Week 3: Online Journalism

1. Week 3: Online Journalism

2. Today! • Lecture on Writing your first post • Posting and writing your first post with: at least three links, one photo, three tags, SEO headline and perfect copy. • Lens Stories? • How is the web changing journalism? Out of Print and Stewart clip • Peer Edit • Group Edit

3. For Next Week! • Your next story. Do some pre-reporting. 500 word free choice post. • Come to class ready to pitch. • Complete Wordpress Tutorial. • Read. • Set up a twitter account.

4. A reminder! • All info posted on www.jaimejordan.com • This info is updated after class.

5. Writing your first post • Make sure you have all the facts. Make sure you know what your story is about and that it is- in fact- a story. • Do you have the answers to the 5 W’s? • Who? What? Where? When? Why? And sometimes How? • The story is in the reporting.

6. Reporting • Journalists mine raw data for their stories from three sources -- observation, documents (writing, audio and video tapes, web sites, etc.), and interviews. • But of these, interviews are the most fundamental. Listening to other people answer your questions and tell their stories is the way you get your story. • Pay attention to your boredom.

7. 10 interview guidelines • 1. Prepare.Learn as much as you can in the time allowed about the person you will interview, including personal details, and the subject you are writing about. Then draw up a list of the specific questions you plan to ask, in the order you plan to ask them. Make your list of questions follow a kind of arc or plot, so that the interview will have some form to it. You can organize questions along "plot lines" so they are chronological, thematic, analytical, etc.2. Be at your top form in interviews. In other words, an interview is when you need to be most alert, most informed, and most engaged. Proritize accordingly. Prepare yourself physically and mentally towards this goal. If things go well in your interviews, everything will go well in your stories - you will learn vital information, get good quotes, create a good new source, and so on. By contrast, if things go poorly in the interview everything will go wrong - your story will be inaccurate (which leads to endless more trouble), uninteresting, you lose readers and make enemies.3. Be forthright and direct. Interviews are all about building trust with your sources, no matter how short or long the interviews are. The best way to build trust, besides preparing in the two ways mentioned above, is to be forthright and direct in the interview. People often have a bad image of journalists. They think that what they say will be taken out of context, skewed, even misquoted. By being forthright and direct, you reassure your sources otherwise and make them understand that you will listen carefully, including to their misgivings, and that they are in control at all times.4. Explain yourself. Immediately give your name and say who you are writing for.5. Ask if you can ask some questions. Next, explain the story you are reporting. "I'm writing a story about the campus robbery last night." "I'm doing a story about international transfer students to St. Thomas." "Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?"

8. 6. Eplain you want to understand their point of view. If you say that you are writing a story about, say, the Mayor's new policy about immunizing people against Monkey Pox, you might tell your source: "I understand that you have written an academic paper arguing that Monkey Pox isn't a serious enough health threat to justify mass inoculations. It would be important to reflect that point of view in my story, could I ask you to elaborate?"7. Go in with a specific story idea but be prepared to change it. This is critical. Having a fairly clear idea of what your story is about is important to let your sources know you are knowledgeable, focused, and professional. At the same time, they won't talk to you if they think you aren't really listening to understand their point of view. You have to be ready - indeed, eager - to listen to what they have to say and to change your own viewpoint after you have listened as deeply and thoroughly as you can to them.8. Say "Please help me understand."9. Listen for quotes, and listen for information. These are the two things you are always going for in an interview. Always know, in your own mind, which of the two you are going for primarily during an interview. Of course, you are always listening for both, but most of the time you are leaning heavily toward one or the other. The most important thing you can do as a reporter on a story is to understand what your source is trying to tell you. This is a matter of listening for information. Sometimes you may say to him or her, "Feel free to go off the record and please just explain to me what this is all about." A person may well relax at that point and give you the information you need. Another time, when you feel you understand the basic story well enough, you can tune your ear to quotes more, and ask questions that are designed more to elicit quotes than information."10. Shut up and listen. The most powerful and important practice in the world - not to mention journalism -- is listening. Learn how to ask good questions and then be quiet and let your source tell you what he or she wants.

9. A Writing Guide: The Four Boxes • The Four Boxes is a story structure that’s adaptable to almost any conceivable journalistic form – news story, feature piece, personality profile, issue analysis, trend story, investigative piece, and many more. It answers the need for every piece of journalism to be timely, relevant, useful, and aesthetically pleasing enough to attract a reader’s attention and to spend some quality time reading. • Learning it is a bit like a musician the musical scales. It takes only a little while to memorize, and a lifetime to master. But you can start producing credible, useful and readable journalism very quickly by simply following this paint-by-the-numbers method: • Box #1:The Anecdotal Lead • Box #2:The Cosmic Paragraph • Box #3: The Motley Middlei) Statistics, Quotes, Anecdotes  ii) Chronologies iii) Paraphrase-quote, Paraphrase-quote, Paraphrase-quote.   iv) Bricks & Pillows • Box #4:The Kicker

10. Start with your headline • Headlines should be optimized for search engines. • This means writing straightforward headlines that search engines will pick up on.

