9    Researching and writing online

We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true. (Robert Wilensky Conference Speech, 1996)

The Internet offers the writer a wealth of information, some valuable research tools, an opportunity to promote your work and a potential market for your writing. The sheer scope can seem overwhelming. No one knows how many web pages are out there since more than 7.3 million pages appear every day. In January 2004, Google had an index of more than 4 billion pages; by November 2004, this had doubled to over 9 billion. The effortless experience the Internet offers can be seductive. At the click of a mouse you can consult library catalogues, order the latest bestseller, read newspapers, books and government documents, watch movie trailers, listen to radio stations from far-flung countries. Most importantly, you can communicate with people all over the world. You can even file your copy from almost anywhere in the world.

But although it can inform and entertain, educate and amaze, the Internet is also a minefield of poorly researched writing, half-truths and invective masquerading as journalism. With such a wealth and diversity of material, what tools should you use, how do you go about searching, and how do you know that you can trust the information you find?

INTERNET BASICS

The Internet is a publicly accessible worldwide network of interconnected computers. Users communicate, search and browse using email, online chat, instant messaging, newsgroups and the World Wide Web. Sixty per cent of Britons are already connected to the Internet. If you’re not among them, don’t panic: if you have a computer and a phone line, all you need is an Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Connecting

Internet guidebooks, computer magazines and newspaper surveys will offer advice on the best Internet Service Providers, most of whom offer both dial-up access and broadband.

Dial-up access, though cheaper than broadband, has significant disadvantages. It ties up your phone line each time you need to log on and, more importantly, it is slow, so webpages may take a long time to load, and downloading a large file may take hours. The alternative, broadband, is faster and more reliable. There is no need to dial up – you are permanently connected to the Internet and a typical broadband connection is 10 times faster than dial-up access, drastically reducing the time it takes to send and receive files. It is essential if you want to take advantage of the audio and video content offered by many sites. Cable broadband, offered by cable TV companies, connects using a set-top box. DSL (Digital Subscriber Line), like dial-up, uses a phone line to connect, but ‘splits’ the line so that you can use the Internet and still make and receive telephone calls.

When deciding on an ISP, read the fine print: compare not only the monthly charge for the service but the speed of connection. Broadband services may have a monthly ‘cap’ on how much data you can send and receive, and charge an additional fee if you exceed this limit, but these terms are generous enough for most users.

Wireless access

If you travel frequently and use a laptop you might consider investing in a ‘wireless card’ (many new laptops come with this as standard), making it possible for your laptop to connect to the wireless ‘Wi-Fi hotspots’ increasingly available in airports, cafés and hotels worldwide without worrying about cables and wires. Wi-Fi hotspots are sometimes offered free of charge, but many charge an hourly or daily rate. Your wireless card can also be used at home, in conjunction with a wireless router, allowing you to work from any room in the house – or even the garden.

Useful software

Your service provider will supply you with the basic software necessary to access your email, browse the Web, use ‘instant messaging’ and read newsgroups.

Email

There are dozens of software programs which allow you to send and receive, store and organize email – the most popular of which are Microsoft Outlook, Eudora and Netscape Messenger (Windows) and Apple Mail (Mac). Remember many mobile phones and most palmtops (PDAs) can be configured to send and receive email. When you travel abroad, you can send and receive email using your ISP’s webmail facility, or use a service such as www.mail2web.com.

Web browsers

The billions of pages of treasures and clutter that make up the World Wide Web are accessed using a web browser. The most popular (though its share has recently declined slightly) is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer; others include Netscape’s Mozilla Firefox, Opera (Windows) and Safari (Mac). All of these browsers perform much the same functions.

Instant messaging

Instant messaging allows you to communicate in real time with one (or more) people – something closer to conversation than to email. It can be a useful way of conducting online interviews, as the software can ‘record’ the whole conversation and save it as a text file. Popular instant messenger software includes Jabber, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and .NET Messenger.

