Friday, November 3, 2006

Headlines tell story by design... or not Today's pick-on-knoxnews comments gradually become optimistic... But first: This morning's top-of-the-page story labelled "new" and "Top local news" was jarring -- an Associated Press story headlined "Ga. mother gets life for killing adopted son." Local? Alma, Ga., is 426 miles away, according to Mapquest.com. New? She was sentenced on Thursday. I assume Georgia courts finish their business before dark, although I can't say the same for the AP. At KnoxNews, the story has been on top of the page since my first cup of tea this morning, and it's still there at 10:30, although a local early-voting election story has pushed it down to second place on the list. Getting that voter story out now, instead of waiting for tomorrow morning's paper, is a good sign -- the kind of "not just a newspaper" use of a website we talk about in online journalism classes. The story even ends with the note, "More details as they develop online and in tomorrow's News Sentinel." Great! However, if that "Top local news" section at the top of the front page is also the place for "this just in..." bulletins from AP, perhaps the word "local" should disappear from the heading. Update: Sometime this afternoon the "Top Local News" heading changed to "Breaking News." I wonder if that's a day-shift/night-shift thing that I simply hadn't noticed before? On the other hand, without the "local" tag, this morning's original No.2 headline would be even more a mystery. It reads "'A testimony to his life'" (in single quotes). Someone who has been following local news might guess that it's about the memorial service for a school security officer killed on duty Halloween night, and they'd be right. Someone not following the story would be mystified -- but possibly not intrigued enough to click that link. The quoted phrase is, indeed, from that event, and it was the "kicker" to the longer headline on the News Sentinel story: Community holds vigil to honor slain school officer and friend Russell Kocur A few words from the longer headline would have made a more informative page-one link to the online story, if the KnoxNews page-builder wasn't programmed to grab the short line. I could have been: Community holds vigil to honor slain school officer or Community vigil honors slain school officer or Vigil honors slain school officer The layout of the KnoxNews website and its software "content management system" play a part in the KnoxNews use of those vague "kicker" headlines, although they for the most part appear to have been getting better recently. Update: See comment below from Jay Small. There also is some research supporting the headline-only approach. And that gets me to today's other positive news: Scripps, the News Sentinel's parent company, is making strides with a new Django and Ellington content management system combination being rolled out at a few of its papers' websites. See the Colorado Daily Camera for example. KnoxNews could use this trick: Gently move your mouse over one of its headlines (without clicking) to get a second "layer" of headline. (Note for Online Journalism students: It's not rocket science -- just a "title" section added to the headline's anchor link code. I'll add one to this next link.) Here's the paper's discussion of the redesign. Unfortunately, one of the first readers to comment on the site still thinks the headlines don't say enough: "The old format made it much easier and faster to scan for interesting articles. The headlines don't often provide enough information to tell what the article is about. As a result the new format makes users follow a link just to get a clue. I, like most web users, lack the patience for this. As a result I wind up reading less which is sad. Please add a few lines of each article after the headlines." However, Scripps design guru Jay Small has these words of encouragement back at his blog: "We use patterns we know test well for usability and ease of navigation. But we're not forcing sites into cookie-cutter designs they can't change. A major premise of the whole system conversion is that sites can take control of their own system templates -- meaning their own designs -- as much as they see fit. The design patterns we're rolling out are just a starter kit for sites' own efforts, long-term. But we believe it's a good starter kit." Here's hoping the company will hire a few more copy editors and headline writers to take advantage of the software and site-design's built-in flexibility. Good designers and good software can't do all the work. (Follow that link for an interesting analysis of online news jobs at my former classmate Deb Gump's EditTeach.org) In fact, some colleagues of mine at UT are testing a Django-backed news site for the journalism school, and it's really starting to take shape. (I won't link to it until the crew says it's ready.) As students get to know their way around it, perhaps they'll graduate to Scripps and other companies joining the Django bandwagon. 11:11:08 AM    comment []

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