11. Next, your lede • There are a number of different types of ledes. • A lede is the first line of your story and above all, it must hook your reader. • Your lede may take a number of forms: An anecdotal lede. A scene setting lede. Regardless, your lede needs to hook your reader.

12. Box #1: The Anecdotal Lead • Professional journalists call this the “anecdotal lead,” and it is the most common way to begin a piece of journalism. It can be used with many kinds of articles – profiles of individual people, trend stories, feature stories, analytical pieces, news events, and many other types. Generally it’s only a paragraph long, or two at the most. An anecdote is only a small story, a small event that in some way illustrates the larger story that you are writing about. It’s helping, in trying to find the best anecdote to start your piece, to ask yourself: “If I were at a dinner with friends and wanted to tell this story, instead of writing it, what’s the story I would start by telling?”For example, in the case of the story about the migrant workers, I might start by telling the story of Maria, a migrant who lives in Mapleville: “One morning, Maria phoned home during her coffee break and learned that her six-year-old son was running a fever of 103 degrees. She rushed to her boss for permission to drive her child to the hospital, but instead was coldly told: ‘Don’t bother coming back if you leave, because you won’t have a job waiting for you.’”That little anecdote could be a good lead for an article about poor working conditions and lack of human rights for Mexican migrants working at the local vegetable canning plant in Mapleville. 

13. After that, your nutgraf • Your nutgraf is a summary of your story. It explains why you are writing. • The nut graf tells the reader what the writer is up to; it delivers a promise of the story’s content and message. • It’s called the nut graf because, like a nut, it contains the “kernel,” or essential theme, of the story. • AtThe Philadelphia Inquirer, reporters and editors called it the “You may have wondered why we invited you to this party?” section.

14. Box #2: The Cosmic Paragraph • This section is what professional journalists call the “nut” or the “nut paragraph.” It is where the journalist explains the wider significance of the small anecdote that started the story for the whole community, state, nation, or whatever is the article’s full context. It’s usually a paragraph long, or two at the most. In addition to showing the lead anecdote’s larger significance, the nut paragraph also often includes brief allusions to important parts of the story ahead. For that reason, the nut paragraph is sometimes also called the “billboard paragraph,” because it gives readers quick highlights of the article to come. For an investigative story about migrant workers at the local cannery, the two-paragraph story “nut’ might read something like this:“Maria’s story is one of dozens of nearly identical tales told by seasonal workers at the Peppy Foods plant in Mapleville, and at the company’s sixteen other food-packing plants throughout the Midwest. In interviews with more than three dozen workers, a picture emerged of a company that routinely exposes its seasonal workers to hazardous working conditions even while it denies them access to medical care, affordable housing, and a minimum hourly wage.“In the most egregious case of abuse, one Mexican worker, according to county health records obtained yesterday, died after complaining of headaches but was forced to continue working until he collapsed. State legislators say this case and dozens of others documented by Migrant Rights International, a human rights group, are certain to influence a controversial “illegal immigration” bill that is supported by Governor Tim Plenty and scheduled for a vote this week.” 

15. The nut graf has several purposes:It justifies the story by telling readers why they should care. • It provides a transition from the lead and explains the lead and its connection to the rest of the story. • It often tells readers why the story is timely. • It often includes supporting material that helps readers see why the story is important. • It is a paragraph that says what this whole story is about and why you should read it. It’s a flag to the reader, high up in the story: You can decide to proceed or not, but if you read no farther, you know what that story’s about.”

16. Here’s an example: Lede: Worried about her weight, Sarah swore off dessert and cut back on meal portions. Eventually, she began skipping breakfast and was just nibbling at lunch and dinner. Within six months, she dropped 13 pounds. Nutgraf: A weight-loss success story? Not at all. Sarah is only 10 years old. Her diet cost her 20 percent of her weight. Children such as Sarah, a Philadelphia 4th-grader who’s too embarrassed to let her real name be used, are at the forefront of a disturbing new trend affecting the health of U.S. children: dieting.

17. What next? • From there you tell the rest of your story. Maybe you go back to your anecdote. • This is where you begin to bring in quotes from your sources and you tie them together with your own narration. • Ultimately, the rest of the story finishes answering the questions.

