Cover every story like the Orlando Sentinel covered the space shuttle launch
Written by amedeo on October 23rd, 2007
OrlandoSentinel.com’s “The Write Stuff” blog covered the space shuttle launch with an approach built for the Web: rapidly released, highly focused, simply presented micro-content that builds complexity and a fuller story over time.
In a world without limited resources, it would have been great to:
- Have the videos broken into smaller, shorter pieces that could be posted as individual blog entries so all of the content is in one location (slightly off to the right creates a micro disruption in my engagement). See Patrick Beeson’s post about what news sites can learn from Twitter. (The Sentinel uses Twitter.)
- Post photos when they’re ready as individual blog entries; post the whole slide show as another blog entry.
- Incorporate, as directly as possible, information from other sources. Why not launch public Flickr and YouTube accounts for this one story, and pull in whatever relevant submissions come through? Well-described links to other news sources?
- Make the whole story embeddable (see my post: “Every story should be a Web site, and a Web site should be a network hub“) so it can go on any Web site. Incorporate ads. What about a desktop widget?
Think of every story, structurally, as an individual blog or, as Doc Searls might say, as a river.
Thanks for the kudos. We do try to pull out the stops with shuttle coverage.