The New York Times had an article published on its website at 12:13 P.M. The internet has allowed for the constant updates of information and in order for a news site to compete, it is expected to provide news all day long. In order for an article to be put out as quickly as possible, mistakes are sometimes made. Karen Upland, a writer for the Edmonton Journal, admits this does pose some problems and recalls a story of putting a story out which had said a man who was not killed had been killed. They were able to change it when new information came that he was not dead, but for fifteen minutes he had been killed.
The speed at which the information is being put up is a reflection of the readers. The users are able to scan around for the most up to date information with ease. The way that the articles are being written has also changed in order to cater to this. Article's cannot simply be shovelware (unedited from the print versions of the stories) because the readers want shorter, more to the point articles. The article mentioned earlier appears to have paragraphs that are too long in length, especially near the end. The story itself is larger than the textbook recomends as well.
Shorter sentences are favoured over longer ones, and paragraphs should never run more than two sentences. The textbook stresses the idea of a short story, stating a story should never run more than 250 words in length. Readers favour more scannable material, with the important information at the top. While it is a well-written article, and it caters to the inverse pyramid design that is so important, it is well over the 250 words the textbook recomends.
The use of subheads to attract the users eyes to a section of a story that is relevant is also a technique used by most major online publications. This article does not use any bold subheads throughout and as a result is difficult to scan through, unless a person was sitting down and reading the whole article from top to finish, they would probably not bother scanning through this. Since there are many readers who read online in this way, it is important not to alienate this part of the audience.
Another technique the book recomends is the use of lists—readers like seeing lists and bullets. This story does not use any lists or bullets.As an online story, this article does not do a very good job catering to the online reader. It is well-written and would run in a paper, but seems more like shovelwear and does not follow the rules layed out by the textbook on online journalism. The more scannable a story is, the more accessible it is to the online community. In order to make this story more internet friendly it could have used:
- lists or bullets
- bold subheads
- shorter paragraphs
- a shorter length in general
Image from PCWorld.
Can I just check, the timing you note (12:13) is in the afternoon as you say? Not in the morning (night)?
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