I found this piece from The Guardian timely and consider it a must read for anyone in publishing.
While several good points are discussed, I am particularly interested in two that touch upon centerpieces of my own seminars and blog posts: frequency and storytelling strategy.
Every newsroom MUST have a strategy in place about these two issues. For frequency, it is a philosophical approach to how the editors and journalists think as they produce content; in terms of storytelling, it is all about realizing that content, the story, is what counts, then accommodating various non traditional storytelling structures that fit into how
Frequency
While editors have no trouble understanding that we no longer function within the old frequency standards (for daily newspaper editors, starting with a meeting around 10 in the morning, and having two other such meetings later in the day), few practice the continuous newsroom strategy. Those we do, however, see results immediately. I have experienced this most recently through my work with Norway’s Aftenposten, where traditional meetings have been replaced with shorter, more spontaneous “story planning” sessions throughout the day. These rarely last more than 15 minutes.
The Guardian piece hits upon that note:
“No longer shackled to the desktop, users are accessing content well beyond the 9-to-5, on the commute to and from work, from the pub, in front of the TV and in bed. For BuzzFeed that means a traffic peak much later in the day. UK editor Luke Lewis said: “It starts to pick up around 6pm and tends to peak around 10pm.” Anyone targeting an audience, staffing teams and timing social media posts to best effect needs to take note.
Take note, too, of the extended internet week. Saturdays and Sundays matter now more than ever. So much so that one of the first things Martin Ashplant did as newly-appointed digital and social media director of City AM was turn his digital news team from a five-day to a seven-day operation.”
In addition, in several other newspapers, including Denmark’s Berlingske, the old “closing” deadlines of late at night for print have been replaced with much earlier ones, recognizing that news does not break on the print edition, and facilitating the inclusion of those popular pdf editions of the print product via the evening tablet.
Storytelling strategies
It is not just rethinking frequency, but also not letting the limitations of old storytelling formats: the traditional text driven narrative, to keep you from creating new, sharper, easier to digest storytelling strategies for mobile devices.
Think format, The Guardian piece recommends:
“That’s format as in layout and format as in genre. “It’s about making [the text] scannable, quite modular,” said Nathalie Malinarich, mobile editor for BBC News Online whose team have adapted the ‘explainer’ for a mobile audience. “We took the traditional format of a Q&A and made it very visual, the answers very short and snappy and the questions very basic, so within a minute you could get a really good idea of what a story was.” The success of Malinarich’s approach is visible in the traffic numbers – for six out of the previous seven days an explainer on Ebola had featured in the top 20 for mobile. “It’s about answering the questions that people are asking themselves.”
Making it very visual is also part of what makes these new storytelling forms popular as we use mobile devices to consume news.
Mario Garcia: Master Class at The Poynter Institute Nov. 20
I am honored with an invitation to teach a Master Class at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies. You can either attend the class in person at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, in St. Petersburg, Florida, or via online.
Here is how Poynter describes the event:
In this exclusive PoynterNewsU event, Mario will highlight the lessons learned from his spectacular career, while pointing out the decision points and philosophies that led him to where he is today. He will take questions on design, redesign, innovation and, of course, storytelling.
This upcoming Broadcast will be broadcast on: Thursday, November 20, 2014 at 10:30am Eastern Time
http://www.newsu.org/masterclass-garcia
Enroll here:
http://www.newsu.org/masterclass-garcia