Web reporting review

What is news?
 News is a reporting of recent events, of new
information.
 Reporting the news is a public service.
 News originate in three ways:
- naturally occurring events,
- planned activity,
- reporter enterprise.

9 elements of News
 Timeliness Human Interest
 Impact
 Prominence
 Proximity
 Conflict
 Novelty
 Consequences
 Currency

Timeliness
 Recent events have higher news value than
happenings in the past.

Impact
 How many people will be affected influenced
by the subject of the story.

Prominence
 Significant people or places are evolved.

Proximity
 How close to home the news originate.

Conflict
 “Bad news” - crime, war, public discontent,
protest, disagreement.

Novelty
 The unusual, strange, unique or odd.

Consequence
 The effect, result or outcome of something
occuring earlier.

Currency
 More value is given to stories pertaining to
issue or topics that are in the spotlight of public
concern rather than topics that have little
prevalence ( more people care about the
issue.)

Human interest
 Stories about individual and groups of people
and their problems, concerns, achievements
can stir emphasis, and sometimes outrage in
the reader or viewer.
 Human interest stories are often the story
behind the story.

Online Journalism Storytelling
 Any story that is an issues that is expressed in
human events.
 Take a common issue and come to it from a
new and meaningful way.
 News is new information, people and details.
 Journalism is storytelling with factstrue.

4 core elements of digital
journalism
 Gathering – facts, anecdotes, facts etc.
 Filtering – critical element, distinguishing
“signal from sound,” mindfully choose what
information to include.
 Packaging and distributing – the information
across different platform and using different
networks.
 Conversation –promoting and discussing your
story with the audience.

Online headlines
 Obvious
 Keyword filled
 Search engine optimized
 Contain a verb

Online news story basics
 Immediacy of the web beats everything for
breaking news.
 Inverted pyramid.
 Online news in ongoing and can be updated,
most stories don’t require a tight conclusion.
 Include at least one image – visual center.
 Hyperlinks for attribution, background.
 Leave your opinion out of it.

Original reporting
 “It’s a waste of time to rereport good
reporting.”
 Aggregate – link to what’s already over there
while seeking original content that will set you
apart.
 Attempt to interviewsee peopleevents in
person.
 Eyewitness accounts will provide the better
details and the most truth.
 No one-source stories.

Hierarchy of source reliability
 Face-to-face
 Source (paper)
 Voice-to-voice
 Electronic documents
 E-mail exchange
 Official web-sites

Not-to-reliable sources
 Personal web-sites
 Social networking web-sites
 Anonymous online comments.

How do I evaluate online
sources?
 Authority – who authorized the web-page?
 Accuracy – are the facts documented?
 Objectivity – what is the purpose of the site?
 Currency – when was it written and was it
updated?
 Coverage – does the site address the topic
 Value- Grammatical errors.

Use critical thinking online
 Determine credibility – plug author’s name in
the search engine.
 Check WHOIS domain name registry.

Fair Use
 Allows for limited use of other’s copyrighted
material for purposes condoned by law.
 It allowes journalists to post SOME
imagescontent online without obtaining the
owner’s permission if we use the copyrighted
work in ay that are fundamentally equitable.

Common examples of fair use
 Legitimate criticism
 Commentary
 News reporting
 Research
 Scholarship

Who is my audience?
 Always ask yourself – this will help to develop
the focus of the story.
 All stories are topics, all topics have an
interested community.
 Find out what topics your audience is talking
about, sharing and the information they are
searching for with Google trends.

Visual functionality
 On a web page successful communication is
influence by:
 Text in the screen.
 Page layout.
 Images: pictures and graphics.
 Color that make a psychological impact.

Readability on the WEB
 Highlighted keywords
 Sub-headings
 Lists
 One idea per paragraph
 Short paragraph
 White space

Sound in the online story
 Downloadable podcasts ( like radio show)
 Offered as sound bites
 Raw recorded interview or live
 Combined with moving picture on the video
 Paired with photos in an audio photo slide
 Augmented with text and graphics

Sound as an emotional carrier
 To hear someone's voice and character
 Capture ambiance of a situation
 Convey intimacy of a situation
 When subject of a story is about music noise
 To create a mood

Mutimedia storyboarding
 Requires to go to the field and think:
 Which details should my audience hear?
 What detail should my audience see?

Digital Journalism Ethics
 To what extent existing media ethics is suitable
for today’s and tomorrow’s news media that is
immediate, interactive and “always on” – a
journalism of amateurs and professionals.

Two level tension
 between traditional journalism and online
journalism
 between parochial and global journalism. If
journalism has global impact, what are its
global responsibilities?

Anonymity
 When is anonymity ethically permissible and is
it inconsistent for media to enforce different
rules on anonymity for different media
platforms?
 What should be the ethical guidelines for
anonymity offline and online?

SPEED, RUMOR AND
CORRECTIONS
 Speed puts pressure on newsrooms to publish
stories before they are adequately checked
 “Sharing” creates the potential for great harm
 How to handle errors and corrections when
reports and commentary are constantly being
updated

Should I comment my stories?
 Yes, and you should identify yourself. You
should never comment anonymouslpseudo.
 “Stock Puppetry” – unethical.

How to comment?
 Provide additional informationtip
 Ask questions
 Share anecdotes
 Say “Thank you for your comment”

Online reputation
 How do you manage your online foot print?

Web reporting review

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Web reporting review