Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should
The headline certainly caught my attention. “Top drinking parties for ASU students.” What the what? My first thought was that this had to be a mistake. Seriously? If you just read the headline, you’d think the Arizona Republic and its web arm azcentral.com are promoting drinking to college students, most of whom are still under Arizona’s legal drinking age of 21.
In the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you that I’m pretty invested here – I’m an employee of Arizona State University, a full-time staff member, part-time adjunct professor, former broadcast and print journalist, current masters candidate, and the parent of an ASU student. So, yeah, I’ve got some skin in this game.
Read the article and you could be convinced that the intent is indeed to advertise drinking opportunities to a mostly underage audience. At the very least, the reporter and/or editor are blissfully unaware of any adverse consequences. “It’s not easy being a college student. Sometimes you need to let loose, have a few drinks and surround yourself with action.” Hmm, maybe the reporter isn’t necessarily talking alcoholic beverages.
“There’s some great partying around ASU’s Tempe and downtown campuses, whether you’re looking for a neighborhood dive bar, a bumping nightclub or a sleek lounge.” So much for that theory. With very few exceptions, most bars, nightclubs and lounges cater exclusively to the over-21 crowd. The only way for an underage college student to get in the door is with a fake ID. Surely the owners of these venues are not looking to attract underage patrons by fraudulent means – the penalties are too high.
“Fortunately, many holidays that involve knocking back a few take place during the school year, giving students a great excuse to celebrate.” I was a college student, too. I get that students are drinking whether they’re legal or not. I’ve also seen what drinking can do to a promising academic career. Should the primary newspaper in the community appear to encourage irresponsible (not to mention criminal) activity by highlighting motive and means?
“…there’s lot of cool events happening year round where you can enjoy a drink and the awesome weather with your crew. Here are some of the best events for drinking during the school year.” Grammatical errors aside, the writer has now tied the association pretty tight between school and drinking. Why target students? Why not promote great parties on Mill Avenue? There are many events and attractions in Downtown Tempe, but the focus should be on having a good time rather than drinking, and certainly not alcohol use by minors.
It’s understandable that an inexperienced reporter might get lost in writing a hip, cool piece for the nightlife section and not consider the impact of her words. But what was the Republic editorial staff thinking? There must be at least one cooler head who could raise a few concerns. As Liz Lemon would say, “What the what?”
Twitter is Good for Business
How to use Twitter Search as a powerful business tool, to find out what your customers are saying about your brand.
(courtesy of Common Craft Productions)
Writing for the Web
Web style is an odd marriage of broadcast voice with print rules. It is first a visual medium and those who peruse the web (perusers?) are readers. But it’s just not the same as traditional print.
Useability
People read differently on the web. Studies have found that online readers do more scanning than reading. Even then, the process is slower and web users have no patience for verbose material.
Jakob Nielsen is a guru in the study of usability, i.e. what works for the user. He’s studied the habits of web readers and recently weighed in with his findings in an invaluable set of tips for web writers.
Nielsen publishes a weekly column called Alertbox to which every web writer and designer should subscribe. And his site www.useit.com is full of reports, studies and tips on making your website more usable.
If you build it, they may come. But if it’s not quick and easy, they won’t stay.
Style
While text content on the web is technically print, the feel of the web is closer to broadcast. Your tone should be conversational and personal, your style clear and concise. Grammar, punctuation and usage should for the most part follow the AP Stylebook (more on that later).
In “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell provides six rules for writers:
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive voice where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
My favorite is the last in which Orwell gives his blessing to break a rule rather than twist ourselves into literary knots. These guidelines are as wonderfully relevant today as they were in 1946.
Mechanics
As in print, every character takes up valuable real estate. Write sparingly, as if you have to pay for every letter.
That said, don’t hesitate to break up blocks of content with small amounts of white space. Rather than one long paragraph, separate your concepts with a blank line. Indents don’t translate well on the web so a full paragraph break really helps to pare down what would otherwise be an insurmountable mountain of text.
Lists and bullet points are relatively easy ways to make it easier for the user to absorb what you’re trying to say. They are also more visually pleasing than a big black block of text. Highlight in bold the most important information – but only a few words at time, not whole sentences.
Stay away from underlining. This is reserved for hypertext links. However, those links are important and should be bolded. Also, use italics sparingly – good examples of where to use italics are tag lines, subheadings, source credits or photo captions.
Use pictures to illustrate and highlight your topic. Use your own images whenever possible. Learn to upload digital photos from your camera and create simple text-based graphics. You can grab screen shots to illustrate your point but make sure it’s obvious to your web visitors that they are not interactive.
Instead, you may want to make the image a link back to the source web site. It’s easy to just copy someone else’s images online, but make sure you ask permission and give them credit, preferably with a link back to the original site.
Sources:
http://www.useit.com/
http://www.apstylebook.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Language
Cronkite Launches News21
The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at ASU has launched the Carnegie-Knight News21 project. This is a high-profile national collaboration, involving a partnership of 12 of the top university journalism programs, led by Cronkite and Arizona State. The site profiles the work of student reporters at these universities as they follow the program’s mantra of Investigate, Innovate and Collaborate.
There are a number of lessons to be learned from these students and their work, as noted by Tim McGuire, ASU business journalism chair – not least of which is how we CAN preserve ethics and best practices in the new media.
Here’s how you can show your support and get involved:
- Sign up to follow News21 on Facebook
- Sign up to follow News21 on Twitter
- Surf around the extraordinarily rich News21 site and give us your thoughts and feedback
Live Event Streaming
Quick test of the live event streaming capabilities of CoverItLive. To see the test as it appeared live, hit the Replay button.
Getting It Right
As a professional journalist in the years from post-Watergate to the birth of YouTube, I’ve seen speed mow down accuracy and too much dabbling at the expense of diligence. Thanks to digital media at the speed of fiber optic light, it’s way too easy for so-called “news” to be regurgitated over and over and over in a “Groundhog’s Day” nightmare – without a shred of independent reporting, fact-checking or corroboration.
Even in the electric shock world of instant headlines, amid the tweeting, blogging and blather, it’s still about getting it right. Or it should be.
I’m teaching a course this fall at Arizona State University’s Cronkite School of Journalism called Online Media. (The school has been getting a lot of awards and the students are getting jobs so they must be doing something right.) Together, my students and I will explore the latest technology tools available to reporters – digital image and video editing, webcasting, and online publishing – and the inherent implications for journalistic method and ethics.
Sadly, I never got to meet the school’s namesake and mentor. Walter Cronkite died shortly after I received my faculty appointment. It was “Uncle Walter” and his contemporaries Chet Huntley and David Brinkley (whom I did meet) who embodied my earliest perception of electronic journalism. Aaron Brown has posted a tribute that nicely expresses my feelings as well.
Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Linda Ellerbee were the industry icons I tried to emulate as I began my professional career. Sam Donaldson gave the administration hell in his relentless quest for truth and we loved it. Bob Costas is still one of my favorites, one of the best at live interviews, tough but fair.
These giants are a hard act to follow. I only hope we can do them justice.
(image credits: slashgear.com, asu.edu)
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