Lecture Three: Text: The Story Behind the Words

When reading a news story, whether it is online or in the paper, the words in front of you are just thrown on the page, right? Wrong, actually. As I learned in our third lecture the process of putting a story in to a hard copy is very complex. The difference between print and online stories is also significant.

Text, I was told, is indeed a beautiful thing. The majority of content online these days is text, in case you hadn’t already noticed!! In fact, apparently our eyes are more driven towards words rather than images, according to the Poynter eye track study.

I also discovered that as a prospective journalist I will need to choose my words carefully (easier said than done). As the law of the inverted pyramid states, a story should be ordered from most important information at the start to the least at the tail end. The info at the end is technically called ‘fluff’ and can be cut if need be, without ruining the story.

Online text appears very intricate to say the least. There are emails, blogs, tweets, facebook, comments and forums as well as the online news. The word metadata was thrown into the mix and my mind was officially blown. Hypertext is a huge part of online journalism and is simply the headline of the article linked to the whole story. If people are drawn in by the headline (which is its main purpose) the reader clicks on it to read more. Online articles can potentially attract thousands of views, but only if the headline’s key words are easily searchable in Google.

I was slightly confused with some of the online terminology

Obviously there are many differences in the production of online and print journalism. As of right now, online sounds pretty damn complex (partly because the words are technical sounding) but I’m definitely intrigued to learn more. After all, that’s where the future of journalism is headed.