Each news item sits in one area of the site. The story might belong in the technology section, the politics section, a world regional section, or some other area. Wherever it is, this is its home. Every story needs a home.

One of the skills of news website management is knowing how to exploit each story in all relevant sections, so that it appears on multiple section indices.

Take, for example, the news story that a study has revealed that users of mobile phones are exposed to an increased risk of developing cancer. Where should that story sit?

If it has come from a medical journal, it might be assigned to the health section as its primary home. If it is written by a technology expert, it might appear in the technical section.

Depending on the news angle, the story can be used in more than one section of the site. For example:

• Health: It is a health story, and users concerned about brain tumours (and who bookmark your health section) will expect to find it there.
• Technology: It is a technology story. Many will want to know what is being done to deal with the problem, such as what hands-free devices are available, or whether there are any shields on the market to protect people from the dangers.
• Business: It is a business story. Those with an interest in the mobile phone industry might be concerned about the effect the story has on shares of the leading mobile phone manufacturers.
• Regional news: The research might have come from an academic study attached to a university in a city in a country, so it is probably a regional news item, too.

This one story, about mobile phones being linked to cancer, can feature in the country-specific regional section and in the health, technology and business sections. It all depends on the focus. It will not be the same story, although there will be some shared information. Each version will focus on the angle of most concern to the section in which it appears.

However, it doesn’t end there. There will probably be some audio and video. If there is, the item could be the lead story in the multimedia section if you have one.  Are there enough images to create a photo-gallery?

Will people want to discuss it? If so, it might be worth creating a discussion on the subject. It could become the biggest interactive issue of the day.

The role of the duty editor is to consider all these things. She or he has to ensure that all elements of the story are covered.

Expanding and developing stories

Another skill in running a news website is knowing when to break a story into component parts.

There will always be the need for one overview piece, but the duty editor needs to decide when it’s worth writing more detailed pieces about the various aspects of the story.

However, there is a danger in this. Don’t try to write a few hundred words on one minor development – this is padding. If it doesn’t justify a separate story, then don’t try to write one.

News specials

The duty editor might decide that an issue is of such significance, and is likely to be around for so long, that there is a need for a special section. This might include background information including fact files, timelines, profiles, question and answers.

As duty editor you might decide to have half-a-dozen themed sections a year to tie in with those being covered by TV, radio, or print. You might want to consider a few news specials highlighting big stories which are likely to crop up again and which you are likely to return to.

The benefit of a well-crafted collection of special sections is that they can be linked to time and again when a related news story breaks. This helps you to publish quality background information quickly. It helps your audience to understand the news story and gives it context. It also makes efficient use of archived material.

Data husbandry

Special sections can be of immense benefit because they group all news items, background information, and context and analysis pieces in one place. However, if you commission too many there is a danger that you might not be able to maintain them properly and they could soon become out of date.

This is particularly true with political specials. You will need to update the details of every politician who has resigned, moved on to another department, or died.

The best way round this is to treat your special sections as you would a garden. One day it looks beautiful, the next day weeds have grown and the flowers have gone to seed or died. You need to weed and tidy the garden regularly to keep it presentable. The same is true with news. Data husbandry is needed to ensure that the content in your special sections does not become out of date.

Again, using the analogy of the garden, some of the news features might need to be pruned or pulled out. Cuttings might need to be taken and replanted. Perhaps the whole special section needs digging over completely and a new design and arrangement offered.

Specials can rarely be left unattended; that is a recipe for disaster. The easiest way to manage this is not to have too many in the first place. You should also make one of your journalists responsible for ensuring that the specials are always presentable. If a related news story breaks, you will want to link to the special section immediately, not wait for a few hours while it is checked and given a makeover.

Special front page

There will be news stories that deserve a special front page. This is when the usual news site is taken over by something so important that no other stories deserve to make it through to the front page. Such stories will be obvious when they occur.

The attack on the twin towers on 9/11 might be considered such a news story. Special front pages might contain only one image, one headline, and one summary linking to one story.