Newsgroups

Newsgroups are collections of messages posted by users interested in a specific subject. There are specialized newsgroups on almost every topic imaginable, though it may take time and experimentation to familiarize yourself with the arcane newsgroup hierarchies. The email clients Outlook and Eudora will allow you to search and browse newsgroups, but it is worth investigating more specialized News Reading software which will allow preview of image files before downloading, decipher the obscure encryption often used by newsgroup posters and handle multi-part files (news groups cannot handle large files – sound files, movies, software, etc. – so posters ‘split’ large files into multi-art files which later need to be ‘concatenated’). Popular News Reading software includes News Rover, NewsBin Pro, News Pro (Windows) and Unison (Mac).

RSS

One of the most exciting recent developments on the Internet, RSS (Really Simple Syndication), syndicates content from websites to a desktop ‘RSS reader’. The RSS is used on news sites like the BBC, The New York Times and News.com, but is also used on personal pages and weblogs. The RSS reader allows you to add your favourite sites and choose how often you want to check for updates. This means you don’t have to visit your favourite websites to check for updates, the content is streamed directly to your desktop. Popular Windows readers include NewsGator and Sharpreader; Mac users can use NewsFire.

RESEARCHING ONLINE

It will take time to master the various tools you can use on the Internet. While you do, you can dip in, have fun and brainstorm. Billions of pages cover topics from aardvarks to zymurgy, making it seem like the ideal research tool for the writer or journalist. Surfing can offer fresh non-linear and surprising associations of ideas, and you may be blessed with exciting serendipity. But although finite, the Internet is vast – how much time have you got?

When you begin to research a feature or article, it may be best to start with printed sources. In the words of Jane Dorner (The Internet: A Writer’s Guide), the Internet ‘does not replace the post, the telephone, going into libraries, browsing in bookshops, attending literary events or talking to people face to face. It is as well as.’ Using tried and trusted sources will guide you to people, periodicals or other books and sources quickly. They may often refer you to websites that will be relevant and reliable.

Reliability is a crucial consideration when dealing with the Internet. The democratic nature of the technology means that anyone can publish anything they like, without worrying about trivialities like accuracy, impartiality and truth. This can make it difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. Furthermore, on the Internet, not everyone is who they say they are. The anonymity of the medium means that, in the words of the legendary New Yorker cartoon, ‘On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog.’ As from any source, information discovered on the Web should be checked and cross-checked. This important caveat shouldn’t stop you from using the Internet as a research tool: it offers a wealth of reliable information and, more importantly, offers the writer a way of contacting people who are the lifeblood of any feature.

Search engines

Unlike a library or a bookshop, the Internet is not helpfully indexed. The most basic tool for a writer, therefore, is the search engine, a program to find web pages which meet your specific criteria. The most popular search engines currently are Google, MSN Search and Yahoo!

To search for information, simply enter a word or words related to the topic and the search engine will return a page of ‘results’: pages which contain the words you specified. The more specific your search criteria, the more precise the results. Let’s say you are doing a feature on the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination and want to see Abraham Zapr uder’s famous footage. Searching using the words KENNEDY ASSASSINATION produces an unmanageable 700,000 results; however, searching for KENNEDY ASSASSINATION ‘ZAPR UDER FILM’ DOWNLOAD gives only 1400: the first of which takes you directly to the footage you want to see. By default, most search engines give results that contain all your search terms, so if you get few or no results, try a more general search with fewer criteria. You can search for an ‘exact phrase’ by putting the words in quotation marks. Metasearch engines send queries to several different search engines, allowing users to enter their search criteria only once to get results from several search engines simultaneously. Popular metasearch engines include Clusty, Dogpile, Ez2Find and Metacrawler.

If you are researching a highly specialized topic and want to avoid the clutter of personal pages and commercial websites, you could use one of the many specialized search engines on the Web which allow you to search books in print, periodicals and movies. Many libraries (including the British Library and the American Library of Congress) have searchable online catalogues. Copac provides free access to the merged online catalogues of 24 major university research libraries in the UK and Ireland, including the British Library.

