newsroomnext

Problem

1. Often, the who-what-where-when-why-how (and “what’s next”) get blended together in a way that is aesthetically pleasing (in terms of logic, musicality and pacing), but fail to offer easy scannability that Web reading behavior calls for.
2. As a reader, I have to run my eyes up and down a story to find facts that interest me at that moment, and though news stories often use the pyramid writing style, the pyramid is a subjective approach that may or may not be useful to me.
3. For example, if I want to find all the people involved in a story, I may have to scan 30 paragraphs. What if I could just go to a “who” subhead or tab? This would create a logical, predictable pattern of story organization, whereas now a story’s organization is entirely dependent upon idiosyncratic interpretations (by writers and editors) of aesthetics and the importance of one piece of information over another (which is actually a valuable service, but one being offered in a one-size-fits-all manner at the moment).

Solution

1. Despite the aesthetic brutality of it, it might make more sense on the Web to provide the components of a story as clearly labeled sections. Think of a single pane  with tabs (or subheads) for each component. The “Who” tab, the “What” tab, the “Why” tab and so on.

Inspiration for this post

1. The Associated Press report on a new model for news said, as I mentioned in the post below this one, that young news consumers gobble up news in the form of Facts, Updates, Back Stories and Future Stores.
2. However, they felt overwhelmed by Facts and wanted more Back Stories and Future Stories, but had trouble finding these more in-depth components.
3. I felt that all four of those components were often present in stories, but organization by paragraph often made it difficult to quickly find such info in the order one might want it.
4. And Facts, Updates, Back Stories and Future Stores sounded like information that could be tabs or subheads.

MO to extract

1. In a world drowning in information, everyone needs to become an expert at providing information (visually and conceptually) about their information in order to make it more useful.
2. Wait a minute; this is what many blogs, aggregation sites, social media tools and more are already doing…

Highlights from A New Model for News | Studying the Deep Structure of Young-Adult News Consumption, an ethnography/report by The Associated Press and Context-Based Research Group (PDF of the report):

p. 53: Youngsters’ (18-34) news diet is made up four dishes on 2 sides of the news, eh, dinner table

1. On the “breaking news/headlines/what happened” side of the equation, there are: Facts (basic info) and Updates (more, newer, better, cleaner, fresher info!).
2. On the “depth and breadth” side of the equation, there are: Back Stories (background; what does the story mean? explaining the “why” of stories) and Future Stories (what happens next in a story; resolution to a story).

p. 52: There are far more Facts and Updates than Back Stories and Future Stories, but young media eaters want more, er, BS and FS.

1. Young news consumers feel overwhelmed with the barrage of these snippets of Facts and Updates delivered across a multitude of devices and digital delivery options (e-mail, text message, video clips, IM, RSS and more).
2. They’re having trouble finding deeper, reflective stories that provide the “why” and a resolution to a story.
3. Web users are creating their own BS (p. 38).

p. 52 continued: Uh, oh, somebody used the vegetable metaphor

1. Due to the barrage of info snacks, “…the subjects’ news diets were therefore out of balance. They were eating too many chips and not enough vegetables.”
2. Potato chips threaten society? What is meant by “threaten”? Here’s the passage on p. 52: “The over-consumption of facts and updates…led them (anthropologists) to conclude that informed societies would be threatened - let alone the news business - if this snacking habit were allowed to persist.” Eh…what? And that seemingly patronizing word “allowed” (shortly after “vegetable”!) makes me think of parents scolding their children. So listen, you makers of this cool report, what gives you the right to be talking down — hang on, grabbing a bite to eat…What was I talking about?

p. 56: 2 things, 1 of ‘em a doozy that sounds like what Scott Karp calls link journalism, that news folks can do to produce more value

1. I’m guessing most journalists are doing this all the time: Create more appealing content for entry points into stories (an entry point can be a Fact, Update, Back Story or Future Story).
2. The doozy: “…build the connections that will transport consumers to that content across both media platform and brand.” So different media outlets will work together on each story? Well, the revenue model will have to change radically, first. And then organizing thousands of brains…wait a minute, did the Borg write this report?

