World Editors’ Forum | Joanna Geary

The graph I created looking at the interactive features of UK business news websites has recieved a surprising amount of attention in recent weeks.

I had put it online to get some feedback, but it was picked up by Paul Bradshaw, who then wrote an article on it for Poynter Online. Then the study was replicated in Romania!

Now the World Editors’ Forum has contacted me and asked if I would let them publish it in their annual report!

Of course, I said yes but I want to wait to get my essay reviewed first before I give the final ok. Plus, I have changed the graph a bit and added another website (click on the graph to see the full-size version):

Being slightly on the nervous side, and having never published anything like this before, I’d appreciate anyone willing to give it a quick squiz to see if they see any glaring mistakes

I have had suggestions that I should by grouping the online tools (e.g. subscriptions, comments) by colour, but I have tried and this seems to confuse the graph. I would, if I had more time, like to regroup the categories into those that encourage “short tail” repsonses from users and those that encourage a “long tail” response. (Read more about these concepts on Paul Bradshaw’s description of the News Diamond).

Oh, and if people are more interested in the popularity of online tools amongst business news sites, this graph may be better (again, click to enlarge):

As the countdown to the website launch begins, I don’t expect to be getting much opportunity to blog over the next few days.

Yesterday was spent tagging up some of the stories that have been imported over from the old CMS. It’s a funny job – my instinct is to just tag everything and anything that is mentioned in the story. But, when you remember that these will appear in the “related stories” box on the page, you have to be a bit more tactical with your tags.

Steve (our multimedia editor) and I have been building up a few internal rules as we go along. As, when the website launches, journalists or sub-editors will tag the story, I imagine we’ll develop a stronger set of tagging conventions. Apprently this, according to people wiser than I, is called a folksonomy. But, of course, it’s a folksonomy that will be created only by the content creators, rather than the users.

I am curious to know if this will effect the way things are tagged and, if it does, whether that is a bad thing or not? Should there be a way for readers to submit tags? Would they even want to? And, if they do, how would you stop that creating a tag cloud as large as the moon?

This ties in to a conversation Marc (my editor) and I were having the other day about the transparent newsroom. He’s written about it on his blog. I have been really taken with what the Spokesman Review is doing in the US (see right hand column on their homepage). They have been experimenting with a variety of different techniques to open up the process of newsgathering and writing, with varying degrees of success. [found via the World Editors’ Forum weblog]

I love the idea that I am not only directly answerable to the people who sign my pay check, but also to the people I purport to be writing for and, if we would make any of the things the Spokesman Review is doing work on our paper, I’d love to try them.

But, as with the tags, would anyone really be interested in taking part? If so, how?

Joanna Geary

If content is king, collaboration is queen.

Tag Archives: World Editors’ Forum

My graph is going to be published!

Guten tag