2012.03.26
How much context is too little, too much or enough?
What kind of news consumer are you?
In this age of incredible access to information, there are many ways users can get news. Twitter, for instance, delivers news in 140 characters (actually fewer once you include a link).
But how often do you follow that link to read the story? And if you do go to the story, what do you want to see or do once you’re there?
The indelibility of the Internet allows news organizations to provide deep context on many stories via links to past stories or even tangentially related stories. The question is do we? How useful would it to be a reader?
New York Times Topics page
The New York Times, for instance, offers it on a Times Topics page (see left): “Each topic page collects all the news, reference and archival information, photos, graphics, audio and video files published on topics ranging from A M Castle & Company to Zyuganov, Gennadi A. This treasure trove is available without charge on articles going back to 1981.”
Add to that the fact that there are different types of news consumers out there (read this 2009 blog post by Erik Gable) — the one who just wants a headline, the one who skims just the first half of a story, the one who wants to read and comment, the one who just cares about comments — is there a way for a news organization to cater to all these needs?
As an example, what do you think of the digest that CNN provides on each of its stories (see below, left-hand side under “Story Highlights”)? Does that help the skimmer? And how do we provide the history of a story without bogging down the latest story? As links on the side or within the story? As a separate page such as the New York Times does?
CNN "story highlights" feature
We’ve been discussing comments, so what do we offer the person who’s more interested in the comment thread? A way to pull that up first? A digest box for comments?
Is any of this dependent on the type of story it is?
In a comment to Gable’s story, Michael Andersen wrote: “In general, I think it’s a good idea for journalists to start spending more time rewriting our reporting for multiple audiences. First write the tweet, then the bullet-pointed Cliffs Notes version, then the traditional daily story, then answer questions in the comments.”
The key, as Gable put it, is engagement. We want to engage readers of all types with our stories, but we want to do it in a way that is useful and makes sense.
This, to me, points out once again the intrinsic value of good writing in journalism. There is a lot of information, true and untrue, biased and unbiased to be referenced.
Journalistic writing has changed not a wit since it was devised centuries ago. To simply parrot the sensational top line of a story from “somewhere” and call it “news” serves no good purpose and brings sad opinion to the media presenting the story.
It is the mission of the news writer to understand the subject matter as well as possible, and condense it to its essence in the headline and opening paragraph. This presents the importance of the story without overlaying it with a bias, and creating the basis for the subject.
Can this be well served in a tweet? Absolutely. But not without considerable insight on the part of the responsible journalist.
The responses and comments are NOT journalism, and are often poorly informed.
The writer should be held responsible to convey the soul of the story, whether the reader chooses to research the source or not.
Comment by Rucker — March 26, 2012 @ 2:17 pm
If I make a comment on the Roundtable Blog or another editorial, sometime I have to search all over to find the story again. Most of the time I just give up. Its very irritation. I read the Roanoke Times everyday online at work. I appreciate RT NOT linking their papes to facebook, twitter and youtube because many online media like channel 10 news, DOES NOT CONSIDER THERE ARE MANY COMPANIES LIKE MINE THAT BLOCK THAT ON THEIR EMPLOYEES COMPUTERS. Thanks for not doing that.
Comment by James — March 26, 2012 @ 3:48 pm
It would be nice to have more depth instead of rehash. For example, in Sunday’s Burgs was a story about Montgomery County’s budget issues. yadda yadda yet again about the 12-cent increase being the largest since an 8-cent increase sometime in the past. Yeah, so what? The more important part of the story that was overlooked was the quote from tightwad supervisor Creed that there is still “extra money” in this budget. OK, so detail exactly where that money is so people on Thursday can explain why it should stay or should be cut. This is going to be an ugly hearing, with the tea party making robo calls all over the place to marshal a crowd to shout down those who support the tax rate and support education. Instead of wasting space with useless history, explain the here-and-now of the situation. Same goes for just about any story reported now — context is one thing, but it goes at the end of the story to be cut if there isn’t room (how I learned it way back in the day) not at the top as the main part of the lede.
But since fluff has taken over substance in The Burgs, that is our way of life in the NRV. If we do get news, it is more as filler than the main reason for the section to exist and context doesn’t really matter.
Comment by Joe Hokie — March 27, 2012 @ 9:36 am
Regarding my previous comment…here’s an example… How do I get back to the comment section of this… CLEAN UP ALL OF ROANOKES NEIGHBORHOODS http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/306473 Its VERY confusing trying to locate it again. This is probably why a lot of commentaries on there dont have comments posted.
Comment by James — March 27, 2012 @ 1:11 pm
James, thanks so much for your comments. This is Kyle Draper with the RefreshRT team. As has been pointed out on this blog in earlier posts, the ability to comment on news stories is not currently available. When you leave a blog in order to read a news article or editorial, you’re also leaving the ability to comment. If you’d like to return to the blog and its comments, the easiest way is to use the “back” button on your browser. I hope this helps, and thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Comment by kyledraper — March 27, 2012 @ 2:47 pm
Hi James, following up on Kyle’s response, here is the link to the story you mentioned: http://blogs.roanoke.com/roundtable/2012/03/huxhold-enforce-the-citys-code/#comments
Indeed, the only way to comment on such commentaries right now is if they are posts on the Roundtable blog.
In the future, you could also try typing in some keywords in our search box in the top right-hand corner. For instance, I typed in “terry huxhold” (author of the commentary) and the commentary (blog version) was the third on the results list.
Hope this helps! Thanks, Kathy
Comment by Kathy Lu — March 27, 2012 @ 3:20 pm
Google is your best friend and if you can remember even a few words, the author, or subject, you can usually find the blog link for comments, you just have to learn to look for the “blogs.roanoke.com” on the link address. Or if you find the article, you can check the date it ran and go to the blogs and find their archived threads for that date till you find it. Once you do it a few times it is easier than you think and quicker too.
Comment by Sandi Saunders — March 27, 2012 @ 6:02 pm
For the online version of stories and features, I would LOVE to have links to more info (as I often have to dig for my own) and any related stuff the author can offer. I think that would help to round out some stories and give us the option of “going deeper”. I also think that you should add a
“track this story” option so that if something else is published later we can see the follow up. I hate it when I read about something like a disagreement or court case coming up and then never hear another word. That is frustrating.
Comment by Sandi Saunders — March 27, 2012 @ 6:05 pm