A superior user experience

Those of us who struggle every day trying to figure out this new media thing and worrying about economic models for journalism get distracted by many ideas and lamentations.

Thanks, then, to Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice president for product management at Google, for this long, thought-provoking, and perceptive piece that helps to refocus on what we should be about: a superior user experience.

. . . As written communication has evolved from long letter to short text message, news has largely shifted from thoughtful to spontaneous. The old-fashioned static news article is now just a starting point, inciting back-and-forth debate that often results in a more balanced and detailed assessment. And the old-fashioned business model of bundled news, where the classifieds basically subsidized a lot of the high-quality reporting on the front page, has been thoroughly disrupted.

This is a problem, but since online journalism is still in its relative infancy it's one that can be solved (we're technology optimists, remember?). The experience of consuming news on the web today fails to take full advantage of the power of technology. It doesn't understand what users want in order to give them what they need. When I go to a site like the New York Times or the San Jose Mercury, it should know what I am interested in and what has changed since my last visit. If I read the story on the US stimulus package only six hours ago, then just show me the updates the reporter has filed since then (and the most interesting responses from readers, bloggers, or other sources). If Thomas Friedman has filed a column since I last checked, tell me that on the front page. Beyond that, present to me a front page rich with interesting content selected by smart editors, customized based on my reading habits (tracked with my permission). Browsing a newspaper is rewarding and serendipitous, and doing it online should be even better. This will not by itself solve the newspapers' business problems, but our heritage suggests that creating a superior user experience is the best place to start.

What do readers want? My guess is that it's three things:

• news and information
• conversation
• opportunity

Opportunity for what?

We'll try to explore that in future blogs.
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And thanks to Jack Shafer, writing another excellent piece in Slate on business models for journalism (Not all information wants to be free), for pointing to the Rosenberg article.

Reforming the J-curriculum: beginning at the beginning

• To really reform a journalism curriculum, you have to begin at the beginning.

The faculty of the School of Journalism and Electronic Media at the University of Tennessee decided at its first faculty meeting of the semester in January to make some definite moves toward revising our curriculum to recognize the realities of the changing media environment and to prepare our students for those realities.

During the past few years, the UT faculty had done what other faculties have done -- lay on a couple of extra courses about web journalism. Some faculty members had made some moves within existing courses (including changing the names of the courses) to include more about the web.

We had even taken a step beyond that in starting a student-operated news web site, the Tennessee Journalist (tnjn.com), that is a central part of the curriculum. The site operates independently from any single course and thus is open to being used by all courses.

All of these were steps in the right direction, but they have not achieved the fundamental changes within the curriculum that we have sought. At our January meeting, we resolved to take a big step (bigger, I think, than even most of our faculty realized) and change JEM 200, the introductory news writing course that is required of all majors and taken by many other students as well.

Because I am the coordinator of all JEM 200 sections, the task of rethinking and re-envisioning the course has fallen to me. We offer 11 sections of the course and enroll about 200 students each semester. The sections are taught by lecturers and graduate teaching assistant and occasionally (though not this semester) by full time professors.

In our new plan for the course, the beginning six weeks of the course have not changed substantially. During those weeks we introduce students to the following topics. (The links here take you to the weekly lecture notes for each of these topics that are posted on JPROF.com.)

• Introduction to media writing
• Basic tools: Grammar and style
• Writing in the media environment
• The inverted pyramid
• Basics of reporting and journalistic writing: sources and interviewing

What came next in the old syllabus was two weeks of writing for the web. That has been expanded to four weeks. My draft proposal for how these four weeks will go follows:

Week 7, Feb. 16-20
Writing sections: continue writing in the inverted pyramid form; emphasize efficiency and conciseness. Have the students learn HTML tags with this tutorial and this exercise.
Lecture: Writing for the web I Introduction to the web | The web as a word medium | How readers use the web | Important concepts | Headlines and summaries.

Week 8: Feb. 22-26
Writing sections: Write short (no more than 200 words) but information-packed stories; introduce and practice with writing headlines and summaries using the tutorials and exercises. Assign the preview story reporting/writing assignment that will be due for next week.
Lecture: Writing for the Web II The Tennessee Journalist | Important concepts (continued) | Technology | Writing for the web - the basics | Headlines.

