Print vs Web: Adapting Your Style for a Changing Environment
In a modern world, more and more newspapers have shifted to an online medium. What are some of the changes journalists need to consider when adapting print stories for online media?
With completely different readerships and ways of interacting with the content produced, print and web are two stark contrasts when it comes to publishing, especially news publishing.
The different forms of media have different requirements in order to become the most effective on each individual platform.
64% of adults use the internet for news, with it being the most popular in the 16–24 age bracket. Printed news was used by % of respondents to access news. Ofcom
Clearly, online news has had a large surge in popularity in recent years, and for that reason, it’s so important to cater specifically to this particular platform.
What do journalists need to do in order to make the most of online news?
What Needs to Change?
Although the stories written in both print and online publications may be the same in terms of their textual content, journalists are constantly challenged to make their content more user friendly for the purposes of online news.
Here are some things they need to consider:
SEO
Search Engine Optimisation is the act of modifying certain elements on a webpage in order to increase the quality and quantity of traffic to your website by helping the webpage appear further up in search engine listings.
When considering SEO, journalists may need to consider including ‘keywords’ in their text, words that are relevant to the content that users might be using in search engines.
They might need to consider the data that they use and the ability to link this data in their article, as search engines will lower a page’s rank if the links within are deemed untrustworthy.
There are plenty of other changes that can be made to make an online news article SEO friendly — this is only the tip of the iceberg. However it is important to consider that journalists may need to keep these factors in the back of their mind when creating content for online mediums!
Interactivity
Users can navigate and interact with a website far better than they can a newspaper. For this reason it’s important to keep interactivity in mind when focusing on online news.
Instead of a text only article explaining the timeline of an event unfolding, the news outlet could consider using a scrollable timeline in order to demonstrate this.
Although the information presented is exactly the same, it’s presented in a way that allows more interactivity and makes the information more digestible for the audience.
Reader Attention
If a person is purchasing a newspaper at their local corner shop, supermarket or newsstand, you can almost guarantee that this newspaper will have their full attention throughout the duration of their reading.
After spending their money, people will want to get the most out of the physical artifact as they can.
With online news, however, much of it is free. If a certain story isn’t particularly engaging, the user can simply search for a better version of the story on another news website.
Couple this with the abundance of social sharing when it comes to online news and you’ve got yourself a lot of competition.
Journalists and news outlets must consider grabbing (and keeping) their readers’ attention for their electronically published content.
Readability
“Using the internet is physically changing our brains so that we have shorter attention spans and worse memory.” The Telegraph
With short attention spans comes the need to summarise — instead of chunky paragraphs, it’s worth delivering online content in bullet lists, and making important pieces of information bold, perfect for the skimming online reader.
Journalists and news outlets may have to question how they present their content in order to satisfy this and get the most readership out of their content.
The Future
Whilst the surge of online news is vast, and many believe the future of news is online, print doesn’t seem to be going anywhere just quite yet.
Although it’s crucial for journalists to be able to adapt to changing mediums, for some, nothing will beat the ritual of sitting down in the afternoon with a cup of tea and reading the dailies.
“I unfold the paper, and the world opens up to me as through a parting cloud. But it is a special world, an invented world, and here is the key to its charm: It is pleasingly static, momentarily a settled matter. My news on paper isn’t subject to updating until tomorrow morning.” Andrew Ferguson
Online may be one of the more accessible and budget friendly forms of news consumption, but in a digital age, sometimes going back to tradition is therapeutic.
So, journalists — don’t always think online first. Allow people to revel in the moment by continuing to create quality content and reporting accurately. Of course, keep in mind the above factors in order to ensure your content gets seen, but don’t let your stories become jarring by putting digital first.
Whether print or online, if accurate reporting, objectivity and creating engaging stories that can help us make sense of the world are the real values of journalism, no matter the medium, journalism will survive.
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