Washington Post’s Masterful Failure of Online Journalism
June 8, 2009 by Craig Stoltz
The Washington Post has just published an important, two-part story about an unresolved local murder. It is available only online, an experiment in web journalism by one of the nation’s [still pretty much] great newsooms.
[Interest disclosed: I am a former Post editor.]
“The Robert Wone Stabbing: Anatomy of a Murder Case” is a masterful piece of reporting and storytelling by veteran staffer Paul Duggan and his editors, a work of significant public service. It explores two different versions of events, one involving an elaborate cover-up by the alleged perpetrators, the other a scenario where an unidentified murder breaks into the house and does his deed. There is a theme of peculiar, ambiguous sexuality throughout.
It’s precisely the kind of local journalism that only high-quality print-based newsrooms have [at least temporarily] the staff, budget and skills to pull off.
And yet “The Robert Wone Stabbing” is an amateurish stumble, an obvious mismatch of medium and message, a squandering of scarce newsroom resources that delivers very little benefit to the community and creates zero business value.
Why?
The story is written, edited and presented as if it were to have appeared in print. Over 8,000 words of American English.
To get through both parts you have to click through 10 long-as-your-arm screensful of text.
I tried to read it all online and found it untenable. My carpal tunnels began to burn. My attention faded. I printed the two pieces out and read them later. It was very enjoyable, like indulging one of those great New Yorker articles that you have to ignore your family to finish.
Hard, non-negotiable facts: People read 25 percent slower online than on paper and can rarely sustain even that slowed pace through multiple screens. [By my math, it would take at least 45 minutes in front of the computer to read just the text of the story.] Online users also behave differently. They don’t read long stories from point to point. [One outlier study by a news organization contradicts this, but many others verify the reluctance to finish long stories.] They restlessly look for things to click. They get distracted by ads, which of course they must be in order for the site to generate revenue. [For more on online reader behavior, see this precis by the annoying half-genius/usability expert Jakob Nielsen].
The Post’s Wone story proceeds in either complete ignorance or simple contempt of these realities–despite the fact that it is published only online.
The delusion that the web is “an endless newshole” where journalists “have the space to do what needs to be done regardless of length” dates to, oh, the first term of the Clinton Administration. Few people who are serious about web publishing have sustained this fervid wish for this long.
It is true that the Wone piece is dutifully enhanced with multimedia assets.
- Some are inane digital reflex: The photo gallery illuminates nothing about the case. Bios of the principals are insufficient and pop up as text windows for no good reason.
- But some are powerful: The 7-minute audio of the 911 call is emotionally potent and illuminating about the incident in a way no words on a screen can possibly be. The PDF of the police affidavit that gathers all the facts (plus the “facts”) and witness statements is invaluable.
- There is a superb graphic, masterfully reported and beautifully rendered, that illustrates how unrealistic the “outside intruder” scenario is. It also includes a timeline of events and inset photos of key items in the story line. But it is nearly impossible to find as presented with the package, badly mislabeled and in any case a “dead” graphic [lacking interactivity]; it could easily have accompanied a print version.
Note the way the graphic is promoted as part of the package. Look for it. . .It’s the “79-minute Mystery” item, last on the list, presented with an icon that looks like cell phone signal bars.
Note tiny label, providing no clue that it leads to an explanatory graphic of great value.
You even had to expand this box to even see this tiny, baffling reference. The editors did not consider it among the “top items for this story.”
[Elsewhere, off a top navigation tab, it is presented, oddly, as part of the "watch" content, as in "read," "watch," "listen," "talk," etc.]
So [you say], what should the Post had done for an online-only presentation of this story?
Funny you should ask. I dropped a note to a former Post colleague answering this question about how a newsroom could approach this experiment in online story-telling differently. [To be fair, he also didn't ask the question. I like to think that answering questions nobody has asked is part of my boyish charm.]
The text of my note to my former colleague, cleaned up a bit:
Here’s the exercise I use when I coach people on this:
Imagine you have this story to tell AND MAY NOT USE A TRADITIONAL STORY FOR ANY ASPECT OF THE PIECE.