There are two reasons for this. A minimal front page with one big story is less likely to crash at times of great user demand. It also sets out clearly that this is the most important news event happening at the time.

Just as important as knowing when to use a special front page is knowing when to take it down. A special front page limits the ability of the audience to find other information. Although they might be interested in the big story, they might also be interested in other material on the site. You might want to start thinking about removing the special front page and returning to normality after a couple of hours.

Legal issues

Be careful when covering legal cases where somebody has been arrested, faces charges, or is appearing in court. Somewhere on your site you may have covered the original incident, perhaps in some detail.

The story containing the background to the case might have been archived, but it will still be accessible via search. The user might also piece together the details and look up the case.

Your site will probably have material stored somewhere that could possibly influence a jury and perhaps lead to a contempt of court. Do not link to archived stories in an active case.

The jigsaw effect

There was a case in England when two schoolgirls were reported missing. The newspapers, radio, TV, and online news organisations published their names. The parents pleaded for their return. Everybody knew their names, the school they went to, and where they lived.

The next day there was a reconstruction of their last known movements. Two of their school friends dressed in similar clothes and walked the same road as police tried to jog the memories of potential witnesses.

A week later, two girls were found imprisoned in a flat above a shop in the town’s high street. They had been abducted. The newspapers, radio, TV, and online news organisations carried tearful scenes of the girls being reunited with their families.

Some months later, a story appeared on the news wires reporting that a man, who lived in the same flat where the girls had been found, had been arrested, charged, and was to appear in court accused of abducting and abusing two young girls. The dangers of the jigsaw effect (piecing together bits to form a fuller picture) is all too clear.

Not only could the girls be identified (and then face the stigma of being associated with being victims of a sexual offence), but the defendant’s trial could also be prejudiced by the piecing together of the various parts of the story.

In a newspaper, on radio, and on TV, it is easier. You don’t mention the past incidents and if someone happens to put two and two together it is not necessarily your responsibility. However, as a duty editor managing a news website, you must ensure that you have not assembled this jigsaw of information for the readers.

Exploiting content

The duty editor needs to talk to all outlets of the news operation on a regular basis in order to find out what material is available now, what is coming up, and when it will be ready for you to use online. They need to attend any daily meetings.

You might find that a particularly searching radio or TV interview can be cut into question-and-answer component parts. Perhaps you can make a text box for the front page highlighting the main questions. Those could link through to the answers in either audio, video, or text, or perhaps all three.

Knowing what material is available to you means that you can exploit it online. You could have quote, film clip, image, and sound of the day. Everything you have can be cut up and used again in some other form.

This is important where you have different audiences tuning in at different times of the day to different programmes with different editorial focus. A news website presents an excellent opportunity to bring all the various elements together.

Every element can present you with another opportunity to help your audience better understand an issue. Clips or quotes from an interview could form the basis for an interactive forum discussion.

A guest, in the newsroom for a print, TV, or radio interview, might agree to stay for another hour for an online chat. If you know the day before that they are coming in, you can canvass users for their questions and put them to the guest.

The post Presenting and exploiting content online first appeared on Media Helping Media.

Increasingly, news websites are the product of a converged newsroom operating as a content factory and delivering information to whatever device the user turns to in order to access information.

If the editor-in-chief of your news organisation is out of the country, she or he should be able to browse your site and by looking at your story choice and treatment have a good idea about the news priorities of the entire news organisation.

Your website will probably share the same news schedule as your broadcast or print colleagues. You may share reporters and correspondents. Some have a combined planning team.

When stories are discussed for TV, radio or print, someone from the online team needs to be present. They need to sit in on news meetings and suggest interactive elements for all the big stories. Their role is to come up with ideas for presenting information in ways that can engage the audience.

The duty editor needs to ensure that the material that appears on the site cross-promotes other output areas. If the website is part of a broadcasting organisation with TV and radio news output, it will be expected to display the best of the material produced by the broadcasters.