Week 9: March 2-6
Writing sections: Reporting assignment (preview story) due on the first section meeting; upload that assignment to the TNJN server. Practice uploading pictures and writing cutlines as well as sidebar material if possible. Look for live stories on the Tennessee Journalist to show as examples for sidebar material. Pay particular attention to the "related links" function of TNJN and have students find appropriate links for their stories.
Lecture: Writing for the Web III Inverted pyramid | Visual variety | Lists | Summaries | Microcontent | Links


Week 10: March 9-13
Writing sections: Writing assignments should include writing headlines and summaries, creating links and lists, and taking pictures and writing cutlines. A second reporting assignment -- another preview story if you don't think they're ready to do anything else -- would be good.
Lecture: Writing for the Web IV Twitter | Photojournalism | Audio | What you need to do to get ready to work in the web environment.

That will take us up to spring break. During the week after spring break, you should continue doing whatever your lab needs. One idea is to assign them to do a photo story over spring break.

After spring break, we will devote three weeks to "writing for broadcast," but that will change from the broadcast writing section that we once had.

This draft plan has been written for the lecturers and lab instructors of JEM 200, but I am posting it here on the JPROF blog so that anyone who reads it can weigh in and help us with our deliberations. I am especially interested in hearing from anyone who can suggest additional resources -- readings, tutorials, exercises, examples, etc.

Resources:

Writing headlines for the web

Basic HTML tags

Finding links

The art of linking

Writing summaries

Guidelines for the student photojournalist

Audio slide shows

What's right with J-education at Tennessee

The call has gone out from Innovation in College Media for journalism profs to come together on Sunday for a chat on journalism education. It begins with a blog post, and one of the suggested topics is "What's going right at your school."

Here's what's going right at Tennessee:

The Tennessee Journalist (TNJN.com)

TNJN.com is the student-operated news web site of the School of Journalism and Electronic Media at UT. It is operated by a student staff and is independent of any particular course. It is part of the curriculum of the School, and there are too many good things about it to list in the short amount of time I have to post this blog entry.

But here's one: We have a weekly staff meeting, and every week -- EVERY week -- at least 35 to 45 students show up. Their enthusiasm is palpable.

Check out the site. I am privileged to be the faculty adviser.

Intercollegiate Online News Network (ICONN)

We have formed an organization of campus news web sites, journalism students and educators, and professional affiliates. Any individual, program or professional organization can join. Our first meeting was in Knoxville in January, and there will be more soon.

The web site is http://intercollegiatenews.com.

And join the Facebook group.

I am looking forward to the chat.

The demise of newspapers means better journalism

We who contemplate the importance of journalism look at the future with trepidation.

What happens to journalism, we ask, when newspapers continue on their inevitable decline? The question assumes that journalism itself will be diminished.

I am coming to a different conclusion:

Journalism will improve once newspapers die or decline to a minor medium.

Note that I said news-PAPER, not news organization. I have worked for newspapers in five cities (technically six because Bristol, Virginia, and Bristol, Tennessee, are two different cities). I loved the work and made my living at it for a while. I have many friends and former students who are newspaper people. They are facing difficult and uncertain times right now, and I wish them stability and good fortune.

But the medium they work so hard to produce -- the paper -- is holding back journalism from doing the best job that it can for society. The sooner the paper is gone, the better.

I have been thinking a lot about a piece that Steve Outing wrote for Editor and Publisher a couple of weeks ago. In it he envisioned the all-digital newsroom, and I teased out of that his list of qualifications that people who got jobs in that newsroom would have. Those qualifications are just the ones we need for journalism to thrive in this new technological age.

In addition, I was privileged to be in Nashville last week and hear Janet Coats describe how the Tampa Tribune (via TBO.com) is shifting its focus and operation from print to digital. (A short video of some of what she had to say is here on Jack Lail's Random Mumblings.) Her talk was fascinating -- a blend of practical and inspirational words that this beleaguered profession needs.