Web directories

Unlike search engines, web or subject directories organize Internet sites by subject. They do so by employing editors to categorize and index the wealth of information on offer, making it easier to find relevant subject matter. The expense of this approach has meant that in recent years web directories have all but disappeared; however, LookSmart, About.com and dmoz (the Open Directory Project) remain useful tools.

Like any form of research, with time and experimentation you will become more adept at searching, and as you find interesting or reliable sites you can ‘bookmark’ them in your browser so that you can return to them easily.

Evaluating online sources

Since, as we’ve noted, almost anyone with access to a computer can create a website, it is important to decide how authoritative and reliable an online source is. This is not an easy task and even reputable agencies like the BBC have been caught out. So, when you find that piece of earth-shattering, unbelievable, exciting information on a website, you first need to decide:

•  Is it dated, current, timely?

•  Is information cited authentic?

•  Does the author have a bias? Is he or she affiliated with a particular organization or institution?

•  Could the page be ironic – a satire or a spoof?

Even if you are satisfied that the information seems authentic, up-to-date and unbiased, how can you be sure the author is who they say they are.

Some clues can be found in the following:

•  Look at the URL (the ‘web address’).

•  Is this a ‘personal web page’? If the page is being hosted on free web-space provided by an ISP, this should be obvious from the web address, which will contain the user’s name and often a tilde (~) or per cent sign (%) (aol.com/members/%joebloggs, geocities.com/users/~joebloggs). This does not mean the information is necessarily unreliable, but undermines its authority.

•  Does the web page claim to be an authorized source? Educational, nonprofit, government or other agencies use specific domain suffixes for their sites. Is your web page genuinely the site of a governmental (.gov/.gov.uk), educational (.edu), universities (.ac.uk) or non-profit organization (.org/.org.uk)?

Ask yourself: who is the author? Does the page give contact details where you can verify the writer’s bona fides? Have you heard of this person or organization before? If so, search engines might help to check what has been written by or about them. Is the author qualified to comment on the subject? What background information (education, profession, credentials) is offered? If there is none, you might want to ask why.

Lastly, read the piece carefully: is there sufficient evidence to support the facts it presents? How does the information compare with other sources you have consulted? Does the author seem to have an axe to grind? If you have doubts about any of these issues, take care to check the source: you can do this by contacting the writer, verifying information using trusted sources or searching using the name of the author or organization to see.

Trusted sources and premium content

As a feature writer you may be particularly interested in online versions of newspapers and magazines or reference works available on the Internet.

UK and foreign newspapers and magazines offer online versions of print publications, from The Times and The Spectator to Time Magazine and Newsweek. Search for the contents of those that cover your subject areas. Both newspaper and magazine features accessed online often give valuable links to related features in the archives. While most, however, allow you to browse recent content free of charge, they charge for access to archived material. Some, like the New York Times, allow you to buy individual articles, others insist on a monthly or annual subscription.

The news agencies which supply news reports to newspapers, magazines, and radio and television broadcasters (Associated Press, Bloomberg, Reuters, The Press Association) all have comprehensive, searchable websites. Like newspapers and periodicals, however, some charge a fee for reading or downloading archived articles.

A vast array of standard reference works are available online, from the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Oxford English Dictionary to dictionaries of quotations, world history or classical music. Though they may offer a time-limited ‘free trial’, to continue using them you have to pay a subscription, so you will need to consider how useful such a resource will be to you.

A recent – free – addition to online reference works is Wikipedia, an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. While this has become a hugely popular resource, with scholarly information on a vast array of subjects, remember that ‘anyone can edit’Wikipedia entries, so it would be wise to cross-check information found here against other sources.

Finding experts

If you need to find an expert on a specific subject you are researching, you might try www.ibiblio.org. If you’re not sure where to turn for help, submit a query to www.profnet.com, a network of news and information officers commonly used by journalists searching for expert sources, and an expert in the field will contact you.

