Plan on it: No Boring Stories

Several dozen journalists are converging on Poynter this afternoon for a five-day workshop on coverage of the 2004 political campaigns. Most of the participants are charged with coming up with a plan for their newsrooms' coverage of campaigns for local, state and national office over the next 52 weeks.

As these editors and reporters described their aspirations for that coverage in their applications, a common theme emerged, best paraphrased by one of our visiting faculty, St. Petersburg Times Managing Editor Neil Brown: "No boring stories."

Nearly 20 years working for a newspaper with a small news hole (the Detroit Free Press) rendered me a newspaper reader with little patience for long and windy copy. Most of the research suggests most readers agree: they limit their reading to stories they find interesting and they continue reading only as long as the story stays interesting.

So far this morning, I've read two politics pieces I found interesting: a discussion of media bias by Stanford linguist Geoffrey Nunberg and a weblog entry by Jay Rosen on the ways the Internet is changing the way elections happen.

Sure, the attributes of interesting can be as varied as any one person's, well, interests. But interesting stories do seem to include the following, less subjective characteristics: reveals something new, presumes no particular point of view among readers, leaves me wanting more.

In an hour or so, Poynter's Chip Scanlan will outline the spine of this week's workshop: a planning process that prompts the participants to break down the next 361 days of coverage into a five-step scheme aimed at producing an outcome they'd characterize as "wildly successful."

Is coverage without boring stories something you can plan for? We're about to find out.

Comments

[Jay Rosen]

Thanks for the link, Bill. I would love to know how this seminar is progressing. Will you be posting updates? For those interested in what's different about the Internet campaign this time 'round, check out a new audio interview with the head blogger for the Clark campaign-- a very thoughtful guy, Cameron Barrett.

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/lydon/2003/11/09#a423

Cheers, everyone at Poynter.