I just added the Niemen Journalism Lab’s blog to Google Reader, and I really love the innovative video (and accompanying transcript) that they posted today! Matt Thompson, a web editor and web producer who blogs at Newsless.org, shared some innovative ideas about news updates on the web.
The problem: Because many news websites are updated in real-time, many news updates are fragmented and disjointed. Reporters are not able to create a traditional beginning, middle, and end of a story because they don’t have enough information! By the time all the information is gathered, the story is a fragmented mess of web updates.
The solution: “I will be working with The Columbia Missourian on creating a web site built more around context than around time. A web site sort of inspired by Wikipedia as much as anything else.
(Pictured at left: Putting together the pieces, by liza31337)
It’ll have, very broadly, two components to it. A wiki…[that] contains stories as they develop over time, synthesized into a report that is cohesive and reads as a single story. And a blog that contains ongoing updates and developments as the story iterates over time.”
Why I love this idea: Matt and his colleagues are trying to preserve the model of a traditional news story, which includes a beginning, middle, end, all the facts, and sources. Sure, the Internet allows journalists almost immediate access to information, but that information probably arrives in bits and pieces. This is a great way to take advantage of what’s great about the Internet while still maintain the journalistic integrity one would find in a print story.
Recently, some people have speculated that citizen journalists (think Tweeters documenting the Hudson River plane crash) are going to shape the new wave of journalism. Matt’s project takes this concept and professionalizes it; it reclaims journalism as a respectable and important field that is evolving to keep up with the demands of people who consume information!
