It turns out that USAT's write-tight style works very well for blogging: Short posts, with impact high. Eye-catching art, and provocative headlines with reader-friendly terms -- what, where, when, why, how, etc.That's a dividend from having worked at Gannett's flagship for nearly eight years: My writing and self-editing skills really improved. Competing on the same national stories, I often packed as much information -- or more -- into less space, because I adhered to USA Today's famous, tight format. (Folks who don't work in the newsroom may be surprised: It takes more work to write a complete, short story than it does to just dump all your information into a longer story, and force the reader to wade through it all.)
I helped heave a lot of multi-part/multi-day projects into papers in Little Rock, Boise, Louisville -- and, in San Francisco, for USA Today. I worked closely with page designers and graphic artists, because I really like visuals (duh). Plus, if people don't read my package on lax daycare regulation because it looked so gray and boring -- well, my series has failed. With me looking over their shoulders, designers sometimes hesitated to suggest trimming my copy. I'd often push them to make even bigger cuts!
Earlier: My life, on Internet time
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[today's front page, Newseum]
I got really good at the "write tight" and give readers multiple entry points (boxes, graphics, photos, videos) approach that was just standard practice at the non-Gannett where I worked for years.
ReplyDeleteWas expected to change, though, when I worked for Gannett in a place where editors wanted l-o-o-o-o-n-g, boring book report stenography stuff and strings of big words. I just couldn't make the adjustment to the what I saw was a "please the editor but forget the reader" style.
For years, some Gannett editors were so busy aping peers in pissing on USAT that they didn't understand its breakthrough ideas. Even today, when famous editors agree USAT got a few things right, they never list "tight writing." They say "short stories." There's a big difference, as Jim knows.
ReplyDeleteUSAT has lost conciseness in recent years. It's sad, because brevity is the soul of Web writing.
There are still plenty of writers and even editors at USAT who would much rather shrink or exclude a photo or graphic than cut a story. Hard to believe that mindset still exists at USAT, but it does.
ReplyDelete