic rules of news writing still apply – stick to them  But you have many more elements at your disposal – so think about the overall structure  Use multiple entry points to the story where possible  Make sure each one works in its own right  See Chapter 5 of Convergent Journalism (Stephen Quinn and Vincent F Filak) – in module notes

Writing guidelines  Know your audience  Develop a plan before you start – how will your newsgathering take shape?  Keep it lively and concise. Active verbs. A more functional style. But observe print’s grammatical rules.  Don’t forget to explain – the ‘nut graph’ is important  Rewrite each update properly. Don’t just add to top.  Break it down into digestible chunks and link to them from each other.  Don’t make readers guess what any element is about  Link, link, link  Be creative if you can

Writing specifics  Brevity  Use simple sentences  Use active verbs  Keep paragraphs short  Use crossheads  Sparingly use boldface for impact  Lists work better online than in print  Do what you do best, link to the rest  Don’t use links like ‘click here’ or ‘more info’ within your story  Make sure linked words are a good indication of where the link goes  Five or six words is maximum length of phrase to link

When and what to link  Link to sources that provide either: 1. attribution 2. context 3. ‘Easter Eggs’ – treats for the reader  Robert Niles: 1. Does the URL to which I am referring the reader reward him or her with additional content that a reader of this story likely did not know, or know how to get easily? 2. Does the text I am selecting to link this text give the reader an obvious clue as to what the hyperlinked page will contain? 3. Am I using the shortest possible amount of text to provide that clue? 4. Would the content of the linked text, or the context surrounding it, reasonably mislead the reader into believing that the linked page contains something other than what it does?

Chunking  Non-linear stories can be broken up into individual elements, with the user given some control over the order in which they are read/watched  Each individual item might be linear in its own right, so the collective experience is sometimes described as multilinear  Different angles and conflicting points of view can be layered in to the story or examined in more detail

Chunking  You can’t be sure which element of the story your reader is going to arrive at first  Chances are they will have landed on one of the elements of your story via a link from a search engine or a social networking recommendation  Each element of the story must work hard to explain the story succinctly, without becoming repetitive

Linear online stories  Remember, not all online multimedia stories are non-linear  Audio slideshow is an example of a linear technique that can work as a standalone online multimedia story

Further resources  Convergent Journalism (Quinn and Filak)  Eyetrack:  Eyetrack round-up Study-May-Surprise-You.html  Mindy McAdams:  International Center for Journalists: ws_online ws_online  Jeff Jarvis: you-do-best-link-to-the-rest/ you-do-best-link-to-the-rest/  Robert Niles: