It’s incredible how wrong one story can be, especially when coming from a source as Web savvy as The Atlantic.
Reading this story, they would have you believe that the art of headline writing is dying due to SEO (search engine optimization aka print’s favorite bogeyman). This could not be further from the truth. To understand why, you have to understand one fundamental thing about headlines online. For every story, there are at least two headlines: The headline that is attached to the story and the headline that is used to promote the story on a site’s indices (ie homepage or section pages). The former is the only one that must be SEO friendly. The latter does not.
Since clicks are still every sites’ currency, copywriters online have to write one headline that will sell the story to the search engines and one headline that will sell the story to human beings. Turns out, doing the latter is not so easy. For print people, think about it this way: Every headline on a homepage is a wood headline. Every headline needs to sell. On any given day, a newspaper has to write at most 3 headlines to compel someone to buy the paper at the newsstand. Online, you have to do it FOR EVERY STORY.
This is why headline writing online is far more cutthroat than in the paper. Forget writing SEO headlines. Anyone familiar with identifying proper nouns can do that. When you have to write a headline for a homepage that must compel someone to click, that must stand out from all the other headlines (not to mention photos, videos and ads) competing for their attention, this is what separates the pros from the wannabes. Ask these copywriters to spend a month managing a news website’s homepage and have them come back and see if they’re whistling the same tune.
(On a sidenote, it bothers me to read about copywriters complaining about Web editors rewriting their headlines. Somehow they forget that their puns were born out of necessity. Sometimes they only have 15 letters due to space constraints to promote a story and they have to use silly contractions or misspellings to make headlines work. Obviously online there are no space constraints. If Web editors did not edit these print-layout-specific headlines, it would be an embarrassment.)
So is good headline writing dying? No. Only headlines that involve self-indulgent puns that may make someone chuckle, but won’t make them click.
‘Google Doesn’t Laugh’: Saving Witty Headlines in the Age of SEO
If all online searches are literal, what happens to the headlines that involve a play on words? Are those headlines relegated to the print edition, where headline writers have a captive audience? Indeed, as newspapers embrace search engine optimization, and as young journalists are taught to value Google visibility above all else, many copy editors fear that funny headlines are quickly going the way of the classified ad.Read more at The Atlantic
Michael Klingensmith, the new publisher of the Star Tribune by way of Time Inc., in a profile by David Carr.
Right? Thanks, Michael Klingensmith. The more articles I read like this, the more I think newspapers are just transitioning from big business to good business. And I have to wonder how much of the dour predictions about newspapers are based on a skewed perception of what a healthy newspaper looks like. In fact, does anyone really know what a healthy newspaper looks like anymore? As a publisher, Klingensmith appears to maintain that perfect balance between the conviction that local newspapers can still be good business and humility in the face of unknown.
“There’s a lot to figure out,” Mr. Klingensmith said. “Are we finally in equilibrium or is this just a resting spot before a new downturn? A lot is going to depend on what kind of contribution we get from digital and what kind of money we can get out of consumers on the circulation side.”
You gotta love Mid-Westerners. Such a practical people!
Am I the only one who read this as a very tacit condemnation of the Times? Read this again:
The Daily is a near perfect realization of exactly the idea that occurs to print editors every single time they get their hands on digital media for the first time, regardless of what the underlying technology might be: “Let’s make it just like what we know so well in print.”
How does Vinh know this? Because he lived it. This is clearly written by someone who spent a lot of time designing the web iteration of a print product along side people with a similar mindset to those who are now running The Daily. He may be openly attacking the Murdoch-owned product, but you can’t help but wonder if he’s secretly delivering a kick to his old employer.
What It Means That "Newspapers Need to Be Of the Web, Not Just On the Web"
Emily Bell is right. I suspect Emily Bell knows she’s right and anyone who reads her remarks—since they’ll probably only appear online—knows she is right. Yet how do the converted take their message one step further? Let’s make it more plain.
Newspapers: Hire better. Hire smarter. Give them freedom.
That’s how newspapers become creative—and not just reactive—online.
It’s funny. At every newspaper I have worked at, being reactive is the 8th deadly sin. As a reporter you are trained not to spend your time chasing someone else’s story. Break your own news. Be ahead of the story.
For most newspapers, this is not the case online. Everything and everyone—editors, developers and design—are trained to be reactive. The online mantra for most publishers is to find an example of success and emulate it.
Why? Because it’s the cheapest and safest route.
It’s time to change the culture and it starts with spending the money to make the right hires.
What is most important about Bell’s experience is how closely she collaborated with her developers. She did not treat them as a glorified IT deparment. She did not create ideas in a vacuum, approach her developers and ask what they can do, how long it will take, etc. As Bell notes, it is a mistake to distrust your technologists. Rely on their guidance, collaborate and you will succeed.
Bell benefited, either by luck or by design, by having the right personnel around. She learned to trust the people around her. To follow Bell’s example, having the right attitude is important, but having the right people is supreme.
Emily Bell — the director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, and the former head of digital for The Guardian says one of the big factors in the rise of The Huffington Post was the New York Times‘ decision to put all of its columnists behind a pay wall, which it did in 2005. The wall was dismantled in 2007, but while it was in effect it locked the NYT’s opinion leaders away from the web, and effectively removed them from the discussion stream — which created a perfect opportunity for Arianna Huffington, and helped her build a business that AOL just acquired for $315 million. It remains to be seen what kind of impact the NYT’s new “metered” pay wall will have once it launches, which is expected to happen soon.
