Page updated:
Wednesday, 12 September 2007

SPECIAL REPORT...

Getting your message across

WRITING for online media...

Acquiring the skill of writing for online media will benefit those producing content for their online newsletter, business website or for online advocacy. The skills will benefit existing journalists too. The convergence of different media (print, online, video, stills photography) is now an entrenched trend that is transforming the mediascape. As well as knowing how to gather information, a working knowledge of how to present it for print and online will make journalists more adaptable. Skills in convergent journalism will be increasingly requested of job applicants in journalism.

Writing styles other than newswriting

The inverted pyramid newswriting style is best for websites whose purpose is to provide factual information, however it is not the only writing style found on the Worldwide Web.

Websites also publish writing in the style of:

• longer features (such as Atlantic Monthly (http://www.theatlantic.com/ )
• opinion columns (Australia's Online Opinion - http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/ )
• short fictional stories
• 'creative non-fiction' or 'literary journalism', a form that was developed during the 1970s and that borrows from fiction writing elements such as characterisation, plot, dialogue and drama to present factual material that reads like fiction (Creative Nonfiction - http://www.creativenonfiction.org/).

All of these styles are longer than the inverted pyramid and the reader may have to go through the entire article to discover all the facts. They are written for special audiences that enjoy such writing.

It is true that these other styles offer the online writer greater creativity than the inverted pyramid, however to write in such styles you must acquire the skills.

Inverted pyramid best for providing information

The inverted pyramid style adapted for online reading remains the most useful means of conveying factual information to a frequently fickle readership (see 7. How people use online media).

Like its print counterpart, the online inverted pyramid style provides information:

• in which facts are easy to find
• in brief chunks
• written in language that the readership will understand
• that makes it possible to find information quickly.

Writing for online media

As in print media, the starting point in the development of online media or for writing informational text for a website is to ask:

• who is the website aimed at? who is the text to be written for? is it a special interest group, other businesses, clients or potential clients, a professional group, the media etc?
• how would information best be selected and structured for them?

This gives you a clue as to how you present information (journalistic articles, brief notes, information in tables or matrices, photographs, drawings, illustrations, animations etc) and the complexity of language that is appropriate.

Information can be long-lived

Websites may come and go but the information they contain, like email, can live on.

Libraries and directories archive web pages. Readers save your work for later reference. What you say online today can resurface years later.

The law online

Media law varies from country to country and, in Australia, from state to state. It is useful to learn of the laws relating to your area.

Generally, the laws applied to print media also apply to online. In Australia, it is the laws of copyright and defamation that will be of primary interest.