The role of the features editor in a digital world

When we talk about the digital journalist it is most often in the context of news reporting (because statistically most of our staff journalists are news people.

But in the back of my mind I often wonder where to begin in describing the role of the features editor in an online context.

Well, here is a good place to start. It's a Reuters online "feature" called "Bearing Witness" to mark five years of the war in Iraq.

It features a timeline, maps, photography and so on and while it's not unflawed (does the whole thing have to be in Flash? How irritating!) it's an excellent illustration of what a good online feature looks like (i.e. not 1,500 words with a few links thrown in).

The tyranny of print

A lot of journalists in our organisations have responsibility for creating content both for magazines and websites.

Many of them have a tendency or an instinct or a mania to focus on print and fit in web stuff in between. As one web editor colleague disconsolately told me yesterday, his heart sinks when he hears (all too frequently) the words, "bung it up on the web".

In trying to understand this behaviour I often talk about the "tyranny of print". There are six main elements to this:

1. DEADLINES. Print has very firm deadlines; web doesn't. If you don't get your pages to the printer on time, you're stuffed.
   
2. ALLOCATED SPACE 1: If you don't fill your magazine it's going to be pretty obvious - empty pages or an overdose of filler ads.
   
3. ALLOCATED SPACE 2: Unless you are covering a very slow moving area, you just can't put all the news in your magazine, so you have to make the best decision you can about what to put in or leave out. It takes time and care.
   
4. FRONT PAGE: Most of our magazines have a news front page or at the very least a news lead. This means finding something worthy to put on it. Hopefully something exclusive (and the best way to assure that is to sit on stories)
   
5. IT'S FOREVER: Once printed, you can't change a magazine: every error - factual and grammatical is recorded forever. The web is a more indulgent mistress.
   
6. SOMETHING TO HOLD: The reward for all your hard work is a new "thing" that you can pick up and hold. Like a baby, it's a part of you and you can show it off to people proudly. Websites are more like monsters which devour your young articles as soon as you give birth to them - watch your lovely story work its way down the news page and into the oblivion of the "more" link at the bottom of the page.

But you know, now I'm thinking that the real failure is not the tyranny of print - it's our (by which I mean "my") failure to get people engaged with web to the same degree that they are engaged with print.

Ironic given the title of this blog.

How all I've got to do is figure out how...

Free library pictures

What's with the picture of the senior gentleman adjusting his bow tie?

Well, I plucked it at random from PicApp.com.

PicApp.com lets publishers and bloggers use images from libraries such as Getty Images free of charge. The quid pro quo is that there are ads embedded in the pics in return.

I think it's a great idea - with the cost of photographic images in freefall (i.e. nothing if you use appropriate Creative Commons images through flickr), it's great a great win-win solution.

I think it should be really useful for people looking to pep up their blog posts.

I've got one or two whinges - I can't for the life of me find the place to tell it my full list of blogs (although it says there is one) and I really miss being able to order my search results by Most Recent or Most Popular.

But it's a great start.

Update: It's a bit overblown, isn't it? Quite frightening to a casual visitor to the site I would imagine. And the little avatar poking his head up is rather cheesy. And I'd like to easily be able to run text alongside the images. But, as I say, it's a great start.

The Wikipedia experience

This How to Be a Wikipedia Editor 101 article strikes a chord with me.

My own experience of first tentatively dipping my toe into the Wikipedia editing waters was to have my changes undone. Friends have had this experience too. Seems like it's quite a common occurrence.

I might have another bash now that I've read the article, but I have to say that I'd be far more keen if they'd introduce some kind of WYSIWYG editing interface to deal with all the horrible code.

Video outsourcing

Are you still in doubt about the magic of video? My thanks to colleague Nicholas Coombes for drawing my attention to this fantastic video on YouTube which attempts to get to the essence of just how engaging online video can be.











I've ordered an immediate outsourcing of all our in-house video production to Fred and Sharon.

Serious lesson: you can never be over-dressed for video.

TechCrunch round-up of UK video shows

Essential reading for people looking for tips on creating online video shows from Mike Butcher aTechCrunchUK. Nice to have a focus on UK productions.

Schedule for handling breaking news in digital journalism

While taking a gander at the European Journalism Centre's Video for Newspaper Journalists course, I came across this report from the recent DNA 2008 event.

It's interesting for the detail of an ideal schedule for how the Daily Telegraph would handle breaking news:

The Daily Telegraph is considered a front-runner when it comes to the implementation of video on the web. Edward Roussel, a digital editor for the Telegraph Media Group, outlined several strategies his company has implemented to best benefit from the digital storm.

The Telegraph encourages video by holding editors accountable for the corresponding section of the website – even compensating editors financially for jobs well done.

For each breaking story, a “story owner” is assigned. It is this person’s job to plan, commission and monitor each story across all platforms.

Roussel said his vision of a successful website is one which has it all. He displayed an ideal schedule for how the Telegraph would successfully handle breaking news:

* 11:15: Send out alerts via SMS/e-mail/desktop widgets
* 11:25: Have 150 words online, begin soliciting readers’ help
* 12:15: Update story, add images and audio
* 13:15: Add analysis, topic page
* 15:15: Have multiple angles, analysis, opinion (from readers), multi-media (picture galleries, video, graphics)

“In four hours you want to feel you’ve covered multiple angles of the story,” Roussel said.

Building brand and reputation

My intrapreneurial colleague Martin Couzins ran an in-house seminar this morning. It was a combined digital journalism/career development programme in which he entreated people to embrace the digital age for the sake of their own careers if nothing else. Very brave to stand up and do that.

I was touched that he employed the Digital Journalism Manifesto evolving through comments on this blog post of mine.

But I digress. The point of this post is to draw attention to this short video he showed in which he interviews Kevin May, editor of Travolution.

Kevin has built this e-travel brand - and his own reputation in the field - quickly and effectively and in this video he talks about the importance of getting involved in other people's online discussions.

UK Doritos ad competition

Doritos are running a user generated content video competition in the UK. They've done it in the US before with some fantastic results, but as far as I'm aware, this is the first time in the UK so it will be interesting to see the up-take and the results.

Create a Doritos ad, upload it to the site and you could win £20,000 and have it shown on TV.

More details on their deeply annoying Flash website.

Ribbed for their pleasure

I'm being ribbed over at one of the Computer Weekly blogs- Downtime.

Affectionately, I hope.

They say...

User-generated content of every kind is all the rage in the meeja right now, and nowhere more so than online, where every website wants to prove it's passed Engagement 101 with flying colours. So much so that the trend is now officially a source of mainstream parody. Just watch this from the BBC's Mitchell and Webb show...