Search engine optimization: Killing journalistic creativity or marketing to a new audience?

By Hannah Williams
Nov. 19, 2008

 

Search engine optimization suggests adding key words to standard print headlines, transforming the Chicago Daily Tribune's incorrect report of the 1948 president-elect to “Dewey defeats Truman in presidential election.”

Multimedia reporting spurs journalists to write to multiplatform audiences, manufacturing headlines that gain the approval of editors, catch the attention of readers and crack the algorithms of search engines.

“Journalists over the years have assumed they were writing their headlines and articles for two audiences — fickle readers and nitpicking editors,” Steve Lohr of the New York Times writes.

“Today, there is a third important arbiter of their work: the software programs that scour the Web, analyzing and ranking online news articles on behalf of Internet search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.”

SearchEngineWatch.com explains how search engines work, “crawling” the web and spitting back keyword matches, and offers rankings of the “Top 10 Search Terms in 10 Categories” among other news, info and tips for optimizing your Web site to increase traffic.

Lohr credits search engine optimization with the decline of catchy headlines in “This Boring Headline Is Written For Google.”

“[S]oftware bots are not your ordinary readers: They are blazingly fast yet numbingly literal-minded,” writes Lohr. “There are no algorithms for wit, irony, humor or stylish writing. The software is a logical, sequential, left-brain reader, while humans are often right brain.”

Increased traffic often means increased revenue, a big incentive for those in the newspaper industry with ever-declining readership.

“Some news sites offer two headlines. One headline, often on the first Web page, is clever, meant to attract human readers. Then, one click to a second Web page, a more quotidian, factual headline appears with the article itself,” explains Lohr.

The BBC is known for its dual headlines, especially on extended stories. Today, The BBC’s top story headline reads “A social danger;” click through and you’ll wind up at “How dangerous are networking sites.” In BBC business news, a click on “Motor city misery” leads you to “Detroit hit as car firms beg for bail-out.”

This linking compromise caters to the various audiences of online journalism: editors, readers and search engines.

Writing for the Internet has turned the news media upside down. Traditional print tactics don’t always translate into online success.

New Media Bytes, a site helping journalists better understand how to utilize the online medium most efficiently and effectively for news, offers tips for headline writing. The best headlines will be clear and concise and will contain names, datelines and searchable keywords.

Furthermore, the site capitalizes on the opportunities to increase readership via allowing readers to share the article using web tools: email, del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Mixx and Sphinn.

CNET News advises journalists to think in reverse when titling stories. What terms would a reader search if they were looking for the story content?

CNET writer Elinor Mills tackles search engine optimizing some of the most memorable headlines in history and suggests avoiding abbreviations (“Wall Street lays an egg, stock market crashes” in Variety on Black Monday) and adding key words (“Dewey Defeats Truman in Presidential Election” in The Chicago Tribune’s incorrect report of the 1948 election results).

The Internet is a new challenge for reporters, and in order to succeed in this new frontier, journalists must master their new medium and utilize it to its full advantage.

Relinquishing creative control of the headline to search engine optimization does not have to mean sacrificing witty, poignant, pithy journalistic writing. It merely means making it easier for a worldwide audience to find and enjoy your journalistic eloquence. 

Breaking the mold, picking up the pieces and recreating reality: Iraqi sculptor-turned-reporter Ahmed Fadaam encourages Elon student journalists to retain curiosity

By Hannah Williams
Oct. 23, 2008

ELON, N.C. – Ahmed Fadaam set aside his clay and took up reporting when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 to keep an accurate account of the war that rages still in his home country.

Fadaam urged students to seek out the truth report it honestly in creative detail to maintain an informed public in a reporting class at Elon University Wednesday.

Detail-oriented sculptor embraces journalism

“Art was my life, I was not trying to be the man who chased stories,” Fadaam said. He said he wanted to remain in Iraq to witness the events in his homeland so that he could relay a first-hand account of what happened there to his children.

Reporting was a natural extension of his artistic background, Fadaam said. He credited his insatiable curiosity and attention to detail for his journalistic success.

This accidental reporter started working as a translator for NPR’s The Connection hosted by Canadian journalist Dick Gordon, went on to run the video desk for the Agence France Presse and concluded his journalism career in Iraq as the newsroom supervisor of the Baghdad Bureau for The New York Times. 

Fadaam became an unpopular person with his countrymen, as his reporting work for the western media affiliated him with the U.S.-led invasion.

“After a while, it became unimportant whether you were working with the French or the Americans. Everyone is American.”

Despite the hostilities he encountered, Fadaam won numerous awards for his reporting in 2007: a New York Festivals Gold World Medal and a UN Silver Award for his radio coverage, a Gabriel Award for his national news coverage and an Edward R. Murrow Award for continuing coverage. 

Watch Fadaam explain how being an artist led to being a journalist and the challenges he faces as such. 

Artistic ambassador reports from across the Atlantic

Fadaam left his home in Iraq, relocated his family to Syria and moved to the United States last May to take up a visiting fellowship at the University of North Carolina. He’s continued to work in media, recording pod casts for Ahmed’s Diary, a blog for Dick Gordon’s The Story.

“As long as you are doing your job, and you believe in it, and you know that you are telling the truth and people will listen to you, then it’s not important [the resistance you face]. Keep doing what you are doing.”

A man in Baghdad once asked Fadaam why he was working with the media. Fadaam responded that the media only portray one side of Iraqi society – looters and destroyers. He said he wanted to show the capable side of the society.

Writing for the media can be a form of resistance itself, said Fadaam. It can be patriotism.

“When you want to fight back, you can do it with words. With bringing facts. With telling the world what they are missing,” Fadaam said.

Open communication is necessary to bring healing

“Iraq is not Saddam,” Fadaam said. He explained that there are a lot of misconceptions about Iraqis in America and about Americans in Iraq.

Americans know very little about the Iraqi culture outside of Hussein’s regime, and Iraqis know very little about America outside of the violence they’ve seen in Hollywood movies and during the invasion and occupation.

“Try to talk to each other away from policy, away from government, away from war,” Fadaam encouraged. “People to people.”

Fadaam suggested these stereotypes could be overcome if people were more informed and understood the difference between a public and its government.

Changing media landscape breeds distrust and confusion

Before the war, Fadaam said, there were only three newspapers and two TV stations, all government-owned.

Now, there are over 150 newspapers and from 70 to 80 TV stations, said Fadaam, each owned by a competing political party.

“They [Iraqis] don’t know who to trust,” Fadaam said. “Who’s telling the truth? Whom to follow?”

Patriotism melds with art and communication

Fadaam, haunted by images of death and destruction, gave up sculpting for a while. He has returned to his clay and said he hopes to continue to report as well.

Fadaam is currently constructing a life-size statue depicting the struggle of women in the Middle East as a gift for Elon University.

 “Clay is like a germ, it’s like a disease. Once it gets you, you can’t get rid of it,” Fadaam said. “Journalism is the same.”