Paul BradshawCity University, UKPublisher, Online Journalism BlogFounder, Help Me Investigate.com

Different medium, different rules(BASIC principles, SEO)

- What does the medium enhance?- What does it make obsolete?- What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?- What does the medium flip into when pushed to extremes? 

Tetrad of media effects (McLuhan)

Look at the medium and the

environment of use

This lecture is a hot medium

(your labs are cold)

 

BASIC principles: (brevity, adaptability, scannability, interactivity, community)

Brevity

People read…

25% slower

Source: Jakob Nielsen: http://bit.ly/G4auC

less than 28% of words

Jakob Nielsen: http://bit.ly/ZYni

One. idea. per. par.

Jakob Nielsen: http://bit.ly/ZYni

Adaptability

The journalistThe information

What does the story suit?

What might the user want to do

with the information?

Scannability

Users are task-oriented

Headlines need to be

literal

Get to the point quick

SEO

Subheadings

Bullet lists

Blockquotes

Interactivity

Link

Thinkwiki

blogQ&A

live chat

webcastquiz

image map

gallerypoll

forumuser video

database

mashup

Community&

Conversation

They are not the audience

Users as co-creators of

news

Distributed acts of

journalism

Engage: invite and respond

Create social value off your site

Journalism acts of

distribution

The story is bigger than

the site

Leave your site

Conversation = Distribution

 

SEO: (Search Engine Optimisation)

You are not writing for machines.

- Visible content, weighted:- Headlines and subheadings- Bold and italic text- Links, tables and lists- Main content, intro first 

Level 1: content & meaning

- Invisible content, weighted:- Page title- URL- <alt> tags- tags and categories- location & recency 

Level 2: context

- Inbound links (not <nofollow>)- Text around links- PageRank of referring sites- Your PageRank- Frequency of updates 

Level 3: reputation

- ‘Linkspamming’- Link farms- Invisible text- Keyword stuffing

 

‘Black hat’ SEO - penalised

Easy to find, meaningful,

unique, social

- Page views and unique visitors- Time spent on site- Bounce rate- Traffic source- Search terms 

Analytics and metrics

Lab

1. Set up blog2. Social content ideas3. Meaningful formatting

Links

OnlineJournalismClasses.tumblr.comDelicious.com/paulb/cityoj02OnlineJournalismBlog.com