When editing for the web, one must be sure to follow a slightly different pattern than if editing for a newspaper. A big plus when editing for the web is you do not have to worry about space restrictions; however, you do have to worry about keeping the attention of your reader. Another factor is the ability to keep the story to the point, because the online reader will not want to have to find the main topic in your writing. In the following Toronto Star story regarding gang violence in Mexico, the writer uses an inverted pyramid style to relay the most important facts quickly, but uses relevant information that has happened around the Mexican drug killings to keep the interest of the story throughout the rest of the story.
The story is fairly long, almost too long for the web, but the writer continually uses descriptive story telling to relay the happenings of the recent killings so as to provide some colour for the story.
They effectively use a single image, which is of a white SUV with bullet holes in it and police tape all around. This image conveys the sense of what took place better than any descriptive writing could hope to accomplish. The one problem I have is there are no sub-heads, and so the text becomes un-scannable.
All in all the Toronto Star accomplish the task of effectively editing an article for the web. Even though the article is longer than I would like, the extra details give background and colour to the rising issue of the Mexican drug war. Web editing is a talent in its own rights, and should be added as part of the curriculum in public schools; after all, kids are going to be zoned-out screen zombies anyways, so we might as well make them good at it.
Image taken from Innovafire.com
"All in all the Toronto Star accomplish" - accomplish doesn't agree with the singular subject
ReplyDelete"kids are going to be zoned-out screen zombies anyways" - might be used colloquially but for university writing = "anyway."