YOU MAY NOT DO THE COWARDLY, TYPICAL THING AND WRITE THE MAIN PIECE AND DECORATE IT WITH MULTIMEDIA FILIGREE.
Why?
You will suddenly create a situation where you have people who have spent their careers internalizing the important heart of the journalistic endeavor — far moreso than the often less experienced, sometimes shallow producer class — and have forced them to engage creatively with the journalism of the future.
But it’s vital that these folks–the sweating wretches who have told the stories about fires and murders, who have spent long nights verifying facts and trying to get that one last interview, who have felt the wrath of sources’ anger and the satisfactions of exposing bad actor, who have committed their lives to this hard and important work–that these people learn to tell stories in the way the web demands.
Otherwise they cede the most essential platform for public service journalism to people who have not had those experiences.
So what could Duggan’s piece be like without a “story?” [Blurbs and brief content forms are not only acceptable but essential]
- Rather than a dead graphic buried in the package, I’d make an interactive version the centerpiece: An interactive timeline presenting, the competing interpretations of the murder. You’d be able to compare the alternative scenarios, examining for plausibility and holes, etc. You’d also see which facts are undisputed.
- Each item on time line would be linked to an asset when possible. For instance, that fascinating affadavit should have been broken up into chunks for this use, with different versions of the story “told” with this information at appropriate moments in timeline. Different witnesses’ versions of identical moments could be stacked, their points of divergence visually highlighted.
- That chilling 7-minute 911 call would be linked on the timeline at the moment it occured. With a transcript as well, since [usability tests show] clicking on audio assets is a fairly rare web user behavior. That transcript would be annotated by Duggan.
- Then I’d re-sort those assets using a “geographic” navigation–the interior of the house and its location on the street, with pop-ups of what happened where under each scenario. Again, this is presented in the current package, but dead and buried.
- I’d have Duggan annotating the timelines with audio/transcripts/written comments at various points–refereeing, adding subtleties and insights the raw facts and assets could not provide and that only someone in command of the story journalistically could provide. Add snippets, in text and occasionally in audio, of his interviews.
There are many other non-story approaches, some far more sophisticated.
But I’d argue that even the product described above would be far more powerful to an online audience than the Post’s platform-ignorant, beautifully written 8,000 word narrative. It would reach more people. It would serve the public better.
And I would argue, just to play angel’s advocate, that it would be superior journalism.
p.s. Readers disliked the online presentation for different reasons–largely because it was. . .wait for it. . .published only online. See the Post ombudsman’s column.
It took me four years to actually learn this (the journalism essays on my website used to be monsters of anywhere from 4,000 to 5,000). I always assumed that people could just print the articles and read them later but the reality is that very few people will actually do that. I’ve had loyal readers who will do that, but it’s a very small number.
There’s a place for the “platform-ignorant, beautifully written 8,000 word narrative” and a place for the interactive space. Namely, in their respective print and online places. The online version, in all its interactive glory should even have a link to the full article. Then you leverage the power of new media, but give a traditional presentation that can be printed out/enjoyed in a more traditionally cohesive way. People like to experience a story, but they also want to read a story straight through in it’s entirety.
You don’t have to kill the traditional. Just learn to use it better.
[...] The Washington Post's Masterful Online Failure | Web2.0h…Really? "And yet “The Robert Wone Stabbing” is an amateurish stumble, an obvious mismatch of medium and message, a squandering of scarce newsroom resources that delivers very little benefit to the community and creates zero business value." - ouch. And yet we have to ask - why is "business value" even in the equation? (tags: journalism online future multimedia web2.0 washingtonpost writing) [...]
You raise some compelling points. Maybe the WP should have created two separate versions of the same material–a web presentation and a downloadable, printable pdf of a New Yorker-style prose narrative.
Thanks all for comments.
Patrick: Good question. The evangelist in me wants to take that 8k story off the table as a way to force innovation. Also, writing and editing those things is very resource intensive. I’m guessing Duggan could have taken the same journalistic/intellectual command of the story via his reporting, but without the burden of writing an 8k piece. Anyone who has done this [and I believe, Sr. Kiger, you have this experience?] knows that the process drains away huge amounts of precious life-force.
