Student journalists need to learn SEO more than they need AP style

April 21, 2010 By 25 Comments

Last week, journalists reacting to the Associated Press’s announcement that it would replace “Web site” with “website” in the AP Stylebook pushed the phrase “AP Stylebook” onto Twitter’s trending topics list. (FWIW, OJR’s style for the past several years has been to use “website.”)

Most journalists approved of the news, though a few skeptics, such as the University of Florida’s Mindy McAdams, demurred. Though I disagree with her on this, I loved the snark of her Twitter response: “Everyone but me is cheering AP style change to website. I think it resembles parasite.”

I jumped in with this: “If you’re publishing online, Google style (i.e. SEO) always trumps AP style.”

And… “Really, j-schools need to ditch AP style and start teaching their students SEO instead. More valuable to their careers.”

As much as I enjoy provoking folks from time to time, I am serious about this. The newspaper industry developed a common style, maintained by the Associated Press, to meet the communication needs of a print-based industry trying to most effectively communicate with a broad audience.

Today’s online publishers, editors and reporters need a new style that most effectively allows their words to reach their intended audiences. Unfortunately for them, the print-inspired AP style is not that. Today’s (and tomorrow’s) journalists need to learn search engine optimization [SEO] techniques as much as, if not more than their predecessors who worked the print industry needed to learn AP.

The importance of search engine optimization

SEO provides the key to reaching an audience not motivated by existing print brands, including younger readers and readers outside a publication’s traditional search area – folks who might not know to seek out a newspaper website, but who would nevertheless be interested in its content.

Even as Facebook and social media provide an increasing share of referrals to online news sites, search engines still provide the initial point of entry for millions of new visitors to websites each day. If there are techniques that allow you to jump to the front of the line, to attract more of those potential readers, you need to be using them.

Plus, good SEO can help make your pages more lucrative in keyword-targeted advertising systems, such as Google’s AdWords. Sloppy SEO leads to poorly matched ads, lower click-through rates and less money per click or impression.

Finally, most SEO techniques reduce to providing clear, concise writing that stays on topic – that frequently references the key words and phrases that an article’s supposed to be about. That’s good advice for any writer looking to attract readers in a competitive environment. Unfortunately, in print journalism, with readers too long delivered through local monopoly, too many reporters and headline writers became more focused on being clever than clear.

Unfortunately, there’s not a SEO writing textbook for student journalists as clear and ubiquitous as AP’s stylebook. Combine that with academic inertia and faculties loaded with print refugees, and it’s no surprise that most j-school students get much more instruction in AP style than the SEO they so urgently will need when they begin professional work. (If there is a great SEO text for online news writers out there, I’m hopeful that a reader will let us know, in the comments.)

We’ve written frequently about SEO for journalists here on OJR. In lieu of a good textbook, I’d refer students to Danny Sullivan’s Ttop 10 SEO tips for journalists and Eric Ulken’s headline-writing advice, as well as my advice on SEO-friendly hyperlinking and plea not to break your SEO-valuable inbound links.

I name-checked Mindy McAdams before, and she deserves another mention here, as she’s written what I consider the best single page of advice on SEO-friendly newswriting. Every j-student, and working journalist, should read it.

But what about both?

Replying to my tweets on this matter, Matt Roseboom asked: “I publish online and in print, as most do. Should I use AP or SEO?”

My reply? Do both. Use the print-inspired AP style when producing articles for your print publication (though I would use the inspiration of SEO to keep writing tight). Use SEO techniques when writing for the Web.

But what about articles that appear both in print and online?

(Taking a deep breath now….) Repurposing content leaves you with a website that acts like a newspaper and a newspaper that reads like a website. It’s not a completely satisfying experience for readers in either medium. If you want to maximize your readership – and your revenue – in multiple media, then your organization needs to produce its content specifically for the media in which it publishes.

Does this mean that print stories shouldn’t appear online? No.

So what does this mean a newspaper website should do, and look like?

Well, that’s the question I’m going to take up in a series of articles, starting next Wednesday here on OJR. What should an optimal newspaper website look like in 2010? Come back next Wednesday, and we’ll talk about it.

* Update: Since I’m one of those writers who comes up with his best line six hours after hitting the “publish” button, I’ll take advantage of the medium to add this:

SEO will help you gain new readers online. AP style will not. If you need new readers to make money, then SEO will help you more than AP style. That’s it. It’s just the reality of publishing online today. You can either adapt and accommodate it, or shake your fist at it and resist.

Second, I believe that much of the hostility toward this idea springs from a belief that search-engine algorithms are written to fulfill the needs of machines, and not people. I’ve been writing online long enough to see how SEO techniques have changed over the years as search engines have changed their algorithms. (Remember long blocks of white-text keywords, in the Alta Vista era?)

Why did they change? To better serve the needs of their users.

As Google and Bing change their algorithms to serve better their audiences, and various competitors to step to challenge them, SEO techniques will evolve in response. Ultimately, though, the arc of SEO bends toward tighter, more focused and more reader-friendly writing.