The news website should include details of when that item can next be seen on TV or radio. This is particularly true where your news operation has uncovered valuable, exclusive information and has a special programme, or a special report, running on TV or radio.

The cross-promotion can be shown as a text link signifying when the next opportunity for watching or listening to the news item is scheduled, or it can be a box offering some or all of the material from the TV and radio output. For news websites offering video and audio on-demand, cross-promotion is essential.

Managing all these resources so that they enhance the news website and the stories that appear on it, is one of the main functions of the online duty editor. It is also important that the audience finds the same facts online as they hear or see on air or read in print. They must not be given mixed messages.

Liaising with other departments

It is important that the duty editor has a system for letting other departments know which stories the online team is investing time and resources covering. This usually begins with the daily news meetings. The chances for cross-promotion on air, on screen, and in print, will be far greater if the person in charge of the editorial content on the website lets the editors of other news outlets know what the online team is creating.

Some news operations have a shared online folder where the various elements of a story are added so that all are aware of what is being created and what is available. Some have a superdesk system where representatives of all outlets sit together and share knowledge. Whatever the system, the duty editor in charge of the news website should tap into this resource regularly.

TV and radio producers will need to know when an interactive element is likely to be ready so that they can promote it in their programmes. They will want to know when the interactive team is in place to take feedback from users online. They will need to know when a guest is being lined up for an online interview.

All these elements need to be brought together by the duty editor and offered to all outlets in good time for them to include a mention in their output. It is pointless for a news website to organise a talking point on an issue if the duty editor hasn’t told his or her counterparts about it.

As you inform these outlets, be ready to consider their suggestions. The other editors might have excellent ideas about what should be created online. Keep an open mind. Be prepared to try new ideas if they will enhance the output.

News agenda

The duty editor of a news website must check every decision to ensure that it is in the best interest of the news brand and its users. Examining motives is essential. There have been hand-over meetings where the incoming duty editor has decided to change the front page completely.

This is justified if the previous front page was an inadequate reflection of the news, but it is not justified if it is to try to make the incoming duty editor look good. There have been stories that have taken hours to create, removed from the front page after appearing there for less than an hour. It may be, however, that there is so much breaking news that there is no room for everything.

The news agenda must:

• include all the main stories being covered by the rest of the news operation.
• exploit all resources and effort being committed to covering the news.
• reflect the strengths of your organisation’s newsgathering effort.

The news agenda is not:

• the chance for the in-coming duty editor to look good.
• an opportunity to play with news to appear clever.
• an excuse to deploy inappropriate interactive elements.
• a news product isolated from the rest of the news operation.

The duty editor of a news website has an enormous responsibility. She or he needs to be clear about why news items appear, and why changes are made.

The post How to set online news priorities first appeared on Media Helping Media.

The person in charge of a news website is like a shopkeeper who sets out their stall. If the items are badly displayed the customer might miss them, if they are not fresh people won’t buy them.

In this module we look at how a news website should be managed, how the front page should be built, how to keep control of the various subsections, how to update a site, the best use of links, the building of special sections, and the use of audio, video, and interactivity.

Depending on the content management system (CMS) being used by the news organisation, this person could also be responsible for selecting which images appear on the front page.

The way news stories are presented is essential. A shabby, unfocused, mistake-strewn site will reflect badly on the news organisation.

Errors in presentation, ambiguous headlines, badly captioned images, the juxtaposition of conflicting messages can and will often be saved and stored as a record of major mistakes.

There is no use taking the view that you can always correct your errors. You can, but a damaging screen grab might already have been taken. You need to do your job aware that every word you write and every decision you make is reflected online forever.

Shared responsibility

In a small newsroom, this responsibility is sometimes shared between the journalists writing for the site. In a large news operation, there will often be one person, or shift of people, who perform this function.

Some of the titles used to describe this role include duty editor, day editor, and chief sub. For the sake of this module, let’s call this person the duty editor.

