Writing for news websites

and protals
 The purpose of online
writing
• To deliver essential information to its users in
the most effective, elegant, and efficient
manner.
 
• It must inform quickly and simply, that it must be
pleasing on the eye and make people want to
return to the site time and time again.
 
• It must be fast-loading and free of wasted words
and padding.
 The online journalist
1. The role is similar to that of any other journalist.
2.   The journalistic rules are the same.
3. Platform is different You need web skills to present
that information online.
4.  You are dealing with facts.
5. Your sentences still need to make sense; they
must have a subject, a verb, and an object.
6. You will be presenting the absolute essentials of a
story
7. You will be asking the basic questions, who, why,
where, when, what, and how
8. The story format will be pyramid journalism
(writing that can be cut at any point and still make
sense). This is for reasons that will be explained in
the multiplatform authoring module.
 Is your website a part of
another media operation
• If the website you are working on is a
stand-alone production (one that is
not connected to another media
operation) you will be free to present
the information as you see fit, within
your newsroom's editorial guidelines.
• If the website you are working on is part of a larger media
concern, you will be expected to reflect that media operation's
newsgathering and news production strengths online.

• In more and more cases, websites function as part of a converged

news operation.

• The aim is to reflect the news brand across all outlets, including
online and other interactive platforms. In that case, you will need
to come up with a persuasive reason for investing resources in
covering different stories online than your news organisation is
covering in print or on air.

• You will be expected to add value with content and functionality

aimed at the online audience, but the user should find the same
facts, tone and focus online as they do wherever your news
organisation is delivering news content. 
 Role of news on web
• Your role is to include the elements
that increase and enhance a user's
understanding of a story, or enable
that user to engage with you, and
others, about the news item in ways
that they can't on air or in print.
 Unlimited Space
• There was a time when it was felt that one of the
strengths of the internet was that it didn’t limit the
journalists to a particular story length; journalists
could write as much as they wanted.

• All the column-inch restrictions that applied to print

journalists, and the news bulletin time limits that
applied to TV and radio were not relevant to online
journalism.
 
• This was and is true, but if that freedom is not
managed properly, it can lead to lazy, indisciplined
writing.
 Unlimited Space
• News stories need to have a standard style, layout, and
format. There will always be cases where longer,
background features are needed in order to explore
issues in-depth. However, hard news stories still have to
be presented in tight, short-form writing.
 
• The news stories need to follow a standard house style.
There needs to be a consistency of presentation format
so that the audience feels comfortable with what they
are reading. You need to make sure you know your news
organisation's house style. If it hasn't got one, volunteer
to write one; it's important for consistency of approach.
Example of online news
Story Length and style

It is important that you

learn to write as
economically as possible
with no unnecessary or
wasted words.
 Story Length and Style
• The ideal online news story will be in
the region of 300-500 words. This is
not a hard and fast rule, just a guide.
Some stories will be a lot less, and
some features and in-depth analysis
pieces can be longer, but the basic
news stories should remain short.
 Story Length and Style
 The use of CMS
• The news operation you work for will probably have a
newsroom CMS (or content management system), this is
where you write your stories.
Content Management System: Introductory Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzjqUHDVd_Y

• There are usually boxes for the headline and summary,

and another field for the rest of the story. There might be
functions for adding images, audio and video, links, and text
boxes. Some of the boxes, or fields, might have character
limitations so that you can’t write too much. This will usually
be because the content you write for the Web is also to be
sent to other text-based platforms, such as SMS and WAP.
 Story Construction
• The headline needs to make sense standing alone. It must not
be a label. It will be a short sentence. This is not only good
journalism, but it also means that your news organisation can
use the material as a headline ticker on other platforms.
 