Sky: The economic realities tell us that the opportunity to publish 8k-word features in print will diminish. I do believe we are making a transition, at least in legacy newspaper newsrooms, to either/or.
Constantine: Yes, the print-and-read behavior is extraordinarily rare. Publishers have to understand that. I’d love to see metrics on that.
[...] The Washington Post's Masterful Online Failure | Web2.0h…Really? But I’d argue that even the product described above would be far more powerful to an online audience than the Post’s platform-ignorant, beautifully written 8,000 word narrative. It would reach more people. It would serve the public better. (tags: journalism online future multimedia web2.0 newspapers presentation writing) [...]
“Online users also behave differently. They don’t read long stories from point to point. [One outlier study by a news organization contradicts this, but many others verify the reluctance to finish long stories.] They restlessly look for things to click. They get distracted by ads, which of course they must be in order for the site to generate revenue.”
I spent most of my career in the magazine business, and–despite what magazine editors might like to think–magazine readers behaved very much like Web users, years before the Web existed. They rarely read anything from start to finish (instead, they sampled and sometimes read back-to-front if they felt like it). They hopped around from element to element looking for interesting stuff. They got distracted by ads. Readers abandoned boring stories almost instantly, and were willing to honor really good ones with their attention for extended periods.
There’s truly less difference between print and online reading habits than many people think, but it’s not because the Web is like print–it’s because print is like the Web.
Having said that, I think that words–good ones–have just as much value online as they do in print. That the Post chose to tell most of its story with them is not in itself a sign it’s clueless. For any given story, “This could have been done in print” is not a terribly satisfying criticism. (If a site *never* uses uniquely Webby modes of communication–well, that’s another story.)
Note that the New Yorker, for most of its history, intentionally snubbed many of the tools it could have used to tell stories, such as photographs. No rational person would claim it was therefore a crummy magazine.
Lastly–and I say this respectfully, as someone who agrees with some of your points in this post and admires what you’re doing with this site–I remain a bit befuddled why virtually all criticisms of old media sites for using too many words, offering only “dead” elements rather than interactive ones, lacking artfully presented multimedia, etc. are conveyed via words, with a notable absence of interactivity and multimedia. Should we bash your post because it could have been a letter to the editor?
–Harry
[...] Shared a link on Google Reader. Washington Post’s Masterful Failure of Online Journalism [...]
Harry–
Thank you so much for your remarks and kind words.
I’ll address the last question as a way of responding to your larger point.
Yes: My exhortations to Do Away with Words entirely are hyperbolic. I don’t believe that’s the best solution for all online journalism.
Having said that, as an exercise in cultural transformation, modeling, employee training and newsroom motivation, I believe that challenging people to take–no, insisting they take– “story-free” approaches forces minds open.
And I adopt that posture in these bloggy jeremiads as a way of provoking newspaper-bound journalists to think differently. [And, obviously, of ventilating my own frustration when I see my former colleagues--not just at the Post, but the larger community of journalists--flounder and avoid the challenges of the future.]
As long as you give a skilled veteran journalist a story-telling toolkit that consists of nothing but 26 letters, that journalist will depend on it. Take that toolkit away and what do you have? A really smart, experienced storyteller who must grapple with new approaches. All will stumble and fume at the beginning. But some will take journalism to places none of us can imagine. And where, absent skilled veteran journalists’ participation, we may never reach.
Re: magazines. I’m a former magazine hand myself, as it happens. And I have never stopped to think about this before–that magazine “reading” behavior is a lot like web “reading” behavior. Thanks for that.
Best,
Craig
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The future of journalism on the Web…
If you’re interested in the future of news and newspapers, read Craig Stolz’s article Washington Post’s Masterful Failure of Online……
I love this idea:
– that fascinating affadavit should have been broken up into chunks for this use, with different versions of the story “told” with this information at appropriate moments in timeline. Different witnesses’ versions of identical moments could be stacked, their points of divergence visually highlighted.
I don’t think you mean to suggest a “story-free” approach any more than you want a “word-free” article (except maybe for reasons of hyperbole.) What you are arguing for, correctly in my view, is an approach to web-only features that understands that “storytelling” can take on very different dimensions when one has visual tools at one’s disposal. For example, we often stick to the linear in writing in order to be clear. In a visual display, by contrast, identical moments can be piled atop another, thus communicating, as you point out, divergences clearly and effectively.
