newsobserver.com | A time-saving alternative for readers?

05/23/2006 09:01 AM

Monday, May 22, 2006

Subscribe | Vacation Hold | Automatic Renewal Raleigh · Durham · Cary · Chapel Hill
Search: News Local Web Go To: Keyword Register / Log In

Home News Sports Lifestyles Business Politics Opinion Obituaries Weather Blogs Multimedia Classifieds Shopping Shortcuts Member Center About

Columns by Ted Vaden Home / Opinion / Columns by Ted Vaden

Published: May 21, 2006 12:30 AM

Modified: May 21, 2006 02:50 AM

A time-saving alternative for readers?

TED VADEN, Staff Writer
Story Tools
Caution to readers: Today's column is not in the traditional Printer Friendly Email to a Friend
format. Instead it's inspired by "Alternative Story Form." Enlarge Font Decrease Font

WHAT IS ALTERNATIVE STORY FORM?

More Columns by Ted Vaden
"Alternative Story Form," or ASF, is a new trend in journalism A time-saving alternative for readers?
designed to streamline communication between newspaper and Story and photo - are they a good fit?
reader. This format strips excess verbiage from traditional You win: 'alphaobits' bite the dust
journalism and boils information down to just the facts, ma'am. Bringing order to the obituary pages
News articles now may turn up in question-and-answer format, A Web of privacy?
"bulleted" info morsels (a bullet is one of these: * ), news More questions about the lacrosse story
presented entirely in graphic or chart form, abbreviated stories Burglary victims object to being named
that don't leap from the front page to inside the paper, and other Searching for fairness in the Duke story
formats that depart from the old "inverted pyramid" narrative Scratching away at lottery coverage
style. Good deal for North Carolina journalism?
The brier patch of sex crimes
CAN YOU GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE? Hits and misses in immigration series
Will newspapers outlast Social Security?
WHAT'S BEHIND THIS NEW TECHNIQUE? Errors gnaw at newspaper credibility • Registered Nurse - Health Coordinator
Taunting coverage angers State fans Resources For Seniors, Inc.
Alternative story forms are designed to address the reason that 'Anonymice' menace papers' credibility
people most often give for not using newspapers: "I don't have News columnists anger, attract readers
time to read." The ASF is intended to make reading the paper Bloggers challenge traditional media
• Electrical Designer
easy, useful, even fun. Wakefield coverage raises fairness issues United Engineering Group
Private citizens who get into the news
"We know readers are time-starved," said Thad Ogburn, The
N&O's assistant metro editor, who is designing a style manual on • Teacher Job Fair
ASF usage. "That's one thing we hear all the time -- they want us Onslow County Schools
to just give them the facts."

Andy Bechtel, an assistant journalism professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, teaches alternative story form to his students. A • Financial Consultant & Senior Auditors
former N&O editor, Bechtel says he sees increasing use of the style among newspapers across the country as they try First Charter Corporation
to broaden their appeal to readers, especially the youth market.

"This is another way to convey information to your readers," he said. • Java Programmer
Scynexis, Inc.
ISN'T THIS JUST A SHORTCUT TO MAKE NEWSPAPERS' WORK EASIER?

ASFs usually are shorter than traditional stories. But Ogburn says the extra effort required to boil stories down and • Information Tech. Specialist
enhance their visual appeal often makes more work for the reporter and editor. Healthcare
WHEN ARE ASFS APPROPRIATE TO USE?
View all TopJobs
The best deployment I've seen has been The N&O's treatment of college graduations. Instead of a series of long
boring narratives on the speeches and every-year ceremonial trappings -- usually of interest only to the grads and their
families -- stories are broken into digestible info nuggets such as "What the speaker said," "What parents were saying"
and "Not mentioned" (at Duke last week: "The word, 'lacrosse.'")

These quick hits from the campuses, accompanied by lively art, were so popular last year that colleges were calling to
make sure their ceremonies were treated the same way.

WHAT DO READERS THINK?

Sometimes, readers aren't sure what to make of them. At last month's meeting of The N&O's Community Panel, recent
alternative stories brought ambivalent reaction from this group of readers recruited by The N&O to advise us on
coverage. "I think that works in some sections but not in others," said Nancy Kaiser, of Durham.

In January, the paper received puzzled reactions when it ran a full-page graphic on the Samuel Alito nomination, in a
Monopoly game format complete with cartoon depictions of Alito and the Senate Judiciary Committee. "I was
embarrassed myself and for the paper," said reader Bob Havely of Raleigh. "To cover the opening of Judge Alito's
Supreme Court confirmation hearings, you used a full-page cartoon more fitting for 'My Weekly Reader.'"

Ogburn readily acknowledges that ASFs don't work for every kind of story. They aren't suited for investigative projects,
for example, except perhaps for supplemental sidebars. They don't work for long narratives where story-telling is as

http://www.newsobserver.com/576/story/441718.html Page 1 of 2
newsobserver.com | A time-saving alternative for readers? 05/23/2006 09:01 AM

important as the information conveyed.

And, used profligately, ASFs could translate into a dumbing-down of news that insults readers' intelligence. "I think
those are legitimate concerns and something to be guarded against," said Bechtel, the UNC prof. "On the flip side, the
story form may be just as informative, or even more so" than traditional stories. "And they may get more people to read
them."

SO WHICH IS BETTER, ASF OR TRADITIONAL FORM?

I'll let you decide. I actually wrote two versions of this column, one with a nod to ASF style, and one traditional. You
can read the conventional at http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/vaden/

The Public Editor can be reached at ted.vaden@newsobserver.com or by calling (919) 836-

5700.

© Copyright 2006, The News & Observer Publishing Company

Member of the A subsidiary of The McClatchy Company Hosting Partners of
Real Cities Network Help | Contact Us | Parental Consent | Privacy | Terms of Use | RSS Feeds | N&O Store newsobserver.com

http://www.newsobserver.com/576/story/441718.html Page 2 of 2