by James Zipadelli

Created on: May 10, 2009

Readers are time-crunched today. The average attention span is around five seconds. Unfortunately, many journalists, myself included, are under pressure to cut our stories. My fear has always been that if we cut our stories too much, they lose their relevance. But engaging time-crunched readers can be acheived, with a little effort.

A. Titles

If you're an online writer like me, the title needs to be short, pointed and crisp. For example, in 2005, the Boston Globe did a story on Panthers defensive end Julius Peppers. The headline was,

"Don't sneeze at Peppers."That title has the elements I've described, plus, it's funny. Readers will not click on your story and see the lede you've spent two hours constructing unless your title lures them in.

B. Ledes

The lede is the beginning sentence or two of the story. There are three kinds of ledes: the hard-news lede, the anecdotal lede and the delayed lede. It depends on the writer's style and what the story is about how they want to proceed. Once readers find your title interesting, the lede has to hook them in the story more. Hard-news ledes should be no more than 25 words, and writers count how many words the lede is. There is always a shorter way of saying something; it just takes a little effort. While the writer has a little flexibility with anecdotes and delayed ledes, the story should be get to the point within the first two or three paragraphs. Writers generally should not use quotes as their lede unless there is a special circumstance. The election of Barack Obama as our first African-american president is a good example of such a circumstance.

C. Story selection

When I was in school, we were taught about the inverted pyramid with the 5 Ws: Who, What, Where, When and Why. The most important information goes first, and the least important information goes last. The rest of the body is the supporting details necessary for the reader to understand the event. It was also easier for editors, because if the story had to be cut during the editing process, they would cut the bottom few paragraphs because that was the least important information anyway. Theoretically, the meaning of the story wouldn't change if that information was taken out.

In order to engage time-crunched readers today, we shouldn't always write stories using the inverted pyramid. Instead, we need to utilize other forms of writing to convey the same information in less time, using less space. I call it, the "who, what, why" test. WHO is who is involved in the event; WHAT is what the event is about and WHY is why the reader should care. You can also substitute the why for HOW; that is, how does that event affect me, my family, and my life? People will still gain the essential information using this method, but the downside is that context is still lacking in the story.

I'm not suggesting that this will work for every story. Economic stories, such as on the banking system, need to be explained using the inverted pyramid. Most people don't understand what a derivative is; in fact, CNBC reported that when the financial system collapsed Sept. 15th, 2008, economists had to look back into their college textbooks to figure out what it meant. The good news for journalists is that people want hard news now that they are paying attention to our economy.

If you've read my entire story, congratulations. I'm glad I've engaged you.

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