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Advice

help a brother out

From Reid Forgrave at the Des Moines Register: In our newsroom, we’re having discussions about what are the best ways to do storytelling online. Some have argued that there’s no place for “narrative” storytelling online, that people won’t take the time to sit down and read true “stories” online, that storytelling must take a different (and presumably less time-intensive) form when it’s done online. I, of course, demurred. I think there’s surely a place for long-form narrative storytelling online – perhaps not in the “one big block o’ text” format, but maybe in other formats: short chapters readers can click through, or a few paragraphs of text that are broken up by explanatory photos or art (like ESPN’s eTicket), or video documentaries, or ???

Wondering if you could have people send in examples of online storytelling that’s been successful. I’m not talking about online components to what would be a regular newspaper narrative (like photo galleries, or a short interview with the subject of a story), but instead an online storytelling format that can stand on its own.

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Re: Advice

Reid-
Hey man. I can email you links if you'd like. All the research I've seen shows that people are more likely to read long stories online than in a newspaper. Let me put it another way. When do you have more time? In the morning drinking coffee or all day stuck in front of a computer screen?

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I tried to post this once, but it didn't show up. So I apologize if it posts twice.
The TH-R published a 10-chapter story online. It had the deadwood component as well but was geared primarily toward the web.
http://thr-investigations.com/lebrewjones/

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A good friend of mind who's a reporter at Newsday, Beth Whitehouse, did an amazing story on a girl with a rare disease whose live was saved when her parents had a genetically engineered child who donated the necessary stem cells. The online package is amazing and, as a result, Beth is nominated for a Pulitzer this year. This is the first year that the Pulitzer Prize jurors are considering Web packages across all the price catagories.

You can find beth's package here:
http://www.newsday.com/thematch

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Here.

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Here:

Readers select stories of particular interest and then read them thoroughly.

And there's a twist: The reading-deep phenomenon is even stronger online than in print.

At a time when readers are assumed to have short attention spans, especially those who read online, this qualifies as news.

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Bill Simmons' stuff on ESPN.com at times runs laughably long, and it's read like crazy.

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Sorry, I should be working right now, really, but I just need to get this off my chest here: People listen to This American Life because it's good. People watch The Wire because it's good. People read an 8,000-word Gary Smith story because it's good. Radio, TV, printed words, on paper, on the Web, what-the-fuck-ever: People listen/watch/read when they want to, when they're MADE to, when they just can't stop. The question isn't about the forum. It's about the content. Always has been, always will be, always SHOULD be. So go back to your people there in Des Moines and ask them a few things: Does the Internet somehow change what makes a story a story, and what makes a good one good, and a bad one bad? And what the hell is "narrative" storytelling? What other kind IS there? Okay. Rant over. Back to work.

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Thanks for the tips and examples, y'all. Keep 'em coming.

And if anyone can toss out studies that show people actually WILL read long stories online, that would help my case, too.

Kruse, I can't say I disagree with a single thing you say there. Of course you're right -- good writing is good writing, period. But it's easy to say these things coming from the St. Pete Times, where there's an ingrained culture of storytelling built into your paper. Now, coming from one of the innumerable other mid-sized papers in the country where the culture is more corporate, this can be an uphill battle. That's why you see so many other papers where the top story on the web site is "what's the most salacious bit of cop news from this morning" or "what photo gallery is going to get the most hits" -- obviously, the lowest common denominator in web "journalism."

What I'm hoping to do is try to get a narrative foothold in our paper's digital world. And when you go up to a web editor to discuss this, and the first thing he says is, "Well, we first need to realize that people don't read long stories online," you can see the culture we're battling here. It's sad how many newspaper people don't enjoy reading. But it's a truth that many of us have to operate under on a daily basis.

I need to go to angryjournalist and REALLY rant...

Re: Advice

My friend Rachel Dissell told me after her series about a young girl who survived a shotgun to the face by an abusive ex-boyfriend (www.cleveland.com/johanna) that an outrageously high percentage of people who clicked on the story's first page read all the way through. It was wicked high -- like more than 75 percent. Maybe even 90. I can't remember. I'm sure she'd share that info with you if you asked -- rdissell@plaind.com.

Also, I agree with Kruse to a point. It is and should be about the storytelling. But when I get sent a link on my blackberry, I don't like to read through a feature length story. I'd rather do that on paper or on the Web. Of course, you should figure out a way to exploit that medium the best way possible. So considering your format is important in deciding on how to tell the best story. But I think we may not have the Web right in our minds: Long, with lots of links to original documents and other resources, may be the best way to use the medium.

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You're right. We're fortunate here at the SPT, and Ben and I also were very, very lucky to work at the Times Herald-Record when we did, getting to learn from Mike Levine and his crew. But the main point here isn't about either of those places. It's that people think in stories, this happened, then that happened, then the next thing happened, beginning to middle to end. We want a political candidate to come in story form. Juries go with the most believable, most compelling story. In sports, every game is a story, every season is a story, every franchise is a story. It's been this way FOREVER, and I just can't believe -- will not believe -- that's changed in the last, oh, 10, 12 years since the Web came along.

