Josh Flynn

Although “Journalism Online” was published in 2002, and the web is a completely different beast here in 2009; Mike Ward was still able to provide some guidlines and tips for writing online that still apply today. It is obvious now, but Ward realized early on that the online environment is largely a non-linear experience, and that journalists can no longer dictate the news, but rather need to be a part of the community and serve as a medium for news between those making the news and those needing to be informed.

Ward highlights five rules put forth by Leah Gentry, one of the leading voices in the early years of online story construction and a writer for the Chicago Tribune and latimes.com. The guidelines are a good reminder of how to go about writing for this medium. It is one of those things where the suggestions seem so obvious like rule #1: Follow the guidelines of good journalism, or rule #2: Leverage the strengths fo the medium. While these things seem inherent in writing for the web, it is helpful to see it laid out in this list.

Rules three and four were grouped together, but also stressed an important point that I had not thought of as so crucial to the process; deconstruct, reconstruct, and storyboard. It is easy to get lost in online stories, and it is hard as a writer to develop a rhythm and organization that can captivate an online audience to read your entire story. Gentry reminds us that we need to look at things from a broader perspective and look at how stories connect and can be presented in a cohesive, yet non-linear fashion.

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I have been trying to explore and learn how to use Twitter to its full potential lately, and this BeatBlogging.org article is a pretty good starting point for a Twitter rookie, especially if you want to use it for journalistic purposes. The article itself, written by Patrick Thornton, is short, but it is a concise beginning point with a lot of good external links.

One feature of Twitter I didn’t use before reading the article was the search page that allows you to query everybody that is tweeting. I had been using the external client Tweetdeck before, that has a similar option. What I liked about the Twitter search is that for somebody who wants constant updates on a certain term and doesn’t want to take up a column in Tweetdeck, or just prefers RSS feeds, the Twitter search allows users to set up RSS for the searches.

I used the search to find people tweeting about Lauraville, and was even able to get some leads for interviews and connect with some people that were vending and attending the Lauraville Tuesday Market Connection and meet up with them through Twitter. I think if used in the ways it was meant to be used, it is a powerful tool that has the potential to stay for at least a few more years.