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The need for a 'digital media pyramid'

February 16, 2010 By 3 Comments

[Editor's note: A reminder: Friday, Feb. 19, 2010 is the deadline to apply for the 2010 News Entrepreneur Boot Camp. Please consider applying if you're looking for better training on how to make your online news publishing efforts an income-producing business.]

The advent of the Internet and digital age of communications has brought forth the expected decline of newspapers at a faster pace than many business journalism experts predicted. A major part of the decline results from publishers not adjusting their products and news gathering techniques fast enough to changing technologies. Publishers competed in a digitally dominated world using analog-based technologies, business models and journalism techniques.

One news gathering technique still being taught to practicing and aspiring journalists is the more than a century-old use of the Inverted Pyramid, which guides the construction of writing predominately print news stories. The Inverted Pyramid is analog. A new paradigm known as the “Digital Media Pyramid” has found a place among some young writers and journalists.

The basic premise of the Inverted Pyramid remains sound, but the device desperately needs to be adjusted for the fast-moving digital world. The Inverted Pyramid has had its detractors throughout the years, many of whom assumed that it would be forgotten as a once-vital part of news gathering. But what the Inverted Pyramid provided that was hard to replace in the deadline world of news was the ability to quickly present facts, first to the editor and then to the consuming public.

The Inverted Pyramid is presented to journalists as an up-side down triangle with the top representing the most important facts to be presented, since this is what editors demanded and the consuming public needed for competitive reasons. Next, the Inverted Pyramid presents secondary information that would be connected to additional details supporting the reported facts. In essence, the most important facts are presented first, then repeated and supported by detailed information.

This presentation of news facts worked quite well during the latter part of the 19th century and most of the 20th century, especially since during that time many news reports were first sent via telegraph, and then eventually by other analog transmitters like broadcast television, radio and satellite.

Journalism historian Chip Scanlan believes the Inverted Pyramid may have never come into existence were it not for the telegraph. In the opinion of Scanlan and many other journalism scholars the telegraph was just as revolutionary during its time as the Internet is today. Unlike the Internet though, in real dollars, the telegraph was much more expensive. Therefore, a briefer, smarter presentation was needed to communicate initial facts. In its early days the telegraph cost as much as one penny per character to transmit. That’s a price even Twitter would love today!

During the civil war that one penny per character was a financial strain on newspapers trying to cover a conflict spread along many miles. The price of words dictated brevity, clarity and a concise writing style that permeates much of today’s news writing. In total, newspapers were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars paying for wire service transmissions and at the time, just as today saving money was paramount. The resulting writing style was drastically different from the flowery prose typical of the static media of previous generations. So teaching an Inverted Pyramid approach to writing news was convenient and it matched the revolutionary technology of its time.

With the advent of the Internet, brevity was just as important, but equally important were the many layers of digital information that could be distributed quickly and cheaply. With the Internet the analog-based presentation of the Inverted Pyramid suddenly becomes overwhelmed by an ocean of zeros and ones.

DIGITAL MEDIA PYRAMID

The “Digital Media Pyramid” addresses the demands of today’s journalists who could be writing a television, radio or print story and nearly simultaneously be required to re-purpose their work for a digital Internet audience.

The “Digital Media Pyramid” does not replace the analog-based Inverted Pyramid. It simply enhances it by bringing it into a 21st century digitally dominated information universe. The “Digital Media Pyramid” also commands an immediate understanding by young journalists and students who are already digitally minded. It provides for the traditional brief introduction of facts (the five W’s) which are boldly separated from all supporting details. Yet, the “Digital Media Pyramid” also addresses the need to surf the Internet for additional supporting information by permitting and explaining cut-and-pasting rules. The “Digital Media Pyramid” impresses on the need to respect copyrighted material and original works by teaching proper attribution and giving credit when needed.

The Digital Media Pyramid

The “Digital Media Pyramid” explains the journalistic use of photographs, video, interactivity and all elements that are not simply text. It respects the importance of such elements as being part of any news story in this new era of information.

Just as important and revolutionary the “Digital Media Pyramid” calls on journalists to be cognizant of advertisements in an age when software can dictate the appearance of a sales ad next to a story which can easily be bias by the appearance of inappropriate ads. This new pyramid teaches the writer to be aware of any ads automatically placed near or inside a written story, so the writer can inspect a story’s presentation and seek to maintain objectivity.

Finally, the “Digital Media Pyramid” encourages the self-education of “users” or readers, enabling them to quickly seek out balanced information on a news story through the use of embedded links, social networks and other resources.

Journalism students who have been taught the “Digital Media Pyramid” for the past seven years at Rutgers University have enthusiastically welcomed the change in how they are to prepare and present their news stories. Most comment that they immediately understand the “Digital Media Pyramid” just by viewing the diagram. That cannot always be said of the Inverted Pyramid. Typically, students have voiced a sense of recognition. The words “oh-yeah” precede a fuller explanation of the “Digital Media Pyramid” when it is presented to young users. Digital is already part of their environment.