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Neil Postman: "Of course, in the first half of the 20th century, we added some important inventions so that the burdens of information scarcity were removed once and for all. But in doing so, we created a new problem never experienced before: information glut, information incoherence, information meaninglessness ... (W)e have transformed information into a form of garbage, and ourselves into garbage collectors. Like the sorcerer's apprentice, we are awash in information without even a broom to help us get rid of it. Information comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, in enormous volume, at high speeds, severed from import and meaning. And there is no loom to weave it all into fabric. No transcendent narratives to provide us with moral guidance, social purpose, intellectual economy. No stories to tell us what we need to know, and what we do not need to know."

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If you want to see someone doing web narrative at a paper you'd never expect, check out Shauna Stephenson at the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle. The WTE is a sub-30k circulation paper in Cheyenne, Wyo. The editors let Shauna do stuff, but it's on her to do it. And when I say it's on her, I mean she shoots the photos, writes the stories, designs the web pages and literally puts the whole package together and gives it to the web guy to load on the server.

Check out this package she did on an adventure race:
http://www.buyorsellcheyenne.com/news/projects/AdventureRace/home.htm

And this one about the people affected by the Peacekeeper Missile plant in Wyoming:
http://www.buyorsellcheyenne.com/news/projects/wyonews-peacekeeper.asp

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Let me ask this question: When it comes to more than words and photos online, how many of you have Web staffs that actually have the time and knowledge to design a page?

Some of Wright's stories on ESPN just wow me. I know it's only for a certain category of story, but it feels like a magazine online. It has the right feel and it incorporates video/audio/whatever beautifully.

I regularly have lots of ideas on how to tell stories using the Web, and I usually can get the Web folks stuff that's half there (such as handing them an edited video, a markup of a Web page, etc.). But unless I know how to actually program it on the page, a lot of times it just doesn't happen. That's been the case at every paper and magazine I've worked at. I've started studying how to use Flash, but, honestly, the right-brained computer programming and left-brained writing is a lot of brain to be using. And because I prefer writing, sometimes I just throw my hands up, post an audio slide show and move on to the next story.

Anyone have any suggestions on working around an over-busy or under-educated Web staff? (In our case, I think it's more the former)

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As a former longtime copy editor, I make sure the headlines are great. When I see a bad or boring headline on one of my stories, I write my own, and then, usually, I watch them rise on the "Most Read" list.
I've not upset our web people at all when I do this, at least as far as I can tell. They're cool.
Also, when I do have the "Most Read" stories, I make sure editors are aware of it. I had a series around Valentine's Day last year called "Complicated Love," four complicated love stories over four days, and I knew it would be a big hit with online readers. But for some reason, web guy didn't think so and first day Day 1 got poorly displayed on web. Actually, it didn't get put on the web at all. So I threw a fit, got my way, and by the end of the week the series was Most Read online. And thanks to the web, the people who'd missed Day 1 could click on it few days later.
I know it goes against our grain to promote our stories in-house, but we have to, because there are so many editors now who falsely believe narrative doesn't work on the web.

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I'm so glad that you asked whether there was research out there on this, because you spurred my interest and I found a fascinating Poynter study that we should all print and wave around at editors!

A summary of two important points proving people will read long-form online:
# Once people chose what they wanted to read they read more thoroughly online than in print.
# Online readers read both short and long stories more completely than either broadsheet or tabloid readers (online 62% of the text of stories longer than 19 inches was read compared to 52% in tabloid and 49% in broadsheet.)
# Online readers, overall, read an average of 77% of the stories they chose to read.
Implication? Can we get over the longing for the "good old days" when supposedly people sat and read the newspaper cover to cover? It is clear that once engaged, the online reader stays with the text of a story longer than the newsprint reader.

# There were two reading styles revealed in the research – methodical readers and scanners. The "methodical" reader is described as someone who reads from top to bottom, without scanning, moving down the page / screen and sometimes going back to re-read material. The "scanner" would move quickly from headline to photos to reading part of a story without going back to the same place in the text. The eyetracking showed:
# 75% of print readers were methodical.
# Online readers were evenly split between methodical and scanners.
Implication?
Now, knowing that the audience is split between two different types of readers, how can online news be designed to engage both types of behaviors.

Here's a link to a summary:
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/070414paul/

and Poynter:
http://eyetrack.poynter.org/

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The Oregonian did an amazing video series on one of their former staffers who chose to use Oregon's assisted suicide law after years of battling lung cancer. It's not text, but it's narrative for sure, and it's amazing. Lovelle Svart got a huge response and sparked a community discussion about a topic we too often shy away from — death.

http://next.oregonianextra.com/lovelle/

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