I agree with Harry that one can overdo the comparisons between how we read print and how we read online. The real question is how writers who previously confined themselves to mano-a-manos with the English language can best utilize the array of tools now available to them. Good writing is still good writing. Good visual storytelling is a different bag of tricks. Here’s to more many more discussions of what great multimedia storytelling looks like.
Dedi
I just wanted to say thanks - thanks for pushing people to innovate, and especially for being detailed in your analysis and proposing real solutions.
So little innovation is happening lately on the web, it’s as if everybody discovered content management software that was easy to install and then… gave up. As an interaction designer, and heavy internet user, it frustrates me greatly!
I’m going to point people to your essay here as an example when I end up relying on hand gestures because I’m so angry ;)
[...] done some follow-up on his blog including some interesting critiques by former Postie Greg Stoltz detailing how the online package could have been improved. They are great tips for multimedia packages. I tried to read it all online and found it untenable. [...]
Dedi: Thanks and yes, that’s it exactly. Well put. I think maybe you should write my blog. Entries would be shorter and clearer.
Amy: I’m delighted this blog entry can help replace angry hand gestures, though I suggest you don’t give them up entirely. I find them useful nearly every day.
thanks for pushing people to innovate, and especially for being detailed in your analysis and proposing real solutions it really makes sense and i like it a lot
[...] last week Craig Stoltz wrote an interesting piece about the Washington Post’s failure of online journalism. While the company may not have smoothly transitioned into the 21st century, they are at least [...]
[...] last week Craig Stoltz wrote an interesting piece about the Washington Post’s failure of online journalism. While the company may not have smoothly transitioned into the 21st century, they are at least [...]
[...] issued a blistering broadside against the Post‘s [my former employer's] inept lunge at web-native storytelling last week, I had no idea that the [...]
Craig, the news biz badly needs the head-banging you are delivering, even it if makes me flinch from time to time. But we’re in a time when all the big and lumbering enterprises of the nation are encrusted with inertia, now in various states of splintering, from forces their stewards have either ignored or slept through. So bang away. (BTW - have we increased the height of those levees on the Mississippi yet?)
Your “story board” for the Wone story reminds me that running news elements through the web’s mashware makes the process more like documentary film making, in terms of positioning and using the elements. Talk about wholesale mental readjustment.
Years ago, way before any Web, a brilliant ad guy named Bob Abel produced a video disk (yes, that far before the web), called “Guernica.” The user opened on Picasso’s famous painting of that name, and by clicking on images in the painting would follow a path of his or her own discovery through the meaning and background and context of that painting. Click on the bull to find out about its place in Spanish lore, in Guerician economy, in western mythology. One could veer out of the path at any time onto another. All the elements of the story — the bombing of that town and Picasso’s rendering of that experience — were there to be “bundled” by each individual according to his or her edu-experience.
I’ve seen slight variations of that technique infrequently on a web site or two. And there are many ramifications for such an approach, in terms of a readership’s shared understanding of the “facts of the case.” But that doesn’t necessarily happen with the best reported and written 800 or 8,000-word articles.
Your banging is really posing the same question over and over to the profession, which is: “What are the unique attributes of the digital media…those that truly create value for those who experience them?” The answers, as you say, will dictate how journalism enterprises sustain themselves, to say nothing of the profession. (The same question also has to be posed to the ad side of the industry as well where, unfortunately, Class 3 hurricane levees are still considered perfectly suitable.)
A hypertext timeline? Really?
Are you saying that narrative has no place on the web?
I’m after the opposite — that the web gives you space for longer narratives, the kinds that have been cost-prohibitive in hardcopy. Shouldn’t online newspapers run longer narrative pieces? That’s what I think. I think they should bring back a poetry and fiction section, too.
I read all day online, much more than hardcopy now. I bet in a few years more people will read books online with Kindles and related devices than hardcopy equivalents.
Jim, I should have qualified my point. Narrative most definitely has a place on the web. I’m for delivery of 8,000 word articles (which at least should be excerpted in the paper product), unless at some point nobody makes use of them. Maybe Kindle with a less visually harsh (and non-tweet interupted?) form will be the vehicle for longer narratives.