So, I began to think ahead to the day when won't be chained to the printing press. And my conclusion was that journalism will be better. Here's why:

• More reporting. I don't necessarily buy the argument that there will be fewer journalists in the new age of digital journalism. The numbers will drop if the current news organization managers (editors and publishers) are in charge. Fortunately, they won't be. Instead, we're likely to have managers who recognize that good reporting -- and lots of it -- is an asset to the organization, not a cost to be cut.
  
  
• More reporters. Students in my experience are wildly excited about this new age of journalism. I am honored to be the faculty adviser to the Tennessee Journalist , the student operated news web site of the School of Journalism and Electronic Media at the University of Tennessee. More than 35 people regularly show up at our weekly staff meeting (only the editors are required to come) and the numbers are growing. The number of our majors has grown from 350 to 450 in just one year.
  
  
• More, different and better ways of telling a story. Newspapers and the people who run them have stifled the development of digital journalism. Slavery to print -- as well as simple laziness and stump stupidity -- have sucked the energy out of efforts to creatively use this new medium.
  
  
• Recognition that journalism occurs outside the traditional news organization. Digital newsrooms will form in places that never thought of themselves as news organizations. All web sites that attract an audience are news web sites. Visitors demand new information. That why people return to a site. Journalism would do well to embrace this concept.
  
  
• More respect for the audience. The accusations of arrogance leveled against traditional journalism are unfortunately correct. The web -- with its interactivity and with the ability of the audience to leave in an instant -- does not tolerate the arrogance of the journalistic priesthood.
  
  
• Better writing. As Jakob Neilsen, usability guru, says, readers are "selfish, lazy and ruthless." They will not put up with the flabby, self-indulgent prose we produce.
  
  
• Better reporting. With the audience involved in the process, we will have more sources and more points of view. We won't be gatekeepers. On our best days, we'll be conversation starters and guides. But we won't be in control. And that is a good thing.

Despite the current financial woes of news organizations and the generally hard economic times, the future of journalism looks bright and exciting.

And it will improve when we are done with print. I say, speed the day.

Qualities of the digital journalist

Steve Outing, a well-known thinker and writer about online journalism, has envisioned the not-so-distant future digital newsroom in his January 28 column for Editor and Publisher. (The All-Digital Newsroom of the Not-So-Distant Future)

The whole thing is well worth reading and, journalism profs, recommending to your students.

Of particular interest is what Outing says will be the qualities of those who land jobs in this new space. They will be:

• people with understanding of and enthusiasm for new forms of media and storytelling
  
  
• multifunctional journalists who can use all the tools available, particularly audio and video recorders
  
  
• social networks users and people who know how to gather an audience
  
  
• people who can engage with audiences and are comfortable sharing personal information

Underlying all of these qualities is an affinity for practicing good journalism.

Someone asked me today what I thought the Knoxville News Sentinel (the local paper) would be in 10 years. I said I thought there would be a 24/7 web operation with a weekend print edition. That's based on what has happened in the last few weeks.

But who knows what innovations await us? We can only say with certainty that paper will no longer be surpreme.

Editing for the web: discussion notes for journalism instructors

These notes are designed for editing instructors who want to conduct a section on editing for the web or online journalism instructors who want to teach their students about the special considerations for editing for a news web site.

An example of taking a "for print" story and making it into a "for the web" can be found here at JPROF.

Begin with the basics

Any discussion of journalistic editing should begin with reminding students of the basics of copy editing that do not change no matter what the medium:

• Grammar, spelling, punctuation -- These are always considerations for the editor. It is just as important to be technically perfect in use of the language on the web as it is in any other medium. Two common mistakes in punctuation: direct quotations and forming possessives.
  


• AP style -- Style rules are not optional in any journalistic setting.
  
  
• Syntax, sense, repetition and redundancy -- All of these are problems that need to be dealt with in any writing, web included.
  
  
• Accuracy -- Always, accuracy. (See JPROF's notes on Achieving Accuracy.)
  
  
• Structure and emphasis -- The basic form for news on the web is still the inverted pyramid news story. (Checklist for inverted pyramid news stories.) Readers of the web want their information immediately; writers and editors need to give it to them.
  
  
• The five Ws and H. Editors should make sure that there is a clear statement of who, what, when, why and how in the story. (Where and when, too, certainly.) These things tend to get lost in all the verbiage that we are likely to produce.
  
