Stop whispering and start shouting: Don’t look everyday when the big story heads your way
By William M. Hartnett on Sep 11, 2008 in featured, newspapers, weather
Hurricane Ike is pointed at Galveston and Houston, and the forecast as I write this says it could be packing sustained winds of more than 100 mph when it makes landfall late Friday night or early Saturday morning. Not a storm to mess around with, and the sort of news that absolutely monopolizes a community’s attention. The perfect time for news sites to stop whispering and start shouting, in other words.
Not to pick on any one newspaper, because we all know none of us are truly putting it all together online, but does this screenshot, grabbed less than 24 hours before Ike’s expected landfall, strike you as shouting?
Or this one, from about the same time?
The immediate message I get from those pages: Just another day at your link-laden local newspaper website.
An event such as a hurricane (a “local armageddon,” as Will Sullivan called it) is the time to try some of the simplification Mark Potts described here. There’s only one story about which everyone is talking, so why overload your page with 30 links about the same event, not to mention the other 50 links that are usually there? Why not just one big picture or, better yet in the case of a hurricane, interactive map? Throw in a gigantic headline, and you’re accurately reflecting both the gravity of the event and its natural grip on your readers’ attention.
Easy to use trumps everything, after all, and lots of words, sentences and paragraphs are the very last thing people are looking for when a hurricane is headed their way, no matter how cleverly they’re written. I’ve done the oh-no-it’s-coming-right-at-us dance six times since 2004 and, believe me, stories are of very little use. Just give me a big map.
Even if you don’t go that far, at least have a special armageddon design ready to drop onto your site:
Here’s some musical inspiration to get you going:
Christian | Sep 12, 2008 | Reply
I guess we are rating somewhere in the middle? Our headline probably isn’t quite big enough. We have a big map (and even link to a Stormpulse embed!”
Hassan Hodges | Sep 12, 2008 | Reply
Go big or go home.
William M. Hartnett | Sep 12, 2008 | Reply
@Christian: Better than most, particularly considering you’re 200 miles inland! (Hopefully the tropical storm-force winds will sort of just skirt Austin.) And, to be fair, as good as papers here in Florida do.
As a frequent user of news sites before hurricanes, I just find the laundry list of links to 30 different stories, graphics, lists and other resources incredibly frustrating. For all the value newsrooms place on our sacred news judgment, we sure don’t seem to apply much of it to hurricane coverage.
What’s the bottom line? Is it coming here? Where’s the map? Will it flood? Will my roof tiles blow off? Maybe hard for the ex-reporters and copy editors who run newsrooms to admit, but stories don’t best serve readers in situations such as a hurricane.
And how creepy does Thom Yorke look in that video?
William M. Hartnett | Sep 12, 2008 | Reply
@Hassan: Exactly! If the end of the world is nigh, don’t give me a 250 pixel wide photo and a list of headlines like: “Schools closing early due to end of the world” or “Gas in short supply as end of the world nears.”