On my first day working for my local newspaper just north of Liverpool, England, back in the mid ’70s, I was shown to a desk in a dusty corner of a smoke-filled newsroom. On it was a sit-up-and-beg Underwood typewriter with broken keys. A pile of folios — small, checkbook-size pieces of paper — was stacked on one side, along with a box of elastic bands, a folder of carbon paper, and a grubby, well-thumbed dictionary.
There wasn’t much light. Old editions of the tri-weekly broadsheet were glued to the windows. They were there to prevent journalists from being distracted, rather than to stop people from looking in.
There were piles of back-copies in every corner. A cuttings cabinet took up most of one wall; it contained clips that were painstakingly snipped out of every story from every edition with a pair of blunt scissors, then filed by a junior office worker.
The news editor sat at the end of the room. He always wore a suit and tie, even in the height of summer, and sported a bushy handlebar mustache. He would address you by your last name, never your first, and, if you made a spelling or grammatical mistake, would order you to stand by his desk and proceed to humiliate you in front of the whole newsroom by pointing out the error, not once, not twice, but usually three times. Everyone would be expected to stop what they were doing and listen, although they would also be expected not to laugh.
It was during one such session that I learned the difference between “more than” and “over,” and how never to write “to try and.” Public humiliation is a great teacher.
News was about facts, not padding. Welcome to the formula for the digital age.In those first weeks as a newspaper reporter, I was taught about pyramid journalism. The story had to be written so that it could be chopped and still make sense. The sub-editors, and later in the process the printers, would have to fit the words into the column inches available. If the story relied on the last paragraph, their job would be made harder.
We were told the basics of good journalism. Sentences had to contain a subject, verb, and object. A story needed to tell the reader who, why, when, where, what, and how. News was about facts, not padding. Welcome to the formula for the digital age.
More than 20 years later I was part of the small management team planning for the launch of BBC News Online. As we began grappling with how to create content for presentation online, I realized that many of the lessons learned in that typical English regional newspaper office held answers to some of the questions facing those of us attempting to deliver digital journalism in the online age. That realization was hammered home when, two years later, I introduced a multiplatform authoring strategy (MPA) for CNN.com –- all based on those early lessons in print.
When I was invited to build CNN.com Europe in 2000, I decided that the new site could only launch if we had the tools to allow someone to write content once, but deliver it to all current platforms using an MPA solution.
At that time, CNN had separate teams in Atlanta and London using a variety of tools to create unique content for several platforms, including online, CNN text, WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), and SMS (Short Message Service). The news production process was resource-intensive, slow, and clearly unsustainable.
The technical team agreed to build a content creation system that forced limitations on the journalist, who in turn agreed to deliver words that made sense within that framework.
The basics of clear, crisp, accurate journalism are a timeless requirement.For example, journalists had to write short headlines to a limited character count. The headline could stand alone, be tagged, committed to the database, and then extracted to any platform. The first paragraph had to be a certain number of characters to be automatically deliverable to SMS pagers. The first three paragraphs had to be a certain length to fit neatly on WAP and CNN text. Most important of all, the story could be cut at any point and still make sense.
This formula was ideal for hard breaking news stories; other solutions were deployed for features and in-depth background pieces. It was simply returning to the basics many of us learned in print, but now applied to the digital age.
The experience reinforced for me that the basics of clear, crisp, accurate journalism are a timeless requirement. Realizing this is as essential for anyone planning a career in print as it is for those working in TV, radio, online, and magazines.
With more and more broadcasters and publishers moving toward converged digital content strategies, these disciplines are key to reducing costs, ensuring consistency of editorial message, and strengthening the brand.
