If online journalism simply entailed text with pictures, readers would have no reason to prefer it to the newspaper. They want links, video, live streams and even advanced advertising. As online producers, we must strive to provide more in our web stories than a video package and read along. We have to engage the reader, tell them where to go next and get them to come back for more.
Let us take the KUJH-TV story Community Blood Center hopes for more donations, which was put together by my stellar 692 partners Brooke and Haley. Good story, but what could make it better?
First of all, the story is about the Community Blood Center, and there isn't a link to the organizations website. With bleeding heart stories like this, we have to make the reader at least think we care that there are not enough blood donors and that we really want them to help out. We should always try to link the organizations name to the site.
Now that we have given the reader the power to participate in the story, we need to show them, not tell them that there is a problem. In the second paragraph the page states that the center requires 515 units of blood per day to meet its need, but the reader doesn't know how much a unit is. The reader might assume that a unit is taken from each person and 515 people need to donate blood every day. All of the information in question could most easily be answered in a small graph, even if it only has the average amount they get compared with the amount they need.
In the third paragraph, Brooke and Haley get the donor recruiter's take on the situation. There is a problem if they did the interview over the phone, but if they went down to the blood center, a picture of her in between her introduction and quote would be perfect.
Brooke and Haley wrap up the story by telling the reader how much more the blood center needs, which would come into focus with the aforementioned graph, and where the blood is going to. I guess we could add in links to the specific hospitals the blood is going to, but it might be better to just name them in the article.
I believe that the addition of these elements would give the story the added dimensions that readers will eventually come to expect from online journalism. When you are tying to pull on peoples heart strings with a donation story, you should really try to give them the tools they need to help out. Right now this page just says, have fun flipping through the phone book trying to solve this problem we found for you.
Leave a comment