For eg : Dozens killed in Afghan explosion

• The first paragraph must not repeat the headline, but must add
information without duplication. It must also work on its own
and with the headline. Your news organisation might want to
use this for an SMS service.
For eg: A massive car bomb explosion in the southern
Afghan city of Kandahar has killed at least 30 people.
• You might find that your news
organisation has arranged the CMS
so that the headline and summary of
your story automatically publishes on
the index page of the section you are
working in, or the front page of the
site.
 Story Construction
Eg of first 100 words
• The next part of the story •
• Dozens more were hurt as buildings
will be a series of collapsed in the attack in the centre
paragraphs, each adding of the city, doctors said.
more and more essential • The explosion took place shortly after
the first results were announced in
facts to the story. By the the presidential election.
time you have written • Earlier a bomb killed four US soldiers,
making 2009 the deadliest year for
100 words you should foreign troops since the US-led
have presented the main invasion overthrew the Taliban.
elements of the story. • Election attacks
• No-one has yet claimed responsibility
for the attack in Kandahar, which is a
stronghold of the Taliban. There have
been a number of attacks in the city
this year.
• The remaining 400 words can be • ‘Once again they've
used to add value, including
killed children, women,
quotes, statistics, and analysis.
innocent Afghans. They
are not human. They are
• Many people choose to write
sentence-long paragraphs for the animals. ‘
web. There is no hard and fast
rule. Some feel the breaks make
it easier on the eye; others elect • Mohammad Sher Shah,
to stick with conventional deputy provincial police
paragraphs. You will need to chief
adapt to the house style of the
site you are working on.
 Story deconstruction
• If you feel your story is
worth more than 500
words, and can only be
told properly in 1,500,
it might be worth laying
out all the facts and
seeing whether you can
deconstruct the story
into small, but related,
component parts.
• Deconstructing a longer news story is an
important technique for the online journalist. 

• It means that they can still offer the core facts of

the story in 500 words, but they can also offer
links to separate stories, which offer further
explanation of elements within the main story. It
also means that the user is not faced with too
much text, and it breaks the text into manageable
chunks.
 Story Deconstruction
• It also makes business sense. If you
are working on a commercial news
site, and the income is generated
from adverts placed on the site, the
deconstruction of the story creates
more opportunities for the
positioning of adverts
Story Deconstruction: A tool
for explaing
• Each part of the deconstructed story will have its own
headline and these headlines can be flagged up in the
main story (and each part of the deconstructed story)
as related news items. Story deconstruction enables
you to show the basic essential elements of the news
item in the main story, while, at the same time, offering
you a tool for explaining the more complex issues in
what some people call, ‘side bars’.
 Facts not padding
• In a media world where many news
organisations are creating content
once for multiple outlets, the days of
producing long unwieldy text for news
stories are past.
• Features are different, but journalists
writing news stories need to keep their
writing crisp and tight.
 Facts not padding

• For the user, time often costs money.

They will not thank you for padding
between the facts, or indulging in
poetic pros when what they want are
the essential details.
• Your job is to deliver facts to
users in the most efficient and
effective manner, not to obscure
those facts with unnecessary
verbiage.
Making the most of the web
• The web offers many fascinating ways to tell
a story differently.

• When the editor hands a story to a journalist

there is usually a top line. Something has
happened, there are some basic facts
already in.  The journalist has to make sense
of it and deliver a report as quickly as
possible.
Take the example of the 
Bahrain boat tragedy in 2006 . 57 people died
(the death toll rose later) after a pleasure boat
capsized in the Gulf.
 
For those wanting news of relatives, the list of the
nationalities who died or survived was a key fact.
 
However, to draw up the list in text would have
meant several paragraphs.
 
This is where the facts can be displayed in a text
box so that those who want to scan read can
reach the facts faster. It offers the user a quick-
glance view of the main elements without having
to read the whole story.
 
