Innovating online journalism: new ways of storytelling

Kulkarni, Shirish, Thomas, Richard, Komorowski, Marlen ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1944-9855 and Lewis, Justin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5300-9127 2023. Innovating online journalism: new ways of storytelling. Journalism Practice 17 (9) , pp. 1845-1863. 10.1080/17512786.2021.2020675

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Abstract

Journalism faces a number of challenges: patterns of news consumption have changed and audiences for traditional news outlets are declining. In this context, we explore whether the “inverted pyramid” model – a system of news writing that arranges facts in descending order of importance, which remains predominant in journalism – is the most effective way of communicating information online. Based on a mixed-methods approach using qualitative data from workshops and expert consultations, we developed a series of new “prototypes” of online news storytelling and tested them with a wide range of audiences (N = 1268). Building on earlier work, we find that linear forms of storytelling - rarely used in news - are more effective in transferring knowledge to news consumers and are seen as more engaging, convenient and useful than the traditional inverted pyramid. We then identified key principles that should underlie a more user-focussed approach to narratives in online news.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Journalism, Media and Culture
Additional Information:	This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License
Publisher:	Routledge
ISSN:	1751-2786
Funders:	AHRC
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	13 January 2022
Date of Acceptance:	13 December 2021
Last Modified:	01 Dec 2023 14:34
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/146606

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