Managers at most news organisations want to be able to publish content to every device their users to turn to in order to access information. This makes perfect business sense. And exploiting existing resources to their maximum in an intelligent and meaningful way is the way forward.

Of course a lot depends on available editorial resources, newsroom systems and whether journalists are able to access the assets needed to create an online news story.

The following notes are based on experiences gathered working on large-scale broadcast news websites. They cover the elements you should be thinking about adding to a breaking news story as it develops. They also sets out some rough timings, which will vary depending on whether you:

• are operating in a converged news organisation
• have centralised journalistic tools that make all the assets/elements available
• belong to a media organisation with audio/video
• have a website that aims to update around the clock
• deliver content to multiple devices.

It will also make life easier if your news organisation has:

• a strong forward planning operation
• a core editorial proposition based on issue-led journalism.

As soon as news breaks, you need to display the information on the home page of your site. This might be in the form of one line of text.

The first information you receive might come from the news wires. If that is the case, and if you have not been able to verify the details independently, you must qualify the information you are publishing with words such as “According to the wires…”. See our attribution module.

Now you need to find a second source in order to verify the information. Ideally that will be one of your own correspondents or reporters but, failing that, another source will needed.

You will also need to make calls, search online and scour the social networks for updates, adding information as appropriate once verified. You will be looking for something unique, perhaps a quote, image or audio clip from your own news resources – ideally within the next 10 minutes.

By now you should have a headline, a summary and a couple of paragraphs. You might even have an image or a video. Publish what you have and add the words “more soon” to indicate you are still working on the piece. This will encourage the reader to return for an update.

Add a quote box as soon as you find a good quote. Your content management system (CMS) might have tools for doing this but, if it doesn’t, create a small table in your text editor, add a border and write the quote inside. This breaks up the text and helps highlight an important element of the breaking news story. Always go for the most newsworthy quote in the story.

Fact boxes are ideal for displaying other important elements of the story. You might want to add the main facts as bullet points. All this can be done by creating a table and inserting it in the piece.

If you have a good CMS, and a database stocked with previous news items and other background information on the topic, you should be able to search for previously created elements such as timelines, fact boxes and people profiles.

Free tools for enriching content

There are some useful free tools for adding interactive timelines and maps to text stories. Search online for the options.

The beauty of these free online tools is that, once published, your creations can be shared by others who can embed your timelines and maps in their blogs and on their social networks. This all helps with the distribution of your information and encourages others to visit your site.

Multimedia

They say pictures are sometimes worth a thousand words. Sometimes they help to break up text. Graphics may illustrate a technical or complicated concept more easily than a written explanation.

Video and audio clips may also be incorporated in your news pages; these can add life, colour and realism. But try to summarised what the viewer/listener is likely to hear with a well-written introduction to tease them to click on the material.

Video or audio of a specific event – a building collapsing, a wave destroying waterfront properties, a recording of a call to emergency services – may well convey far more in emotion and real-life impact than even the best writer could hope to achieve.

Sometimes, a video clip itself may be the news. Consider social-media posts about a YouTube video purporting to show government soldiers who have been captured by rebels, the aftermath of an air strike, footage of a jet in flames and about to crash.

If the video clip is the news, it is foolish to write a piece about it without embedding the video clip itself.

Graphics

If your CMS links to a TV or print database, you may enable to search for shared graphics. This is a great way to  ensure you are not duplicating effort (so it saves costs), but it also is good for the brand, showing a consistency of style and message across all platforms.

Some news organisations impose a house style for graphics. This is an intelligent strategy, and all part of a converged, multi-platform content production approach. Info graphics are ideal for showing the viewer, in a simplified form, detailed and complex information that might otherwise take several minutes to read. They are useful for presenting information in a way that is simple to understand.

Backgrounders and blogs

If you are able to access the text being written by the TV, radio or print correspondent assigned to the story, you may be able to publish their report as a related story. You will also want to follow any tweets they are sending. You should have a desktop social media aggregation tool running in order to keep a track of breaking news on the main social media networks used by your audience.

Your reporters and correspondents may already blog for your news organisation and some of these will be worth linking to for background information as the story develops.

Often, when a journalist is not able to access the CMS, a microblog can be used to upload a story, complete with images and video, from a smartphone or laptop.

Audience input

Ask the audience whether they have any information or witnessed anything. Invite them to add their comments and submit their pictures. Consider adding the best to the developing story.