More on the Borg:

1. p. 64 “Where online consumers once surfed and bookmarked news sites, users now wonder why a logical trail through the news can’t simply unfold, link by link, across a multitude of sources.”
2. p. 62: “Unless many — indeed, most — news providers adopt a standard set of digital tags, content will not be automatically linkable across both brand and platform.”
3. p. 64: “For its part, AP is offering to apply its metadata tags to the content of its member newspapers in the United States so that related news can be linked across provider.”

p. 58: Are we all going to be wire services?

1. The AP’s 3-stage approach to creating news in this fragmented, always-on news environment: 1-2-3 Filing: 1) Headline; 2) Short, present-tense story with vital details; 3) Story that takes whatever form is most appropriate for audience and platform.
   

p. 65: Sweet! Show me the money!

1. “Still to come are the business models that will drive this news distribution system of entry points and links.”
2. Oh.

Questions:

1. So are people spending so little time on news Web sites because there are too many Facts/Updates and not enough Back Stories/Future Stories, or because people just don’t spend a lot of time on Web sites? What does “time spent” mean anyway?
2. When we are one, gigantic interconnected brain separated from one another only by a Google search or lack of awareness of what we should be searching for to bridge any perceived or non-perceived gap in awareness, will there be less concern about capturing attention and more concern about assisting the efficient application of attention toward completing whatever task our Borg body must undertake in order to survive the material world?

Purpose of this post:

1. To demonstrate the way distribution works on the Web.
2. Though it’s nothing new, to show how embeddability of content can greatly increase its reach.
3. To raise questions about how to monetize content as it moves across the Web:
   • Make the tripod (and other objects) in the video linkable (I wrote about Ooyala doing this). Clicking takes me to a review/buy site.
   • Or slice up the revenue as it changes according to the attention paid to content harnessing the attention? Is Attributor working?

Below is the digital path to the video (which is at the bottom):

1. I found a video about getting crane and dolly shots, without a crane or dolly, via CamcorderInfo
2. Camcorder info got it via FilmFlap
3. FilmFlap got it via ProLost
4. ProLost got it via tslesicki
5. And tslesicki is where I paused in my hunt due to a forum requiring registration. I registered, but had to wait an incredibly long 200 seconds or so to complete the process.
6. But I learned tslesicki found the video via Eugenia’s
7. Eugenia’s found it after getting an e-mail from a Vimeo user named kingofpunk, whose blog is here.
8. And after searching MetaCafe, I found brusspup, the person who, I think, actually made the video.

And here’s the video:

Video Cam Super Trick! - video powered by Metacafe

Most recent Alertbox column from Jakob Nielsen, the “King of Usability”:

• On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.

Why I’m interested:

1. There is still a lot of room for the evolution of how text is presented on a news site, as well as how stories are written. Nielsen broaches this.
2. I wonder what’s after the pyramid.
3. I like CNN’s bullet-point summary at the top of its articles, about which Pat Thornton has written.

I have not read the study (here, but you need a membership for download) cited by Nielsen, so there may be questions about the methodology, such as:

1. Did it look at news sites?
2. Did it consider the reader’s goal when using a site?

Other interesting work from Nielsen on how people read on the Web:

1. How Users Read on the Web (They don’t), which also offers tips on presenting text on the Web
2. Eyetracking Research

Here’s a piece I wrote about writing for the Web.

And a video that effectively critiques videos on financial news sites while making me laugh:

Xoost.com connects you with people searching for the same thing you are (via eHub).

It’s not necessarily creating communities, but creating the awareness of the possibility of a community.

The same principle can be applied to almost any activity. For example, if you have a database of users on your news site, each story can list who has viewed it and how many times, if this doesn’t violate privacy expectations/agreements.

What strikes me about Xoost is the passive nature of the creation of the connection; machines watch you, then connect you to like-minded folks. That’s handy. That’s scary. Make it optional and maybe most people will be OK with it.

No doubt this kind of service will become a standard layer of information experience on the Web. I suppose it is already is with Google (and others) tracking your information habits, though I don’t think Mr. G offers a list of other Googlers who are searching for the same things you are.