The duty editor’s job is to ensure that the news is covered properly, that it is delivered on time, and that it is created to the standards set out in the editorial guidelines of the news organisation. They also decide what the user will or will not see. And those users will be clicking on the website expecting to see what their trusted news organisation has to say on an issue.

Unfinished business

Like all 24-hour news products, online journalism has no beginning and no end.

Newspapers and magazines have editions, traditional radio and TV stations have news bulletins and news programmes, but 24-hour news operations, be they on-air, or online, keep rolling along.

If you work for a print operation with an online presence, the website must be updated around the clock. It will be an editorial strategy decision, taken by senior managers, as to whether the news website follows the lead of the print run, or whether it has updates and sets its own deadlines more appropriate for the online audience.

Even if your organisation decides that you should not update as frequently as a broadcast organisation’s website you will still need to take care in your use of times, dates, and references to ‘today’, ‘tomorrow’, and ‘next week’. It can confuse users if you use terms that work for your schedules, but are meaningless to theirs.

A news website duty editor will never have to build a site from scratch. She or he will arrive for a shift with a site already built and with stories being continually refreshed and updated.

Stories will have been commissioned, journalists will be working on features, interactive staff might be building components such as talking points, votes and polls, and the multimedia staff might be cropping images and choosing audio and video.

The importance of reading in

The duty editor inherits a product, and herein lies one of the first dangers. Unless he or she has read what they have inherited, they are in no position to decide what needs to be updated or replaced and what is still relevant and informative.

The duty editor’s role is not there to play with content. Their role is not to change things for change’s sake. They are there to present the news properly.

Make sure that you are up to speed before you start your shift. There have been cases of stories (already written and published online) being updated again by a new shift simply because the duty editor was not fully aware of all the stories on the site.

It is also important for the duty editor to read other news sites. They should also watch TV news and, if their organisation is a radio broadcaster, listen to those bulletins and those of the competition. The duty editor needs to know what is happening, what has happened, what has been covered, and what still needs to be covered.

The user should never notice there has been a change of shift. The user should only feel better informed as the day goes on.

Managing the front page

There should be a handover at change of shift when one duty editor will brief his or her successor about what stories are being worked on and what can be expected in the next few hours.

Knowing your audience, and what the site statistics say about visiting habits, will help inform your decisions about when to update and when not to update. If, for example, the peak viewing periods are 11:30 to 14:00, and 18:00 to 20:00, you should aim to update the news content significantly for 11:00 and 17:00.

You might want to make smaller changes between those times, but it is worth focusing your efforts on the times when you have the biggest audience. However, you should not withhold news update. Breaking news and updates happen 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Knowing your audience viewing habits will help you to decide where best to focus your editorial efforts.

Updates are important. They need to show that something significant has happened. There is no point in changing stories on the home page if there have been no meaningful developments. You can make small changes, for example updating the image, but you must not use cosmetic alterations to fool readers into thinking that these indicate important updates when the underlying content contains nothing new.

If a user is attracted by a new headline and image but finds that the main substance of the story has not changed, they might feel let down.

Think carefully before you drop a story featured on the front page or a section index page. These are the most visible areas of your site. If the story is not featured here the chances are that it won’t attract the views it would otherwise.

Story shelf life

Consider how much a story costs in terms of time, effort, and resources before reducing it to a headline link in the ‘other news’ section. Your job is to manage the content intelligently in terms of its editorial impact and in terms of its cost and benefit to your news organisation.

Similarly, you must decide on which stories your journalists should invest their time and effort. When making this decision, you need to bear in mind the audience profile, the news operation’s core news strengths, and the story’s shelf life. This will often be the duty editor’s responsibility.

Several journalists might be contributing to one story. None of them is likely to have the overview you have. They will continue to offer fresh content and update the story until they are told to stop. The duty editor must know when to save a story as a complete version of an event and when to start a new story.

By evaluating the shelf life of a story, you will also be deciding how much effort to put into it.

The post Managing a news website’s front page first appeared on Media Helping Media.