How Journalists Are Finding A New Home In Web Content
http://article.nanolive.com/articles/145024/1/How-Journalists-Are-Finding-A-New-Home-In-Web-Content/Page1.html
Robert Starr
Robert Starr is a professional writer/editor with several published books and a degree in journalism. He's brought 20 years of experience in the craft to his own on line writing/editing service. You can reach him at
http://www.robstarr.org/index.php By Robert Starr
Published on 09/16/2008
Writers trained in journalism are raising the online content bar.
When you first consider it, you might think that there would be a hard road ahead for a journalist that was attempting to make the switch to a career based on the Internet. However, a careful consideration of what the two careers entail would show that the reporter that's been working the beat for years in the newsroom with newspapers and magazines would be able to make the crossover with little problem.
The time frames involved are one of the areas where the two jobs come together. The amount of copy that the average web content writer needs to produce to make a living is close to the harried production schedule they faced when they were working for newspapers and tight deadlines day after day. The key element here is that both these jobs demand that you get it done right the first time and that you get a lot of it done.
There's a need for accuracy as well. It wasn't that long ago that Internet based companies were cutting corners and hiring offshore writers who spoke and wrote English as a second language. The results were predictable. The text that inundated the Web for some time was so grammatically bad that companies seeking to gain keyword ranking status were actually losing money as potential clients abandoned them.
What's happened recently is the shift has gone back to a brand of web content writer that has been professionally trained in a similar discipline. Hence the level of writing that's been appearing on the Internet lately has been getting consistently better and those companies that still insist on using cheap foreign writers are falling even further behind.
So that's where the old journalist or copywriter comes in. When it comes to the reporters specifically, they've got other advantages that the web based firm is happy to use as well. For example, years of working in the news field has developed a keen ear and eye for what's important and what isn't when it comes to the pertinent facts. A reporter can quickly and easily pick off the 'lead' of the article or blog and place the other facts in order so that they are presented in a logical sequence that will make sense to the reader.
With only a little retraining, most people with a journalism background can make the jump to Web content without much trouble and the copy that they produce is always much better than the type that had been making its way onto the Internet before.
The time frames involved are one of the areas where the two jobs come together. The amount of copy that the average web content writer needs to produce to make a living is close to the harried production schedule they faced when they were working for newspapers and tight deadlines day after day. The key element here is that both these jobs demand that you get it done right the first time and that you get a lot of it done.
There's a need for accuracy as well. It wasn't that long ago that Internet based companies were cutting corners and hiring offshore writers who spoke and wrote English as a second language. The results were predictable. The text that inundated the Web for some time was so grammatically bad that companies seeking to gain keyword ranking status were actually losing money as potential clients abandoned them.
What's happened recently is the shift has gone back to a brand of web content writer that has been professionally trained in a similar discipline. Hence the level of writing that's been appearing on the Internet lately has been getting consistently better and those companies that still insist on using cheap foreign writers are falling even further behind.
So that's where the old journalist or copywriter comes in. When it comes to the reporters specifically, they've got other advantages that the web based firm is happy to use as well. For example, years of working in the news field has developed a keen ear and eye for what's important and what isn't when it comes to the pertinent facts. A reporter can quickly and easily pick off the 'lead' of the article or blog and place the other facts in order so that they are presented in a logical sequence that will make sense to the reader.
With only a little retraining, most people with a journalism background can make the jump to Web content without much trouble and the copy that they produce is always much better than the type that had been making its way onto the Internet before.