Writing for the Web: A guide for TV journalists
Cory Bergman of Lost Remote tells us, step by step, How to Write for the Web:
On the web, you’re writing for the motivated reader. Users impatiently scan headlines for anything that jumps out at them, and once they find a story they like, they click it. Once they’ve made that decision to read a story, they expect more details than they typically see in a 90-second TV piece — not as many as a newspaper story, but more than television. In a nutshell, web writing should be tighter and more conversational than print, but more detailed and a little more formal than TV.
He goes on to explain 11 steps concisely.
A commenter named Jason added this good tip:
I always log my tapes in my package slug in the newsroom software (that way the total log is saved as a prior version). When I write my web version of the story, I copy the entire log into MS Word, and start writing from scratch.
That helps me get details into the web story that were omitted for time, flow, or storytelling reasons in the TV version.
Technorati tags: journalism | television | online journalism | online media
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