Special sections

If the story is on a recurring topic you may have a special section already created for that subject. For example, if your region is prone to flooding, you may have a special section on flooding. If the breaking news is about flooding, you should link to this special section where the reader will find more information.

Related stories

Most top stories benefit from having a number of related stories. These can include many of the elements discussed above. However, they may also involve various interesting angles not covered in the main story. These offer the reader a collection of items that will enhance their understanding of the topic about which you are writing. The aim is to offer the audience the most comprehensive and interesting collection of elements you can.

News assets

Another option for speeding up your news production process and creating asset-rich articles is to use online content creation tools to add images, video, audio, and links to your story. Each element can be detached from your piece and shared on the social networks. This helps spread your information more widely while also encouraging others to visit your site.

The post Updating an online news item first appeared on Media Helping Media.

If the editor-in-chief of your news organisation is out of the country, she or he should be able to browse your news website and, by looking at your story choice and treatment, have a good idea about the news priorities of the entire news organisation.

Your website will probably share the same news schedule as your broadcast or print colleagues. You may share reporters and correspondents. Some have a combined planning team.

When stories are discussed for TV, radio or print, someone from the online team needs to be present. They need to sit in on news meetings and suggest interactive elements for all the big stories. Their role is to come up with ideas for presenting information in ways that can engage the audience.

The duty editor needs to ensure that the material that appears on the news website cross-promotes other news output areas. If the website is part of a broadcasting organisation with TV and radio news output, it will be expected to display the best of the material produced by the broadcasters, along with supporting in-depth background information.

The news website should include details of when that item can next be seen on TV or radio. This is particularly true where your news operation has uncovered valuable, exclusive information and has a special programme, or a special report, running on TV or radio.

The cross-promotion can be shown as a text link signifying when the next opportunity for watching or listening to the news item is scheduled, or it can be a box offering some or all of the material from the TV and radio output. For news websites offering video and audio on-demand, cross-promotion is essential.

Managing all these resources so that they enhance the news website and the stories that appear on it, is one of the main functions of the online duty editor. It is also important that the audience finds the same facts online as they hear or see on air or read in print. They must not be given mixed messages.

Liaising with other departments

It is important that the duty editor has a system for letting other departments know which stories the online team is investing time and resources covering. This usually begins with the daily news meetings. The chances for cross-promotion on air, on screen, and in print, will be far greater if the person in charge of the editorial content on the website lets the editors of other news outlets know what the online team is creating.

Some news operations have a shared folder on the organisation’s computer system where the various elements of a story are added so that all are aware of what is being created and what is available. Some have a superdesk system where representatives of all outlets sit together and share knowledge. Whatever the system, the duty editor in charge of the news website should tap into this resource regularly.

TV and radio producers will need to know when an interactive element is likely to be ready so that they can promote it in their programmes. They will want to know when the interactive team is in place to take feedback from users online. They will need to know when a guest is being lined up for an online interview.

All these elements need to be brought together by the duty editor and offered to all outlets in good time for them to include a mention in their output. It is pointless for a news website to organise a talking point on an issue if the duty editor hasn’t told his or her counterparts about it.

As you inform these outlets, be ready to consider their suggestions. The other editors might have excellent ideas about what should be created online. Keep an open mind. Be prepared to try new ideas if they will enhance the output.

News agenda

The duty editor of a news website must check every decision to ensure that it is in the best interest of the news brand and its users. Examining motives is essential. There have been hand-over meetings where the incoming duty editor has decided to change the front page completely.

This is justified if the previous front page was an inadequate reflection of the news, but it is not justified if it is to try to make the incoming duty editor look good. There have been stories that have taken hours to create, removed from the front page after appearing there for less than an hour. It may be, however, that there is so much breaking news that there is no room for everything.

The news agenda must:

• include all the main stories being covered by the rest of the news operation.
• exploit all resources and effort being committed to covering the news.
• reflect the strengths of your organisation’s newsgathering effort.

The news agenda is not:

• the chance for the in-coming duty editor to look good.
• an opportunity to play with news to appear clever.
• an excuse to deploy inappropriate interactive elements.
• a news product isolated from the rest of the news operation.

The duty editor of a news website has an enormous responsibility. She or he needs to be clear about why news items appear, and why changes are made.

The post How to set online news priorities first appeared on Media Helping Media.