There's obvious changes like the boom in social media etc but that's not what this blog is about as I've mentioned all that before.
I want to talk abut how the mantra has changed. When I was learning how to be a reporter (something I somehow don't think I ever mastered) the first paragraph and the headline were the important things. In those days reporters had no control over headlines. They were written by sub editors.
But for us the headline and then the first paragraph needed to attract attention. The first paragraph needed to have the essence of the story and answer the obvious questions of who, what, where, why, when and how. Of course it wasn't always possible to include all of those and some could wait until the second paragraph. But essentially the first paragraph told most of the story. In other words it gave the bones of the story and subsequent paragraphs put the meat on those bones.
Now with the onset of online news it seems to have changed. Titillate the reader and keep them reading seems to be the new mantra and why is this? Well my friends it's all a matter of advertising or should that be ADVERTISING.
Before you deliver the real story make the reader scroll down the page through the adverts, because that's where the money is.
When I open my laptop I get a front screen with lots of tantalising stories such as yesterday "Woodstock folk hero dies." You then have to open them up to find out who the folk hero is that has died. In this case it was Melanie. As soon as you open the page up there they are - the adverts.
The point I'm making was perfectly illustrated by a story that had the headline - "Pretty Yorkshire village voted one of the best in England." Now we travel around Yorkshire quite a lot as the other four-fifths comes from there. So I was keen to see which town it was as it was almost certainly somewhere we have visited.
The first paragraph told me exactly what I already knew that a Yorkshire town had been voted one of the prettiest.
The second gave a list of other attractive towns. Then came the mess of adverts. I finally found out it was Thirsk that was being talked about. So much for the old days when the story would have started with something like "Thirsk has been voted one of the prettiest towns in England." Oh the glories of the past. Now articles on the internet are often confusing as you tread through the porridge that is advertising.
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Received a lovely message of thanks from our friends at the RiNG for our talk on the Le Paradis Massacre. Update on our book. We should be receiving the final proof to check next week. We are confident that it will now be out by the end of February.
Also very grateful to East End poet Chris Ross who got back to me when I sent him a message asking if we could read a couple of his poems at a coming Forget Me Not Cafe meeting. Chris was very gracious in saying he would be honoured. Well we will be honoured to read them out. All we need now is to find somebody who can read in a cockney accent.
I must break off here to say that yesterday I had my Barnet Fair cut. Afterwards I had a tinkle on the Joanna after coming down the apples and pears. I also paid some bills by sorting out my bees and honey. After lunch I had a bread and cheese and then spent some time with the trouble and strife.
That's enough of that I hear you shout.
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Spent much of the evening putting together a playlist for a quiz for the coming Forget Me Not Club. The quiz is being put together by one of our helpers Lesley Evans. The questions come from a magazine and I have to say some of the music is awful. The quiz surrounds boys and girls names.