Website purpose

The purpose of every news website is to deliver essential information to its users in the most effective, elegant, and efficient manner. This means it must inform quickly and simply, that it must be pleasing on the eye and make people want to return to the site time and time again, and it must be fast loading and free of wasted words and padding.

The online journalist

The role of an online journalist is largely similar to that of any other journalist. The journalistic rules are the same; the only differences are the platform you are writing on and the skills you need to present that information online.

• You are dealing with facts. Your sentences still need to make sense. They must have a subject, a verb, and an object.
• You will be presenting the absolute essentials of a story, and you will be asking the basic questions, who, why, where, when, what, and how.

The story format will be pyramid journalism (writing that can be cut at any point and still make sense). This is for reasons that will be explained in the multiplatform authoring module.

The website remit

If the website you are working on is a stand-alone production (one that is not connected to another media operation) you will be free to present the information as you see fit, within your newsroom’s editorial guidelines.

If the website you are working on is part of a larger media concern, you will be expected to reflect that media operation’s newsgathering and news production strengths online.

If the website you are working on is part of a larger media concern, you will be expected to reflect that media operation’s newsgathering and news production strengths online.

In more and more cases, websites that belong to a broadcaster, or a newspaper, function as part of a converged news operation. The aim is to reflect the news brand across all outlets, including online and other interactive platforms. In that case, you will need to come up with a persuasive reason for investing resources in covering different stories online than your news organisation is covering in print of on air.

You will be expected to offer a different treatment and add value with content and functionality aimed at the online audience, but the user should find the same facts, tone and focus online as they do wherever else your news organisation is delivering news content.

Your role is to include the elements that increase and enhance a user’s understanding of a story, or enable that user to engage with you, and others, about the news item in ways that they can’t on air or in print.

Your role is to include the elements that increase and enhance a user’s understanding of a story, or enable that user to engage with you, and others, about the news item in ways that they can’t on air or in print.

Unlimited space

There was a time when it was felt that one of the strengths of the internet was that it didn’t limit the journalists to a particular story length; journalists could write as much as they wanted. All the column-inch restrictions that applied to print journalists, and the news bulletin time limits that applied to TV and radio, were not relevant to online journalism.

This was and is true, but, if that freedom is not managed properly, it can lead to lazy, undisciplined writing.

News stories need to have a standard style, layout, and format. There will always be cases where longer, background features are needed in order to explore issues in-depth. However, hard news stories still have to be presented in tight, short-form writing.

The news stories need to follow a standard house style. There needs to be a consistency of presentation format so that the audience feels comfortable with what they are reading. You need to make sure you know your news organisation’s house style. If it hasn’t got one, volunteer to write one; it’s important for consistency of approach.

Story length and style

The ideal online news story will be in the region of 500 words. This is not a hard and fast rule, just a guide. Some stories will be a lot less, and some features and in-depth analysis pieces can be longer, but the basic news stories should remain short.

It is important that you learn to write as economically as possible with no unnecessary or wasted words.

It is important that you learn to write as economically as possible with no unnecessary or wasted words.

The news operation you work for will probably have a newsroom CMS (or content management system), this is where you write your stories.

There are usually boxes for the headline and summary, and another field for the rest of the story. There might be functions for adding images, audio and video, links, and text boxes. Some of the boxes, or fields, might have character limitations so that you can’t write too much. This will usually be because the content you write for the Web is also to be sent to other text-based platforms, such as SMS and WAP (more about that in the multiplatform authoring module ).