Building a content project: seventeen rules of good news

A few weeks ago I wrote an article “ Are we building a content project: is the team a chicken or an egg? ”, After which, at the request of readers, I promised to continue. Well, actually here:



The second part of the cycle will be more practical than theoretical. I am publishing a guideline “News Creation Rules”, which I recently wrote for the news version of the Gooddays.ru project, whose blog you are currently reading. This is an internal document, but the rules described in it are quite universal, so I publish it almost without bills - including links to old news from the site, which I took for example “how not to”. As it should be - you can see right now , we are still far from perfect, but we are confidently moving towards it :)
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• Informativeness. News is written for fun, for intimidation (as a kind of fun, the so-called chernukha) and for information. With the first two cases, everything is clear, with the last - more difficult. How to separate dill, for example, from useful? Very simple: the news should answer the questions of what happened, why, and what the reader should do with all this.

For example: news about a drowned man - chernukha or information? People drown, it happens. The question is why did this happen? If the answer to this question is important for others - for example, water is poisoned there, or sharks, or the rescue service does not work - then you need to write, but in this way: why it is unsafe to swim in a particular place.

• Meaningfulness. It is necessary to avoid abstractions, allegations, understatements, rhetorical questions and any moments when the reader may ask "how was it?"

For example, the news about the problems of the ski complex in Belgium : “The snow was saved, but this exceeded the standard costs of the complex several times” - the statement about the costs sounds more than unsubstantiated. The author of the news himself considered it? Did he compare any numbers? Then you need to give links to these figures so that the reader, if he wishes, can make sure that the author is all right with arithmetic and he is not mistaken. But most likely this statement was made from someone else's words, and then you need to mention who said it, for example, “The snow was saved, but it exceeded the standard costs of the complex several times, its director Hercule Poirot complained.” By the way, about the standard costs - what, again? Daily, monthly costs? Or standard annual procedures for keeping snow in the summer?

• Citation. Directly follows from the previous example. If someone's thought or a direct quotation is given, then do not hesitate to indicate its author. If it is not possible to indicate it, then you need to explain why - for example, “...” a source who wished to remain anonymous told Kommersant. ” By the way, he told about Kommersant about phrases like “as Reuters reports” - they are often liked to be sculpted just for the sake of solidity. This should be done only in one case: if you want to put a direct link to the Commerce message or Reiter's program, for which such a construction is needed (for example, in the case of the interlocutor's anonymity, as confirmation that it was not we who invented it). In other cases, it is enough to quote and name the author, without mentioning the intermediaries, which are news agencies.
  
  
• Accuracy.

For example, the news about the opening of the former residence of Tito for tourists : “Tito lived in the Briüne Islands for about 33 years” - there is a significant difference between “lived” and “was the residence”. The heads of state may have several residences, where they live alternately, and one main one. This must be indicated - the phrase "was the main residence of Tito for 33 years" will be no more original, but more precisely. Or, if he really lived there without a vision — due to illness, or by reference, you had to indicate this accordingly.

• The plot. If a certain topic suddenly gets a sequel, then do not be shy about this sequel to be voiced in the news. If previous events have already been mentioned, then with reference to the previous news and a haunting mention of the fact that you are following developments and do not let your readers miss anything (and of course, from this point on you should really start to monitor and close the gaps if such were allowed). If the news has not been published before you, then you can begin to follow the development of the plot at any arbitrary point in time, introducing the reader to the background.

For example, the story of a Russian who is tried in Thailand for pedophilia. In addition to resonance (read - traffic), it is also curious from a purely functional point of view - for example, you can search for expert comments on these topics, write about the legal side of your stay and relations with local law abroad, discuss the myths and truth about sex tourism . Of course, much of this is already beyond the scope of the newsman’s responsibility, but finding and proposing an interesting, inspiring to write great material topic is an important part of his work.

• Headlines. They should be informative. They can also be cool, ironic, contain allusions and references, but not at the expense of information. The reader must understand whether this news is interesting to him, if he sees only one of its headings - and on many pages it happens. Misinforming and hyperbolic headers are not allowed. Once you’ve attracted a reader to the Pugacheva Galkina news, you will lose it for all other news. In statistical terms, this will mean that the depth of your site will tend to one.
  
