Web news articles are read in more depth than tradition news papers. Audiences read on average 64 per cent more the entire story (EyeTrack 2007)
Readers are often drawn by navigation links and online reading is actually 25% slower as eyes become tired faster. This is why many news stories are broken up over a page with many pictures (to keep the eyes active)
Writing for the web is competitive and to stand out from the herd must have multimedia options and be considerate of a possible global audience. Journalistic writing should be effective, concise and interesting.
Online writing has a particular style along with all the other standard news rules (fair, accurate, attributed, present tense, inverted pyramid)
Online readers are less patient.
Short paragraphs = twice as likely to be read.
Web news audiences wants locale in heading/first sentence must spell it out. e.g. Noosa Heads on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia.
Language Differences Online - English is the most common online language followed by Chinese and Spanish.
THE BEAUTY ABOUT ONLINE STORIES IS ERROrS CAN BE DEALT WITH BY CORRECTING AND THEN RE-PUBLISHING.
Short heading in active voice, short intriguing introduction gets more readers, inverted pyramid, good hyperlinks add depth to the story.
CHUNKING is an approach to writing information online to make it more accessible and readable.
Other points...
- Use boldface emphasis to highlight major points.
- Use links liberally, and build documents with reader responses and inbound links in mind.
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