Feature Writing and Reporting. Jennifer Brannock Cox

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СКАЧАТЬ how readers get their news. A 2016 study revealed that 59% of American adults who prefer reading news opt to get their news online, compared with just 26% who prefer print.⁶ Loyalty to a particular publication became less necessary, as readers can now search online for news that interests them directly. News articles are also cataloged online, making them available indefinitely. If readers miss a story, it’s no big deal—they can probably find it using a simple Google search. The googleability of archived articles has enhanced the value of feature journalism for news organizations, as stories that have a long-term impact may receive more visitors over time rather than just on the day of publication.

      Sharing the News

      In the age of social media, it seems hard to believe that information sharing was much more limited just 10 years ago. Before Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and numerous similar platforms, sharing news and information happened primarily in two ways: Readers shared the news they read informally through conversations with friends, family and co-workers, either in person or over the phone. But if the news was significant, more formal sharing methods were used, including town hall and community meetings scheduled to address issues.

      News is still shared both formally and informally, but both approaches are much easier online. If readers want to share a story with a particular person, they can send it via email, text message or social media messenger. If they want to share the story with a whole community, they can post it publicly to social media, create a blog post referencing the story or communicate with others who are interested in the topic using online forums such as Reddit and Quora.

      For reporters, the ease of sharing information brings good and bad news. It is easier to distribute news to larger audiences, but it can be harder to make an impact. Online competition comes not just from other media outlets but from friends, family and millions of strangers posting their own versions of events every day. Again, this is where feature writing and reporting has an edge. In-depth and interesting storytelling used in feature reporting can help journalists distinguish their work and make a lasting impression on audiences.

      Helpful Hints

      Fighting Fake News

      Fake news comes in many forms. Stories can be biased and opinionated but made to look objective. They can be poorly sourced and riddled with errors or false assumptions. They can also be outright lies, created and circulated with the intention of deceiving readers. Here are some tips for telling fact from fake:

      Consider the source: Is it a reputable publication? Can you find other articles from that author?

      Fact or opinion: Does the article reflect reported facts or the author’s opinion?

      Says who? Did the author interview sources for the story? How reputable are those sources?

      Balancing act: Are all sides of the issue represented in the article? Challenge your own beliefs with unbiased reporting.

      Look for a trail: Check the “About Us” section of the publication. Consider its connections to people or organizations that might influence content. Avoid “sponsored content.”

      Unhappy endings: Watch for strange addresses, such as .com.co or .lo.

      Too good to be true? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Look to see if other news outlets are reporting anything similar.

      Keep reading: Read beyond the headline or the tweet. Reading the whole article will help you distinguish fact from fiction.

      Use new tools: Emerging tools make detecting fake and unbalanced news easier. Try browser extensions, such as Google Chrome’s Media Bias/Fact Check tool and B.S. Detector.

      Reverse it: Do a reverse Google search of images by uploading a picture to https://images.google.com. Click on the camera icon and upload the image to see where it came from.

      Shifting Gears: Why We Need to Tell Stories in New Ways

      Newsrooms have traditionally fallen behind in terms of innovating. Journalists were slow to publish their articles online, and when they did, they simply sent in the print version of the story with no consideration for the different needs of online audiences. This process of taking content created for a nondigital medium and “shoveling” (copying and pasting) it online without making changes produced what is called shovelware. News organizations also worried about publishing content on social media sites in their early days, concerned about giving content away for free.

      We now know that at least two-thirds of Americans of all ages get their news on social media, and that number is likely to increase. Looking at younger Americans, ages 18 to 49, we find that 78% get their news from social media.⁷ Journalists are changing their old ways of thinking and trying new strategies to thrive in the Digital Age.

      Broken “Breaking News”

      News organizations compete fiercely to be the first to “break” a story. When a significant news event occurs, reporters race to the scene, making calls and reporting details, all while trying not to alert their competitors to the story. But reporters are no longer the ones who break the news, usually—it is often a citizen on the scene with a mobile phone and a social media account who posts it first. When bombers set off explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon in 2013, Twitter was flooded with immediate eyewitness accounts, while major news networks followed with the news about 20 minutes later.⁸

      Twitter/@caitlingiddings

      When news organizations focus only on the timely news of the day, they can wind up parroting each other, telling the same story in a similar way across multiple publications. This is especially common when publications or television stations are all owned by one corporation whose managers write scripts or articles to be shared in multiple markets. Before the internet, this convergence of resources could go unnoticed. How would someone in Seattle know that the story they just read or watched had also been broadcast in St. Louis, Baltimore and Las Vegas?

      Twitter/@shananaomi

      In the Digital Age, viewers are quicker to notice parroting. The Sinclair Broadcast Group got into trouble with audiences in 2018 when corporation heads forced anchors at nearly 200 television news stations across the country to read identical scripts echoing President Donald Trump’s accusations of other media outlets for producing so-called “fake news.” Viewers attacked Sinclair, producing both parody videos of the anchors for entertainment and compilations of the anchors reading the script as a warning to social media viewers against stations owned by the company. Media experts deemed the script “right-wing propaganda” and called reporters who were forced to read it “soldiers in Trump’s war on the media.”⁹

      This is a series of news shots of dozens of television news anchors working for the Sinclair media corporation, who were all required to deliver identical messages from a prepared script calling other media outlets “fake news” in March 2018.¹⁰

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