Is it too early to have an opinion?
Aug 30th, 2007 by handolio
As if things haven’t been busy enough in the three months or so since Charlie and I joined Spannerworks, we’re now involved in interviews for a third journalist. Some might see interviews as a curse, but it’s all pretty new to us. We’ve been amazed by the experience and qualifications of the people who want to join, and have met a couple of extremely interesting candidates.
Several of the applicants have recently studied for an NCTJ certification, and something that’s come up more than once is the lack of an online element in the courses on offer. It seems a curious omission when you consider that traditional print media are in decline, established newspapers have been on the web for years, and that publishers, bloggers, journalists, marketers and companies are all battling it out for people’s attention online.
There’s no doubt that publishing on the web raises different challenges that ought to be included in a journalist’s qualification, but I find myself wondering how significant they truly are from a journalist’s point of view. It’s still early days, but one of the things that has struck me as I’ve gone from being in print to mostly web-based is that a good article for print is the basis of a good article for the web. There are ways to optimise your writing so that it’s ranked more highly by search engines but, increasingly, what pleases a search engine is closely aligned with what pleases human beings.
Praise the Lord!
For too long people writing online have been encouraged to optimise their copy for search, rather than for the people searching. Finally, search engines are wise to all the most effective ways to manipulate them, which are usually the most detrimental to good writing.
Good web writing
What’s perhaps most interesting, and reassuring to sceptics like myself, is that the rules of good journalism remain key to success on the web. A public with a wider choice of more easily available news sources has a shorter attention span, and is becoming ever more skilled at making snap value judgements about things they happen upon online.
- How do you grab someone’s attention? A short headline or standfirst that gives the gist of the article.
- How do you keep their attention? A concise, well-written article that summarises the story’s key points. Crisp, dry prose. No waffle, false humour or ego.
Sound familiar? It’s just good journalism. Granted, embedding links to authoritative sites like BBC News can be a useful way to inherit authority and boost your search rankings (see what I did?), but it’s also a useful way to be useful.
Either way, it’s hardly rocket science, and like other considerations when writing for the web, it’s nothing that can’t be picked up on the job.
This, then, is a great time for journalists writing online who, rather than having to bring their copy to the search engine, can now expect the search engines to come to them. In theory, that leaves us free to concentrate on writing for people, which should leave everyone happy.
Recent noises suggest that, like me, the NCTJ is finally moving into the 21st century, but all of its accredited courses still focus on print journalism. This is at best curiously old-fashioned, at worst wilfully conservative, but on reflection it’s probably not the glaring omission that it seems.