The text box can then also be used in other
stories, or on the site’s main page, and it also
offers a break in the text in your story page.
 Timelines and factfiles
• Using the same technique, you can
return to the story at a later stage and
produce another text box offering a
time line or a fact file.
• These, in turn, can link to the stories
covered at the time, making the text
box a valuable tool in helping the user
navigate a complex grouping of facts.
• Again, these text boxes, timelines, and
fact files, can be used in all the other
stories, offering the user, wherever she
or he ends up, all the details they need
in one place, with the opportunity to
find out more by clicking on the issue
or fact they are most interested in.
• MILITANT ATTACKS IN AUGUST
• 18 Aug: Nine Afghans and a Nato
soldier die and more than 50 are
injured in Kabul
• 15 Aug: Suicide bomb outside Nato HQ
in Kabul kills seven and injures 90
• 13 Aug: Twin blasts in Helmand and
Kandahar kill 14, including several
children
6 Aug: Five American and three UK
•
soldiers, five civilians and five
policemen killed by roadside bombs
mainly in Helmand
• 3 Aug: Bomb in city of Herat kills 12
• 1-2 Aug: Nine foreign soldiers killed
over weekend
Graphics and images
One showed the Kursk alongside a jumbo jet.
The other showed it on the seabed alongside the Eiffel
tower
 Images and Captions
• Images, particularly those used
on the front page and the section
index pages, should tease a user
into the story. Head and shoulder
pictures are rarely the best
choice, although in some stories,
such as political meetings, they
are hard to avoid.
• However, a powerful image can
add enormous value to the
impact of stories. The best
pictures are those that stop the
user in his or her tracks. 
Head and shoulder images Image depicting some action
 Images and captions
Image looking the wrong way
• The images also need to be
looking into a page. If your
Website puts its images to the
right of a story, you don’t want
the subject looking right. That
would mean they are looking
out of the page rather than into
it. The following image is
looking the wrong way.
Images and captions
• Image looking the right way
 Captions
• Captions need to • Caption for swine
enhance understanding
and stimulate interest.
flu photo:
They are not labels. They
must not state the • Saviours in white: Over 70
obvious. They, and the people have now died in
headline, are often one of India because of swine flu
the most difficult pieces and as the flu continues to
of text to write. spread, doctors in Delhi
  are putting in 14 hours a
day, screening dozens of
patients in each shift.
(NDTV photo)
• Get it wrong and the credibility of your
news brand could suffer. Read them over
and over again. Ambiguous headlines and
captions are a real danger. Think through
how your words might be misinterpreted
and misunderstood. If there is any doubt,
rewrite it and keep it simple.
• The aim is not to be clever.
Being clever can confuse. The
aim is to be clear, crisp and
capture the reader interest so
they will read the story and find
out more.
 Original content and
plagiarism
• With most breaking news stories, the major news
operations will be dealing in the same facts. Their
sources will usually be the same; they will be feeding
off the same wires services and making similar check
calls. It is not surprising to find almost identical stories
being published on different sites. In all cases, a news
operation should try to find out how they can add a
value element the other news outlets can’t deliver.
 At times like these, the online journalist might
want to include a quote from an exclusive
report from the scene filed by one of the
news organisation’s correspondents. If the
website is attached to a newspaper there
might be an exclusive photograph taken by
one of the paper’s photographers. If there is,
this should go at the top and be flagged as
such.
• If you are working for a website connected to a
radio or TV broadcaster there might be
exclusive audio just in, or a clip of some video
only your organisation has and which you can
add to the story. The key is to look for
originality.
• Find out what your news operation does that
the others can’t match and focus on presenting
that rather than worrying about where the
opposition is stealing the lead in other areas.
 
