The internet is a river
March 11th, 2008 by BryanUpdate: Danny Sanchez rightly points out that an editor at the Orlando Sentinel makes the “The Internet is a river” metaphor a year ago:
As Orlando Sentinel editor Charlotte Hall likes to say, online news is like a flowing river, while the newspaper is like a snapshot of the day
But he hasn’t sold me on the second part of the equation. Most news sites act like wells, where water (and readers) go to die. I don’t think Hall was talking in that frame of reference.
In Iowa, in Illinois, and again this weekend at the CICM workshop, I made the following comment:
The Internet is a river, it’s not a well. Don’t let your web site be a well where readers go to die.
I did a quick Google search, and couldn’t find where anyone had used that particular phrase before. If they have, let me know, and I’ll give them credit. If not, it’s mine.
The point of the metaphor is the importance of linking (something I’ve discussed quite a lot today), and sending people out to other web resources instead of trying to hold them on your site. I truly believe readers will appreciate your web site more if you point them to relevant external resources instead of trying to keep them in like caged animals.
March 11th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Hey Bryan, actually our editor Charlotte Hall said something very similar about a year ago. But I’m sure she picked it up somewhere else
Here: http://journalistopia.com/2007/01/16/discussions-on-the-future-of-journalism-education/
“2) As Orlando Sentinel editor Charlotte Hall likes to say, online news is like a flowing river, while the newspaper is like a snapshot of the day. That means news judgment on a Web site is different because there is a more complex time element involved that must balance with the “bigness” of the news.”