Here’s a selection of interesting essays and commentary…
-
Online Storytelling Forms: A look at online
storytelling forms and structures, from interactives to slideshows. -
Searching for the Holy Grail:
The
online media industry has yet to come up with a business
strategy that consistently produces profits, but here’s
something that might help you figure out what approach is right
for your news operation: Poynter’s Steve Outing and Consultant
Rusty Coats break down eight business models being used for
online news and analyze the pros and cons of each. -
What Readers Want: Ever wonder what would happen if journalists gave
readers the power to select the top stories? The major news
sites have a few pages that give you a glimpse of what
reader-selected covers might look like. -
How the Web is Changing
PhotoJournalism:
The award-winning photography
site The Digital Journalist published a wonderful package on
how the Web is changing photojournalism. The series includes: "Reinventing
Photojournalism," by washingtonpost.com’s Tom Kennedy;
An
Interview with Travis Fox, multimedia photographer for
washingtonpost.com;
"Made
for the Medium: Photojournalism at MSNBC.com," by Brian
Storm; "The
Internet and Online Publishing," by JournalE’s Alan Dorow; "Bridging
Art and Technology at ZoneZero" by Pedro Meyer;
and
The Digital Journalist: Looking Back and Looking Forward by
the site’s publisher, Dirck Halstead. -
Transitions in PhotoJournalism: Brian Storm answers the
question, "Dude, why’d you leave MSNBC?" - Why
The Web Can Work So Well for Journalists:
Dan Froomkin, editor of WashingtonPost.com, says
online journalists should: Cleave to core newspaper values; be
trustworthy; provide depth and context; exercise careful and
responsible news judgment; don’t pander or let trends sway your good
sense; and evolve and change. -
How users read on
the Web: Jakob Nielsen says people rarely read Web pages
word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual
words and sentences. -
Inverted
Pyramids in Cyberspace: Nielsen argues for the adoption of
the inverted pyramid by web writers. -
News
sites and user-generated content: Steve Yelvington, former
executive editor of Cox Interactive Media, discusses how news sites
are doing a poor job of fostering community and what they could be
doing better. -
A Life
Without Paper: Mike Wendland went six months reading news
only online, but missed his newspaper. Here’s why. -
The Web and the
Future of Writing: Excerpt from "Reporting and Writing:
Basics for the 21st Century" by Christopher Scanlan. -
New
Media Timeline: A timeline
looking at the history of new media journalism and the
Internet, through 1998. Interesting, but would be great if it were
updated. -
Inventing an
Online Newspaper: This article recounts the debates and decisions
involved in building The Washington Post’s first online effort,
Digital Ink. From a former staffer’s perspective. -
It’s still
journalism: While the Web offers new tools, journalism basics
should not be abandoned. -
Writing
Online: It Rocks: Chip Scanlan of the Poynter Institute tells how
online writing has given him back the printing press. -
Producing,
Editing and Designing Online News: A 48-page digital, interactive
package that resulted from a Poynter Institute seminar.