Distraction provided by wooden spoons and human skulls:

I. Social: You are what you know and remember, and what others know and remember about you.

1. Forming groups of like interest / coordinate connections
2. Being in the know / personal topic guidance
3. Creating self-identity / ascribe values to information choices
4. Forming opinions / critiquing service
5. Sharing information (conversation, e-mail, clippings, recordings, etc.) to create social bonds / facilitate simplification and effectiveness of networking
6. Commenting upon information and expressing oneself /package user-generated content into media product that can be published, shared, found, marketed, jointly monetized

II. Research and information creation: Finding and making answers.

1. Make new information / writing and editing services
2. Answer questions / how to create good questions
3. Learn ways to allot limited resources (time, money, attention, energy) / lifestyle analysis and achieving information goal service

III. Entertainment: Please get me the hell out of my reality.

1. Distraction
2. Avoid work
3. Relax
4. Satisfy curiosity
5. Explore reality
6. ///// One service for all of these activities: Information health; know when you need to alter information activity to maintain health.

At every step, the information user needs to have the option of altering the type of experience they want with your information: click here and you can access deep information suited to a research task; click there and you can go into scanning (distraction) mode.

It’s a bit like having a pair of shoes that changes according to the weather; the pair of shoes is your story (from sandals for a hot day to galoshes for a downpour); the weather is the intent your customer brings to the information. The feet…are just hairy.

I can sense your RSS overload; you need to change your information activity ASAP. Here’s a free distraction service compliments of YouTube, m0serious and newsroomnext:

EveryBlock, from ChicagoCrime.org’s Adrian Holovaty and crew, fishes local info ponds and databases to create a new standard for the required depth of neighborhood news/information aggregation providers.

Why I like it

1. Making raw data made much more accessible is good journalism.
2. It finds and beautifully displays info from government reports (good source material for deeper stories), an aspect which competitors are failing to execute.
3. It finds geo-relevant news articles.
4. It knows the names of neighborhoods.

Opportunity:

• Machines will dominate the aggregation of hyperlocal news and information, but they can’t provide analysis or judgments of information quality, except through user-generated ranking systems with questionable results due to participation levels and voter intent.
• Info like this creates a need for info that indicates the significance or deeper meaning of EveryBlock’s headlines.

My new hyperlocal news service I’ll use to track Albuquerque while living in Hong Kong is now made up of:

1. EveryBlock (well, once it reaches Albuquerque)
2. Outside.in
3. Yourstreet.com
4. Upcoming.org

More reads on hyperlocal:

1. Hyperlocal.org: Berlin blog “investigating in emerging hyperlocal concepts and their economical, social and cultural impact.”
2. Wired: “Dispatches from the hyperlocal future“
3. ReadWriteWeb: “The rise of hyperlocal information“
4. BuzzMachine: “Towns are hyperlocal social networks with data (people that is)” with interesting excerpt: “I now believe that he who figures out how to help people organize themselves — letting them connect with each other and with what they all know — will end up with news, listings, reviews, data, gossip, and more as byproducts.”

And finally, a video of the moment, a new hyperridiculous service I’d like to provide. Today’s pick is the “herding cats” commercial, a classic:

Rather than having 50 million sacks into which you must stuff your data (from personal information to media and more), DataPortability wants the framework for one big sack that brave Web travelers can carry with them wherever they digitally go.

If/once such a structure takes hold on a mass scale, figuring out how to make money in a Web-is-your-Web-site environment will be even more pressing.

So how do we get away from an attention-capturing-and-retaining-and-selling business model?

Show me a newspaper.com information services division. I know I would like the service of transparent information verification, especially as people use data of all types to maintain and enhance their identities.

Would someone buy a “This data verified by newpaper.com information services” stamp?

DataPortability - Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut Media on Vimeo.

(via influx insights)

After being reminded of Ira Glass’ series on storytelling by MultimediaShooter, I felt inspired to create a static page of videos featuring tips and techniques from Glass and others. Up top, you’ll see the tutorials link.

If you know of other great video tutorials, let me know in the comments and I’ll aggregate, though I’m sure a little looking would bring up many similar collections of wisdom.

What: Five of the 10 best-selling novels last year in Japan were originally cellphone novels.

Freaking out:

“Fans praised the novels as a new literary genre created and consumed by a generation whose reading habits had consisted mostly of manga, or comic books. Critics said the dominance of cellphone novels, with their poor literary quality, would hasten the decline of Japanese literature.”

“Author” versus “Cellphone Author” reminds me of: “Bloggers” versus “journalists.”

Why I find it interesting: The tools of information production hugely influence the aesthetics and form of information:

“[The five cellphone novels are] mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels.”

It’s fascinating to watch storytelling techniques develop for different technologies. Could it be that plot and character development are tied to a printing press?

Via IHT (my employer).