  
• Composition. “Pyramid rule”: first - one line “what-where-when”, then in a couple of paragraphs - more expanded, then you can give a commentary, draw analogies, predict the consequences, then comments of experts / participants of the event / other journalists are possible.
  
  
• Illustrated. If the news is not about an event, but about some general phenomenon or concept - for example, about a bill or about an entire country, you can do with a single picture “to be” or, in cases where the news does not require an illustration, put the news without pictures in general.

For example, the news of banning the sale of marijuana to foreigners in Maastricht could, in principle, be without illustration, because she gives her nothing. Or about flying donkeys - if the photo is not the donkey, which was launched into the sky, then why is he even needed? On the other hand, if it was him, then it is necessary to mention this in the text, so that the reader understands that you do not just make illustrations for photos, and you can trust them.

• Portraiture. If there is a person or several people in the center of the news story, then you should definitely add their photos so that the reader “sees” about whom he reads.
  
  
• Multimedia. If the topic of the news is an event, incident, etc. - then there must be photos and / or videos from the event itself.

For example: the news about the party on the autobahn was on another site with photos and videos, allowing to assess the scale of the event: www.mignews.com/news/travel/world/190710_85356_81682.html - you can afford - with normal layout of columns - insert and photos and the video is bigger.

• Date. The news should always contain the date and / or duration of the event.
  
  
• A source. It is necessary to refer at the end of the news or in the text to one or more reliable sources of information (preferably foreign or official, priority to primary sources). All references to sources should be wrapped in the nofollow tag.
  
  
• References If we cannot fit all the information on a topic within one news (and this is practically impossible never), we need to add links on the topic - to Wikipedia, photo galleries, YouTube channels, laws, other articles, discussions in blogs, etc. There are no restrictions for imagination - on the Internet there are a lot of very different ways of presenting information, except for photos, text and video - this is both infographics and various services.

For example, in the news about the cleanest beach in the world, you can add a link to Google Maps with satellite photos of this beach .

• Link Policy. This is the most subtle topic, should be determined by the editorial policy of the site. Personally, I always recommend (and I maintain the rule in my projects) not to refer to direct competitors. Firstly, because they are competitors. Secondly, because there is usually nothing interesting in their news anyway - one bad rewriting and copy-paste each other. An exception is when news about a specific resource, or another situation, when not mentioning these sites makes the news biased. Other things being equal, I consider links to foreign (English-speaking) resources preferable.
  
  
• Internal linking: between news and from news to site objects is a mandatory rule.
  
  
• The rule of the scientist. No need to write simply "scientists" without explanation. Or, indicating only their country (especially if they are British). Scientists, as a rule, if it is scientists, and not “British scientists” have some specialization - chemists there, physicists, astronomers, biologists, oceanologists. By the way, to write "scientists-oceanologists" is also not necessary, because This is taftology - well, who are oceanologists, if not scientists?
  
  
• Authorship. The news must have the author - be it his name, nickname or nickname. It is the authors who form the editorial staff, therefore it is desirable to maintain consistency in this matter.

PS

Separately, it makes sense to mention the importance of exporting news to aggregators - in Yandex. News in the first place. This is not entirely a question of technology news, but their quality directly affects the amount of traffic from Yandex. But in general, working with Yandex is a separate topic, in which I, for example, sometimes move to the touch. Nevertheless, it is obvious - if you work with Yandex.News and under Yandex.News, then an increase in traffic can be a good bonus justifying the content of a separate news editor / editorial.

Disclaimer

This post does not reveal America, but only summarizes some of the rules of writing news, which, in theory, should be well known to every news editor. With the exception of the “pyramid principle” (I heard the name somewhere), everything described here is the systematization of personal experience both as a newsman and as a news editor. Therefore, this list a) may be imperfect, b) is regularly updated.

A separate problem is not only to draw up these rules, but also to make them comply. In a good newsman, all these principles should be brought to automaticity, since writing news is not the work of the artist, but the craftsman is very technological, as far as technological work with texts, events and thoughts can be.