Innovating Online Journalism: New Ways of Storytelling

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.