The importance of updating and rewriting

Journalism is an ongoing commitment to update and rework the material we are producing.

As soon as we commit anything to print, press the save button for online journalism, or produce a broadcast news item, the news we are publishing is likely to be out of date.

As journalists we all face the challenge of ensuring the material we produce remains relevant.

Only lazy journalists stand still, news keeps moving

I started my career in journalism as a newspaper reporter. In the corner of the newsroom there was a desk with a pair of scissors and a pot of glue.

You can see the sort of set up in the image above. The photograph was taken in the newsroom of The Chronicle in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, where I was doing some journalism training in 2010.

The scissors are for cutting out articles from the day’s newspaper. The glue is for sticking them on a sheet of paper with the date and key words at the top. They were then filed in boxes stored on massive shelves. This was the newspaper’s archive. Every new story covered would involve a visit to the archive for background and context.

The same was true at my first newspaper, The Southport Visiter. We had a ‘diary-and-file’ area where our cuttings were kept. There was a line of metal filing cabinets with alphabetically-labelled drawers. Then there was the diary, a shared book where all important follow-up dates had to be recorded.

It was every reporter’s responsibility to ‘diary-and-file’ their work.

This indicates two things. The daily newspaper is – as soon as it comes off the printing press – archive material. But it’s also essential material for background information. It’s a document of record that will provide valuable information in the future.

At the BBC we had department called News Information where journalists could order background information from a huge archive. All was old news, but it was also valuable news when it came to piecing together an update or covering a breaking or developing story about a topic that had been in the news previously. It was essential for adding context.

My first job at the BBC was on the local radio station in my hometown of Liverpool, England. A few weeks after working as a reporter, getting out and about covering news stories and interviewing locals, I was asked to compile and read my first news bulletin.

I thought it went well and returned to the newsroom feeling quite proud of myself. I was about to make a cup of tea, sit down and put my feet up when the news editor came over and told me to rewrite everything.

“We don’t deal in old news,” he said.

Even wonderfully-crafted parts of my script that I felt couldn’t be improved had to be refreshed. I was struggling to think of any ways to update the material as the next hourly news bulletin approach.

My news editor told me to get up. He sat in my chair, took over my typewriter, and, with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, refreshed the whole five-minute news script in what seemed like seconds.

I was told to put in fresh calls to find out new information. It wasn’t as big a deal as I thought. But it was essential work. The next bulletin was fresh, relevant, and, most importantly updated.

The lesson forced me to think through all the elements in the story and how they could be developed. It forced me to be a journalist and not just a news reader.

Radio bulletin checklist 1981

There was a checklist for tasks at Liverpool’s Radio Merseyside in 1981.

• Write bulletin and underline any facts in the story that need to be checked for updates
• Rewrite the bulletin immediately after leaving the studio and before thinking about making a cup of tea
• The rewriting should include both the introduction script and the piece itself
• If necessary, get any audio reports re-voiced if the information is out-of-date
• If you are using an audio clip of someone in the news always have a selection of at least three alternatives available, one talking about what has happened, another about what they intend to do about it, and the third about what will happen next
• Never run a voiced report or an audio clip more than twice
• Realise that all those mentioned in the news bulletin may have fresh information to share after having heard your bulletin. It would be amazing if they didn’t. Call them and see what’s changed
• Make a note of all the times and dates mentioned in the bulletin to ensure the newscast is not dated
• Put in another round of calls to police, fire, ambulance and any notable personalities in a developing news story, such as union leaders, bosses, councillors, activists, sports personalities etc

In other words, never repeat a bulletin hour after hour. It’s almost certain that, if you do, you will be delivering old news and the motto was that old news is no news.

Discipline of updating stands test of time

We had a similar philosophy when we launched BBC News Online in 1997. We were continually checking for new developments, updating stories, and republishing the site.

The early training in print and broadcast that most of us had gone through in that BBC online newsroom had prepared us well for the BBC’s first move into 24-hour rolling news.

It’s interesting how some of those basic principles of journalism best practice appear to be timeless.

And now we have the luxury of a steady stream of updates online via social media and on news sites that provide live coverage of events with story formats that see the coverage grown chronologically.

The problem with that format is that the longer the update grows, the further the reader is from the original source of the material making it harder to read the context behind the development/event.

This is particularly true with social media where emotional and subjective reactions to the original news take on a life of their own.

With rolling updated stories on the main news sites there is a need to continually provide links back to the original story so those following events can better understand where, why, and how the news item first broke.

Otherwise we can easily fall into the post-truth trap where emotional responses to events take over the events themselves. Facts get lost in the quick fire responses, and the chatter and noise of ill-informed reaction takes on a life of its own and eventually becomes more amplified than the original incident that began the news process.

Which means that journalists have a responsibility to continually rework and update our news so that all the new elements (reactions and new perspectives) are included while also ensuring that the essential facts that began the news flow are not forgotten but are also included and updated where necessary.

The post Old news is no news, updates are essential 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.