It seems that the “Digital Media Pyramid” should find a place in the newsrooms and journalism classrooms around the globe, so reporters and editors are more prepared to address the needs of their craft and the demands of sophisticated audiences. After all, even the most hard-bitten journalists would agree that a writing device conceived during the Civil War could probably be updated to cope with the demands of the fast-moving digital world surrounding today’s journalists.

Finding the right balance between the needs of the journalists and the ever-pressing expansion of technology can be overwhelming. It appears that today’s digital universe makes this the right time to for adjustments and changes to an analog model that is more than a century old.

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Don't lose your voice online

April 15, 2009 By 7 Comments

Author Ralph Keyes this week rightly slammed news organizations for using cultural references in their news stories that leave many readers under the age of 50 in the dark. But do not rush to assume that the solution is to strip articles of metaphors and other references, which can help readers identify and understand the news. Instead, smart newsrooms should take a close look at their language, and make a stronger effort to deploy writers who, collectively, can use a broader range of cultural references to appeal to wider audience of readers.

Keyes called an over-dependence to decades-old references “retrotalk,” including comparisons with 1950s television characters, early 20th Century pop tunes and even antiquated farming techniques.

Journalists who lace their copy with such retro terms or names risk alienating those who are too young to get the allusions. Even common catch phrases that hearken back to earlier times may be puzzling to younger readers: stuck in a groove, 98-pound weakling, drop a dime, bigger than a breadbox, or a tough row to hoe. (As one giggling third-grader asked when his teacher used this one, “Isn’t ‘ho’ a bad word?”)

Keyes’ piece roiled the journalism Twitter community, some rushing to spread the word, others to criticize the criticism.

Count me among the fans of lively cultural references in news reporting and analysis. But also include me among those who have grown sick of reading repeated, stale references from a generation to which I do not belong.

One of my few remaining delights when reading the Los Angeles Times is Dan Neil’s automobile column. Neil, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his reviews, spices them with a wide range of cultural references, from 12-step programs to the ridiculous names of some of Los Angeles’ weathermen.

Neil’s use of references of metaphors enlivens his columns, providing me with some of the hardest belly-laughs I’ve had when reading the paper over the past few years, and sometimes sending me to Google to research just what the heck he’s writing about.

That’s engagement – when you’ve rewarded your readers so often that they are not only eager to read your work, but willing to spend extra time researching on their own to make sure they’ve wrung every datum of juicy, snarky goodness from it. If newspapers employed more writers like Dan Neil, the industry wouldn’t be in the mess it is now.

The trick, of course, is to use references in a fresh, engaging, enlightening way. That’s tough to do with the same crop or tired references aimed at baby boomers. To cite one example referenced by Keyes, I cringe to hear Rachel Maddow – a smart, fun GenX broadcaster – making reference to “Leave it to Beaver” characters. Please, Rachel, gimme a “Daria” reference instead.

The first writer for a news publication I read who embraced the culture of my generation, the so-called “Generation X,” was ESPN’s Bill Simmons. Frustrated with his inability to land a gig writing at one of the newspapers in his hometown of Boston, Simmons turned to the Web, writing columns for his own website, then for AOL’s Digital City. That work brought him to the attention of ESPN, which hired him to write for the sports network’s website.

In his columns, Simmons didn’t make comparisons with Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson or other Baby Boom icons. Instead, you’d be more likely to find references to “Beverly Hills 90210″ (the original version) and breakdowns comparing pro athletes to MTV reality show stars. Simmons’ references not only made his employer, ESPN, more relevant to an audience of readers that was then in their late teens to early 30s, he provided an affirmation to that audience that their cultural experience were relevant to a major media source.

In doing so, Simmons help inspire a generation of sports fans to believe that their experience mattered – which led many to go online and do the same as Simmons had, to write about sports in the context of their own lives, spawning a generation of sports bloggers, from Deadspin to The Big Lead. Say what you will about that (thank you, Buzz Bissinger), but Simmons engaged and motivated an audience with his reference-heavy writing. And what news organization wouldn’t want to inspire that level of passion in an audience?

So the problems isn’t the presence of cultural references, it is the use of those references. News organizations that limit themselves to references that precede the assassination of JFK ossify their audience, losing an opportunity to engage a new generation of readers, the way that Simmons did at ESPN nearly a decade ago. And they lose the opportunity to engage audiences from different ethics and racial heritages, restricting their customers to the old, tired and white.

The problem is not too many cultural references, it is too few: Too few writers using too few references from too narrow a cultural experience. Writers such a Simmons and Neil helped expand journalism’s palette, but readers demand far more, including more Gen Y, Millennial, female and international voices. An their demands should be satisfied.

Keyes appropriately tries and convicts news organizations for appealing to too narrow an audience. How ironic, then, that news organizations, threatened with a loss of advertising revenue and a crumbling national economy, are laying off so many newsroom voices at a time when they need to be adding them, to appeal to a diversifying readership that demands to be spoken to in the voices of their own cultures.

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