  

So, what's different about the web? Well, here are a few things:

Conciseness

Wordiness is one of the chief editing problems that a web editor must attack. (See discussion notes for Attacking Wordiness.) The web demands -- and readers demand -- that information come packaged in the fewest words possible. They want detail, they want color, but they also want efficiency. Read the before and after stories in the editing for the web example (referred to above) and see how the editor has attacked the verbiage of the writer. Has anything been lost or left out? Was it that important to understanding the story?

(You may want to talk to your students about a broadcast writing approach if you have not done so already: simple words, simple sentences, telling the story quickly, getting out. We don't really have to go that far on the web, but we do need to emphasize conciseness.)

Visual aspects

On the web, one of the most important aspects of writing is how it looks. Computer screens are sometimes difficult to view, and text on a computer screen takes some extra effort. In addition, many readers are in the habit of "scanning" rather than "reading." As editors, we need to offer them visual cues that interrupt their scanning to concentrate on the words that are on the screen. An editor needs to ensure that the presentation of the words is as legible and easy to understand as possible. Here are some ways to do that:

• Paragraph separation -- A pretty standard presentation on the web is to have a line of white space between the paragraphs. Some programs do this automatically, but if they do not, the editor should see that this is one, as long as it is consistent with the visual style of the web site. Here is a good time to bring up the value of WHITE SPACE in design; white space is what allows us to see items on a page or on a computer screen. The web has unlimited space, so creating the appropriate amount of white space should not be a problem.
  
  
• Lists -- Creating lists, where they are appropriate, is one of the most valuable things a writer or editor can do for a web audience. Lists are easy to read because they are short and the white space is built in. But a good list should also be informative and should add value for the reader.
  


• Block quotes and indentations -- Block quotes, as long as they are not too extensive, are another device that makes reading easier. Like lists, they have white space built in.
  


• Pull quotes -- The pull quote is a graphic device used for many decades in print to create white space on a gray page. A pull quote can also be used to emphasize certain information. This is an important editorial decision that the editor should take seriously and give a good deal of thought to. A pull quote does not have to be an direct quotation, although that is often the way it is used. A pull quote can be anything that editor deems relevant and worth emphasis.
  


• Story box -- A story box is like a pull quote in a graphic sense: an insertion of larger type into the body of a story. The box doesn't pretend to be a quotation, however. It is an explanatory paragraph of list that adds something that is not in the story itself. It introduces both graphic variety and new information to the reader. An editor who creates a story box must spend some time and effort on it.
  


• Subheads -- Subheads serve the same purpose on the web that they do in print: to break long stretches of copy. Subheads should be consistent and logical in their placement, and they should be accurate in their description of the text below them. They should be general enough to cover what the text says in the next few paragraphs.
  

Links

Links represent one of the special powers of the web as a news medium -- the ability to put the reader in touch with additional information about a top. For more on linking, see The Art of Linking article on JPROF.

For the editor, two major questions about links arise:

Where can I insert inline links into the text? And from this question comes those of where will be link take the reader? And will the purpose of the link (that is, where it will take the reader) be apparent? The editor needs to construct inline links so that they fit into the copy flow but that they are also obvious about what the reader will get if he or she clicks on that link.

What links do I list separately (related links)? Why are they there? Sometimes the reason for their presence will be obvious. At other times, the editor will need to describe them succinctly but in a way that will inform the reader.

Chunking

Chunking is an inelegant term for breaking up information and presenting it to the reader. In print, we think in terms of a single "story" and possibly a few exras: pictures, graphs, sidebars, etc. On a web site, we should think in terms of a subject/event and the different pieces of information we have about it.

At this stage of the web's development, we still think of the central piece of information as a "story," albeit a shorter narrative that we might have in print. In the near future, we may see a reduction in the use of the "story" as the organizing center of a web package. It may instead be the video or the photo gallery.

Chunking means that we need to consider the pieces of our package. Many of these pieces may be put together in some kind of text/narrative, such as an inverted pyramid news story. Other pieces, however, may not fit into that genre, and as editors we should be intellectually nimble enough to handle them.

Jim Stovall (Originally posted on JPROF Feb. 7, 2007; updated Feb. 3, 2009)