News content plays a big role in higher ed marketing and communications. It takes center stage on our website homepages and many top landing pages — not to mention our email newsletters, alumni magazines, Twitter, Facebook and other social channels. We rely on it to maintain a timely, engaging web presence. Above all, we rely on news content to help tell our story. Yet how often do we consider what messages our news content is communicating and … [Read more...]
New Storytelling Platforms: Using Medium at Marquette
August 11, 2014 by
Own your story! It’s a common refrain of modern publishing. With so many great content tools at our disposal, we need not outsource the telling of our story to third-party media. One of my all-time favorite quotes, by former King’s College communicator Kyle Christie, sums it up nicely: Universities have an opportunity to leapfrog the mainstream media and explain our research, teaching and wider contributions to society in forms beyond the … [Read more...]
The Power of the First-Person Perspective
July 15, 2014 by
A lot has been said about “clickbait” content from sites like Upworthy, whose headlines tug on (some say exploit) emotions and curiosity to lure readers to their content. While I don’t feel as strongly about these headlines as many do, one type of headline that particularly grates on me is the faux first-person headline. For example: A News Team Follows Potential Models For One Week. My Face Is Now Stuck In Disgust Mode. I’ve Tried To … [Read more...]
We Blog About Headlines. What Comes Next Will Amaze You
January 21, 2014 by
My first job out of college was working for the Boston Globe’s website, which afforded me the opportunity to write a lot of headlines. Perhaps the best (or worst) headline I ever wrote, after a Boston Celtics victory, was “Pierce nets 40 as Celtics pierce Nets.” Clever, eh? “Clever” could be an apt description for many headlines you read. The goal of the headline is to tell you what a story is about, establish its tone, and entice you to read … [Read more...]
‘Snow Fall’ and Storytelling in Higher Ed
January 8, 2013 by
On Dec. 20, The New York Times wowed readers and industry peers alike with the publication of an interactive feature called “Snow Fall,” which told the story of a fatal avalanche in Washington’s Cascade Mountains this past February. It was not your ordinary multimedia feature. It brought words, pictures, video and interactive graphics together in a whole new way that had many hailing the project as a harbinger of the future of journalism. That … [Read more...]