• Never lift content from another site and
present it as your own. Not only is it
unethical, it is also extremely dangerous.
If you can’t verify every fact and detail as
either coming from your own sources or
from one of your news organisations
correspondents, or attributed to
recognised sources, don’t include it.
• Plagiarism is all too easy in the cut and
paste world of computer screens and the
web. There was a saying that the web was
all about ‘copy and improve’. In a way that
is understandable when it comes to design
and layout. However, it is never acceptable
when it comes to story detail.
• Despite being dishonest, plagiarism means signing
your news brand's reputation up to details you do
not know are true. Once you write a sentence and
it is published on your site, it is then considered to
be verified by your news organisation. It is a
massive risk, both personally and professionally.
Only publish what you know to be true and what
you can stand by. 
 Get it first, Get it right
• Once a news story has broken and the
information is in the public domain, it is
often a race to be first with the news.
• Trying to beat the competition is a worthy
aim, but only if you are sure you have all
the facts and that they have been checked
and double-checked.
• There is nothing worse than sending
out a breaking news alert and then
having to retract the story. Your users
will realise you got it wrong. They will
seldom know when you got it right and
beat the opposition. They may not
even care.
 Don’t deal in rumour. Tempting as it might be to
carry vague details of an incident that has taken
place, only stick to verifiable facts. You can flag
up to the users that something is going on.
Breaking news ticker headlines such as ‘reports
are coming …’ are acceptable.
• However, unless you are a correspondent on the
ground and in the know, you must not speculate
on the cause until it has been confirmed by a
reliable authority.
 Comments and Opinion
• As in all journalism, the role of the reporter is to
present fact. You are not there to add comment, and
you are certainly not there to voice an opinion.
• If you are a correspondent, with a particular brief and
an expertise, you will be expected to offer analyisis
of a situation you are covering, this could include
your informed view on how it is likely to develop.
• You might want to add a text box to the
story with the most powerful quote.
• Use them sparingly. Two in one story might
be too much, bearing in mind you might
also have an image, a fact box, and a
graphic. Don’t over clutter with gimmicks.
Only use those that help tell the story
properly. Too many and you might start to
lose the readers’ interest.
 Publishing articles in parts
• In a breaking news situation you
often have very little to go on. There
might be one fact on which the story
is based. The first thing is to knock
out the one sentence containing
what you know and publish that. You
can then continue to add to the
story, republishing as you go
 When to save and when to
overwrite
• As a breaking news story
develops, more and more
information will be added.
Eventually it will be a full
story. However, more
information will continue
to arrive.
know when to save a
story as an archive of an
event in history, and when
to start a new version.
 Links, the benefits and
dangers
• the links we offer on our stories are one of the most
important elements. Links should be seen as part of
the story. Otherwise there is no pointing including
them.
• They should also be seen as adding value to the
words we write. They are not there to repeat those
words, but to offer further information that we are
either not able to say, or have not researched.
• Although links can be a valuable tool in helping you
tell a story, there are also many dangers lurking in
links. You have no control over the content to which
you are linking.
• You need to be vigilant and only click to trusted sites
that share a similar reputation to yours.
• There is also the issue of taste and decency.
• Although most sites protect
themselves with words such as, “this
site takes no responsibility for the
content contained on the sites it links
to”, you need to take some
responsibility as to which sites you
feel are appropriate to be associated
with.
 Cutting clutter
• It is easy to become so immersed in
a story that you become swamped
by details and lose site of what is
important. Sometimes the journalist
writing a piece can be too close to
the facts and unable to see the top
line.
• Journalists can sometimes make too many calls,
look up too many background pieces, and be too
involved in the subject to see the real news
angle. Their minds, like their desks, become
cluttered with data.
• There is an art in online journalism of cutting the
clutter to reveal the core of a story. Often the
duty editor or chief sub will help.
• If you are on your own, you will continually
need to keep asking yourself what the story is
about, what has happened, why it is important,
who it affects, how it affects them, and what is
likely to happen next. Leave the complexities
aside, go back to basics.
• What is the one line that sums up the story?
Keep it simple with short, sharp sentences. List
what you know. Don’t try to be clever. You are
writing to inform ordinary people, not impress
your peer group.
• However, most web journalists
working on a general news site will
not be required to do this. Comments
and opinions have to be attributed
and not woven into a story as if they
are facts.