Organizing a complex story

A complex story should not be challenge to the reader or viewer, however challenging it is for the writer. Careful work in organization of your reporting, digital production and writing will help readers make sense of stories that deal with cumbersome economic or technical issues, or with soap-opera tales that present multiple characters and confusing turns. These techniques will help keep the complex story clear.

Use digital storytelling tools

Reporters with long print experience tend to think they need to squeeze everything into the text story that they love to write. Digital First journalists need to think about the best tools for telling each part of the story.

The bigger the story, the more different digital storytelling tools you should consider. But an important part of organizing the story is to avoid overwhelming the reader or viewer with every fact and every tool you might use. Choose the most important information and then decide which tools share that information the best. Much of the success in a complex story is in those difficult decisions of what to leave out.

Videos and photos

For the strongly visual aspects of the story, use the best visual storytelling tools. Instead of writing a sidebar on a topic with visual appeal, or squeezing it into your text story, make it a Tout video or a longer video and give it prominent play in the package.

Or tell a story in a photo gallery. If a picture is worth a thousand words, an effective photo gallery saves you a lot of writing and lets the writer concentrate on the points that are best conveyed in words.

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Mandy Jenkins will amaze on HuffPost Politics

One of the best pieces of leadership advice I ever got came from Dave Witke*, one of the best bosses I ever worked for: Hire good people and get out of their way.

Our social media strategy at TBD worked because I hired Mandy Jenkins and managed (most days) to stay out of her way.

Mandy is one of those people of whom I know that someday I will say, “I knew her when …” After I hired her, I told the story of how she was already telling me things I didn’t know about social media before she sat down for the interview.

That was just the first of many days that Mandy amazed me. Soon she will be amazing colleagues at HuffPost Politics, the next step for one of the best digital journalists anywhere. I was shocked when our company eliminated Mandy’s position. But I wasn’t at all surprised that she had three outstanding offers within a month from leading  digital media organizations.

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Entrepreneurial journalists need to master social media

Our entrepreneurial journalism class at Georgetown will be discussing social media the next two weeks. Of course, you could do a whole course on social media, which offer some of the most important tools an entrepreneurial journalist will use, so this will be an overview more than a deep dive.

Social media can be part of the solution for all three of the key challenges an entrepreneurial journalist faces: content, distribution and monetization.

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