18. Box #3: The Motley Middle • This is the most free-form and varied part of journalistic articles. Pick up a newspaper or news magazine and peruse a few pieces to see how many different ways writers develop their stories. Whatever their form, however, the middle section of stories always must support the statements and allegations made in the “lead” and “nut graf” sections.In addition, when you boil it down, the middle section of nearly all journalistic stories are all built from three building blocks which are: 1) Anecdotes, 2) Quotes, and 3) Statistics. And the three most common ways to organize the middle sections are roughly as follows: • 1. Anecdote, Quote, Statistic -- Tell an anecdote (one paragraph), give a quote (another paragraph), give just one or two carefully chosen statistics (a one-sentence paragraph). Repeat, repeat, repeat, all the way to the end.2. Chronologies -- The most ancient and time-honored storytelling method, a succession of paragraphs based on the logic and suspense of the formula “and then … and then … and then.” 3.Paraphrase-Quote – Let’s say you have three quotes from a key interview that are colorful, each different from the another, and each of them making a key point. A good way to handle this is, in a one- or two-sentence section ahead of each quote, to paraphrase what your source said in your own words. Follow this paragraph-long paraphrase with a paragraph that contains the person’s quote. You have just created a two-paragraph block of text, the first being a paraphrase of the source’s quote, and the second being the quote itself. Repeat, repeat, repeat.4.Bricks & Pillows – In this popular writer’s tip, “bricks” stand for statistics, numbers, or a paragraph of dense logical reasoning or dry-but-necessary description. “Pillows” meanwhile stands for a colorful quotation, a funny or compelling story, or something else that emotionally fun or rewarding and not intellectually taxing. The idea is to alternate -- a paragraph of brick, then a paragraph of pillow. Repeat, repeat, repeat. 

19. Kickers Your final line is called your “kicker.” It should finish your story strong.

20. Box #4: The KickerA “kicker” is journalism lingo for the last paragraph or two of a story. It wraps up the story in an aesthetically and emotionally pleasing way.The best way to learn to write kickers is to read lots of stories to see how other journalists do it. When you write a kicker, you have gotten to a point in writing the piece where you feel you’ve emptied your notebook and your mind. You’ve reported what you needed to report, and you’ve said what you needed to say. Now you can stop, clear your mind of everything, and just tell a last little anecdote. Like the lead anecdote, this one should have some symbolic resonance with the whole story. Play around until you find one. A survey of successful kickers shows the following frequent characteristics in their writing: • 1. Super quotes – The most common successful kicker is memorable quote, especially one that creates a strong mental picture that restates the story’s main theme in a fresh way.2. Author’s language (as opposed to a quote) that restates the story’s main theme in a fresh way.3. A question, in either a quote or the author’s language, that applies one last turn of the story’s main theme and opens it imaginatively to a new line of speculation or questioning.4. A phrase that lightly strikes or echoes a phrase or theme from the story’s lead.5. Phrases that evoke or directly mention endings, beginnings, continuity or finality, births, deaths, etc.

21. Writing Dialogue: Some basics • 1. When you start a quotation, start a new paragraph. • 2. A one-sentence quotation usually works fine as a paragraph. • 3. Place a comma after the first phrase, or after the first sentence if it is a short sentence. • Yes: • “The market went like a yo-yo today,” said Evelyn Smith, a trader for Baring securities. “Everybody got whiplash.” • Usually no: • “The market went like a yo-yo today. Everybody got whiplash,” said Evelyn Smith, a trader for Baring Securities. • 4. Almost always stick with “said” after a quote. Using other words such as “grumbled Evelyn Smith,” “laughed Evelyn Smith,” etc., looks like gratuitous interpretation and overwriting, which it is. Let the quote itself paint the picture and do all the talking. • 5. Avoid lead-ins. • Yes: “Consumption is a treatable disease,” Kalman said. No: • Kalman said, “Consumption is a treatable disease.”

22. Writing for the web can be different than writing for print. Part of the issue is how people read online. They surf, skim and click. While the web has room for all styles of writing, these tips might help you 1. Write shorter. If you are going to write long, you must give people a reason to read. 2. Be specific and concrete. 3. Use active voice and strong verbs. 4. Omit needless words and phrases. 5. Attribute your sources with hyperlinks. Give credit to ideas, text, photos, etc. 6. Use sub-headings, lists, key words and boldface type. 7. Be specific with headlines. Be clear. Use key words. Avoid puns. 8. Learn to be your own editor. Write. Save. Wait 15 minutes. Come back. Read it again. Then publish. Then read it again. 9. Mistakes, errors, typos and misspellings undermine your credibility. Run spell and grammar check. 10. Link. “Do what you do best and link to the rest.” – Jeff Jarvis.

23. You have two audiences online: readers and robots. For readers: Headlines should be simple, literal, and direct. They must motivate readers to click. For robots: Search engines look for keywords. If a headline contains keywords that are also repeated in the text of the article, it will show up higher in search engines. Suggestions for writing better online headlines: 1. Be descriptive – say clearly what the story is about 2. Use keywords 3. Use conversational language 4. Avoid puns that confuse or are unclear 5. Engage readers Go to in-class exercise … Try rewriting the newspaper headlines for the web. First identify five key words. Then write a descriptive and compelling headlines using at least two of those key words.