All kinds of storytelling goodness ...

...in this piece by Poynter's Roy Peter Clark that breaks down The Boston Globe's narrative of the man who was carjacked by the accused marathon bombers.

Most importantly it shows why narrative-as-newswriting can work, but also what you need to make it work. For me, it reinforces that you can't impose narrative on a news event simply because you want to write it that way; but if you know what you need to do that and are ready to recognize those elements when you see them, you can jump on the chance to do a story like this.

The skinny on breaking news writing for the web

A few days ago I linked to our Harley contract coverage, during which Cathy took some suggestions from Jacqui Banaszynski's webinar on writing breaking news from the web.

Here is a condensed look at what Jacqui talked about (and here is a link to a more thorough handout Amy got when she was at Poynter). Mike H., Jeff, Cathy and Lyzz were in the webinar, so any of you guys are invited to add/comment on what I have here. (And I suggest you check out that document, which will have more detail than I'll go into here).

From Jacqui:

In good web writing, form follows function -- so if the function in breaking news is to let people know exactly what's happening as quickly as possible, there are specific ways to do that. She breaks them down into:

1. Priority -- be clear about what's most important; avoid dramatic writing; consider gathering key elements into a summary before going into detail
   
2. Efficiency -- people online are snapshot readers, scanners, so make key news easily found and digested; use labels and links; consider arranging stories horizontally instead of vertically (that's a web-page-design challenge)
   
3. Clarity -- context and significance are crucial; info needs to be literal and explained; don't assume readers know background; be specific, because vague terms subdue meaning
   
4. Brevity -- lay out info in scannable bursts; use sentence structures that are easily absorbed (think subject-verb-object, and beware of clauses and a lot of modifying phrases
   
5. Audience-think (or, writing with common sense) -- anticipate readers' questions and answer them at/near the top of the story; if you don't know something yet, say you don't know it and (at least imply) that you are trying to find out, instead of writing around it; invite the reader back and let them know when you'll post again (if you know).
   

Writing breaking news for the web

Several of us, including Cathy, watched Jacqui Banaszynski's webinar a couple days ago on writing for the web.

This morning, Cathy has put into practice some of what she learned from that seminar on the Harley contract breaking news story. Check it out.

I'll blog more about Jacqui's webinar and the concepts she laid out, including the ones Cathy is using in organizing the Harley coverage. But briefly, what Cathy is doing now is delivering news to people quickly, in an organized way, with cues like subheads to guide them. The presentation makes it easier to absorb and understand what's going on, for a scanning online reader, than if all of that were being delivered graf-after-graf. More traditional stories may/will evolve as the day goes on.

Thoughts?