The “Guernica” piece was organized less along a hypertext time line than as a collection of hypertexted contextual elements, of which a time line was one.
Taylor–Thanks much for the thoughtful comments. I never saw the Guernica disc. But I used to review what we then called “CD-ROMs” for the Wash Post, and I recall there was some excellent work being done as artists–yes, documentarians–were for the first time exploring the multimedia toolset to tell stories. They understood completely that text is of limited value on a computer screen, and that visual and interactive approaches were better. I recall an excellent Einstein bio and an Impressionists overview, among others.
Jim–I hear what you’re saying, as I’ve heard from many people who, like you, read the entire Wone thing on line. I maintain, however, that you are admirable outliers, lonely high-literacy inquirers whose enthusiasm for first-rate journalism overpowers the usability issues that an 8,000-word story presents on the web.
In my work with web metrics, there is a well-known phenomenon known as “traffic decay”–where the number of people who click into the first page of a multi-screen story is X, the number who click on page 2 is one half of that, those who go onto 3 is 1/2 of that number, and so on.
[I'm using "half" as a marker of decline, not a real estimate. If I recall the drop is bigger than half between pages 1 and 2, and the dropoff slower in successive pages.]
I don’t believe I’ve ever seen an exception to this, a case where the number of folks who click on page 5 is even close to the number who click on page 1. If anyone has any, I’d love to see them.
The Post said the Wone story got “a huge amount of traffic” online, and I’m sure it did well. But I’m guessing [again, based on what I've seen elsewhere] that a lot of people clicked on page 1, jumped to the photo gallery, clicked in and out of the text timeline, went to page 2 and then drifted off to something else entirely. Few returned for the next day’s feeding.
[Which raises the question: Why publish on two successive days in the first place? Strange thing to do in an online format. Again, example of how newspaper thinking--a two-part series!--translates poorly to online consumption.]
If digital journalists aim their work for the few high-literacy, high-motivation outliers, there simply won’t be a business for web-native journalism either. It’ll be another example of how journalists blew a chance to connect with the public because they were too stubborn, habituated, poorly managed or unimaginative to make the leap.
Somewhere, someone needs to say: Here is how online users behave/here is how they think. Now, how do we take that into account and perform the vital journalistic work that is essential for for democracy?
Craig
p.s. Using the word “hypertext” automatically qualifies you for one year free membership in AARP. At least that’s how I got mine. [For others: "Hypertext" is the word that gives us the first two letters of HTML. It was coined, I believe, by Guglielmo Marconi in 1901, though my memory is not very good these days.]
Craig,
…”a business for web-native journalism” is the crux of it, even as that variation is still struggling to take form, in terms of its constituent parts, to say nothing of a sustainability — i.e., acceptance and like, revenue. That will require wholesale re-imagining of the work and its processes and elements. Maybe we’ll pull a mashed-up image out of a resource bin like we now pull out a semi-colon out of our experience to help craft a story.
As to the diminished depth of reading through a story: that is not a web phenomenon. Papers print the whole deal, if memory serves, as part of being a “paper of record;” of creating the “first draft of history,” etc. This institutional tradition occupied by the profession as part of our culture is also very likely to be reshaped in this digital transition, and this is one effect I admit to a great deal of concern about.
colon cleansing…
Fiber is an essential nutrient to promote regular bowel movements. According to the American Dietetic Association (ADA), the average adult should get 20 to 35 grams of fiber every day. However, the ADA also reports that Americans currently take in only…
Actually, the comment above is spam, but its topic makes it seem like a fitting coda to this whole matter. Thanks for the discussion, all.
Craig
[...] Washington Post’s Masterful Failure of Online Journalism “The delusion that the web is “an endless newshole” where journalists “have the space to do what needs to be done regardless of length” dates to, oh, the first term of the Clinton Administration.” — Ouch! Guilty as charged. Hopefully we’ve all learned something since then. Although, it must be said that when the writing is good enough, it’s worth putting online no matter how long it is. Gene Weingarten’s epic profile of children’s entertainer The Great Zucchini is an example. [...]