Bell said one of the mistakes most newspapers made was to not pay close enough attention to the technology side of the online content business, and to ignore the obvious impact of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Bell said she met with Google executives in 2004, and they warned that the traditional media industry was out of touch with what readers and advertisers wanted. But newspaper executives thought “that was just about search, and that wasn’t our business — but the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was our business.” The same thing happened with the rise of social media, she says: “People thought, oh that’s not our business — but it was.”
Emily M. Olson, the managing editor of The Register Citizen, a small newspaper in Torrington, Connecticut, tells The New York Times.
Her paper is undergoing a radical reinvention. Its staff of 10 has thrown open the paper’s doors to the public and invited them in.
The idea of the cafe, public lounge and free Wi-Fi isn’t to make money on coffee. It’s to let the public see The Register Citizen as its space. The same thought underlies the public meetings and open newsroom, the opening of the company’s archives, the public spaces for bloggers and the meeting room that will host courses on blogging and journalism, so residents can write and link to the site.
What’s most striking about this transformation is not the public or educational element. It’s the notion that a newspaper would define itself around its function as defined by its web product, rather than its print product. The way this paper is now structured, the way it operates in the world, is inspired by the role it plays and seeks to play online. They’re not just paying lip service to the idea of community. They are going out into the world and trying to build it.
I’m not entirely sold that News+ follows through on its lofty goal of creating a product that’s not “not a printed newspaper and not the web, [but] a third product that picks up where the print newspaper leaves off”—it just looks too … familiar, albeit beautifully so—but these guys are definitely speaking my language. Here are two intriguing ideas behind the concept, from the designer’s press release:
What consumers buy is a social identity marker rather than the latest news, which can be found already for free on the Internet, he says.
“We believe people are sick of the noise of the net. News+ is a digital product that takes editing seriously, it’s not a competitor to the Internet.”
Two lingering questions for me: How much does the daily app cost? Since it’s a platform they’re selling, I’m assuming they leave that up to the publisher. Which leads me to my next question: How much does it cost to adopt Bonnier’s platform?
I wonder if anyone at the Daily is paying attention.
4 sins of news design reveals biggest sin: web co-opted print content, but not print’s soul
Designer Lauren M. Rabaino (she of the redesigned PressThink.org) expounds on the 4 sins of news design, which are as follows:
1. Clutter.
2. Clutter.
3. Clutter.
4. Clutter.
She has a point, no? If the design of news sites is failing, it is failing precising because it fails to do what the design of their print antecedents did so well: Distill what news is important and create an enjoyable reading experience. It’s bizarre when you think about it. For years, news web sites have happily co-opted their print counterparts content, but have failed to co-opt their soul. From a design standpoint, they clearly need less of the former and more of the latter.
I agree with Rabaino: navigation is too complex, homepages are too tall and content, too often, has to fight with ads and too many related links for your attention. It’s clear that design is being dictated by volume: the volume of content, the volume of traffic and pageviews and most importantly, the volume of ads.
Yet there’s clearly a movement afoot. Call it the iPad-ification of design, the “great magazining” of websites, the Instapapering of content, people want to turn down the volume. They’re looking for clarity. Thankfully designers and information architects are listening. Are publishers?
[Thanks for the link, markarms.]
Three signs your newsroom isn’t ready to cross the digital divide
According to Michele McLellan of Knight Digital Media Center:
1. The staff still reports to an assignment desk that is focused on print […].
2. News meetings focus on top news for the next day’s paper and meeting times reflect print. […]
3. The top newsroom executives - say the Editor and Managing Editor(s) - are all print veterans […].
I would only change “isn’t ready” to “hasn’t.” Whether or not a publisher is ready or not to “cross the digital divide” has as much to do with knowing what institutional changes need to be made, as having the real inclination to do them.
Scary to think how many newspapers are still set up this way.
While we’re on the topic, I have a couple more. Some of these, I guess, would be considered corollaries:
4. Your print CMS is separate from your digital CMS.
5. Reporters are not trained or encouraged to use social media or blog.
6. The web staff does not have control of the website’s content.
7. The web staff focuses primarily on production, not creating original content.
8. There are more people on your janitorial staff than on your web staff.
The best part of an article recommended by Future Journalism Project, “Exploring News Games,” is the author Ian Bogost fighting back in the comments.
(Source: futurejournalismproject)
Lingering questions from “The Daily” announcement
1. a) Who are these 100 staffers? Do they all come from traditional print backgrounds? How many are developers? Designers? Bloggers? This graph is a little heartening, but where’s the leadership with a tech background?
There are three managing editors: Mike Nizza, a veteran of The New York Times, AOL News and The Atlantic; Steve Alperin, a producer at ABC News, and Pete Picton, an online editor at The Sun in the U.K. Alperin’s TV experience gives a hint to a valuable part of the newsroom: In addition to journalists, there will be plenty of people producing videos. Also, there will be lots of design staff.
b) What is the content strategy? Is it the same mix of text articles, video and slideshows that readers can already find online? Will it be more? Should it be more?
2. a) How many readers does the app need to turn a profit at .99 an issue? How will users share articles/content with those who either a) don’t have an iPad b) have yet to purchase the app. Will there be an online counterpart?
b) Will there still be ads?
3. Is this a tacit admission that the iPad is a separate medium from both print and online, that not to repeat the mistakes of the web, it’s best to divorce an iPad product from any connection (except for perhaps maintaining a loose brand affiliation) to a print or web antecedent? Ahem.
4. How are those print guys going to feel in year? Still relieved to be free of the baggage of print or a little remorseful (looking your way, Tina) that they are no longer a part of that thing they dreamed of being a part of for so long. Old habits and loves die hard.
