1. Writing a story for Web
By Anna Poludenko

2. I’ll have my article pulled together in
no time

3. The Seven Deadly Sins
• 1. Pride
• 2. Rush
• 3. Comprehensive search VS focus
• 4. Apathy
• 5. Don’t use the same source for every search
• 6. Don’t be narrow minded
• 7. Ignorance

4. Story-building Steps
1. Listen to find the story
(listen VS monitor?)
2. Where is it likely to be?
3. What search tool might
provide it?
(search engines, subject
directories)
4. Specify the field

5. I FAILED TO SEE HOW FILMING A CAT
MAKES ME A CITIZEN JOURNALIST

6. The Invisible or Cloaked Web
• Search engine
index – less than
10% of the web.
• Google – less than
6% of all
available.

7. Use primary search engines to locate
the database (I want jobs in
Honolulu)
Search within those database.

8. Writing= story telling
• Hard news - event driven
• Profile – microcosmos
• Trend stories – light features, hard news, soft
news – changes in demographics.
• Opinion – reviews, editorial, columns – people
from the community who has something
interesting.

9. Structure I
1. The Inverted Pyramid
• - most important
• - details later
• - critics

10. II
• Top (lead – hard news)
• Transition
• Typical chronicle
• Narrative

11. III
• The anecdotal lead
- mini-story

12. REPORTING

13. Lead
• Intrigue!
• Straight,
• Feature
• Dangerous
• Prohbited

14. Straight
• Summarize the information.
• Quick into the story.
• Blind – drop important details but leave
something the most important.
• The basic building block but doesn’t have to
be boring.
• Which details to use in the first paragraph and
which to skipp.

15. Feature
• Anecdotal – quick story that demonstrates.
• Narrative – give a sense of a place people
• Scene-setter – description of where the event
is taking place.
• Significant detail.
• Word play.

16. Dangerous
• The story is supposed to answer the questions
not ask them.
- Mishandle the question
- the quote
- the topic
- Ineffective quotes to loose its power.
-General description

17. Prohibited Leads
• They are heeeere
• Its official
• He leaned back in his chair
• The dictionary definition.

18. Nut graph
• The main theme statement of the story
: here is what my story is about to get my
information out straight forward.
Followed by paragraphs that answer key
questions

19. Transition
• Signals that the story is moving from one
point to another

20. The three-legged stool
• Statistics
• Example
• Quote

21. Ending
• Circling back
• Looking forward