Virtual communities

If the Internet is a vast store of knowledge, it is also and just as importantly a community made up of people from every walk of life. For the most part, they are a talkative bunch, from idle gossipers to eloquent experts who communicate not only by email and instant messenger, but through newsgroups, web forums, mailing lists and chatrooms. Online communities give you access to a breadth of human experience, and may provide you with ideas, sources for stories, contacts and support.

Use your newsgroup software or search Google Groups for newsgroups on subjects that interest you, or join the message boards on websites you have found to trade information, ask advice (or offer it). Many sites have mailing lists to which you can subscribe and will send you email digests of new and current topics on the site. Chatrooms allow you to talk to people currently logged into a website: thousands of these are aimed mainly at gossiping and flirting, but there are thousands more on specialized topics from Agoraphobia to Yu-Gi-Oh. Chatmag.com provides a useful list. Finally, websites focused on a specific subject or theme may be part of a webring, a group of voluntarily interlinked websites registered with the webring.org.

In time, you will come to find your way through the sometimes labyrinthine world of the Internet. If you feel in need of support or advice, you can find a community of journalists at www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk.

A WRITER’S EXPERIENCE

John Morrish has a broad experience of online and off line journalism. Former editor of Time Out and commissioning editor for Telegraph Magazines, he has worked on Private Eye and is a prolific freelance writer. His Magazine Editing is not surprisingly as useful to writers needing to understand editors as it is to editors needing to understand writers. His website www.journolist.co.uk offers guidance and new resources for journalists using the Internet. I had two questions for him.

Which have been the most important benefits of the Internet for you?

It gives me access to background material and current information from all over the world. The trick is doing intelligent searches in the first place and then learning to sift what you find so you don’t get swamped. It is important not to let your background reading overwhelm your own sense of the story: you can look over it but you don’t have to use it. Mainly, though, I try to use the Internet to find the right people to speak to. I find people who have had interesting things to say in the web pages I have found, or I look around newsgroups and forums.

It is important to recognize, however, that the Internet can’t do everything. In many ways it has simply transferred the burden and costs of research from the publication to the individual freelance. It still helps if the magazine or newspaper you are writing for is willing to help with your research.

The Internet can’t give you the full text of all newspapers and it can’t help with forthcoming events: for both of those you need to subscribe to specialist services that are beyond your reach as a freelance writer.

Three questions in one. Have you interviewed by email to produce a feature? What do you reckon to be the main advantages and disadvantages? For what sort of interview is it best and for what sort is it often inadequate?

I have, but I try not to. On the whole, I like lively quotes that sound like they came from a conversation, and I like to be able to challenge what people are saying to me. But email quotes can be good if you are dealing with people in awkward time zones: you can put in your query overnight and the quotes are there in the morning. I find they can work well with academic subjects where you need not only the general gist of something but a precise, complex form of words.

People who are habitual email users (and fluent typists) can write in a very conversationalist way, and then the results are almost indistinguishable from spoken quotes. Instant messaging is even better for this: you can get your instant messenger to record the whole typed “conversation” as you go, and then you have it as a text file to incorporate in your story.

Good writers can also produce pithy, pointed email quotes, although they are artificial, rather than conversational. Not bad, though, if you want a string of polished bons mots in your pieces.

Email quotes from company spokesmen, PR people, politicians and the business world are useless. They will have been pored over by many hands (?) to ensure they are absolutely “on message” and will consequently be almost without interest.

CREATING YOUR OWN WEBSITE

Whether you are just starting out, or have a portfolio of articles, you may find it useful to create your own website to showcase your work and hopefully to encourage new commissions.

Before you begin, you need to decide on the purpose of your website. Is it a showcase of your work, a bid to obtain commissions, do you want to offer editing, proofreading or tutoring services? How do you persuade people you have something to offer? Study the websites of other journalists and make notes. The Bibliography contains titles of Internet guides for writers.

You will want your first website to be as simple and inexpensive as possible. The cheapest way to create a website is to use web space provided by your ISP, e.g. AOL (http://hometown.aol.co.uk/bjphennessy), but all ISPs provide between 5 and 25 Mb of free space and most offer tools and support to help you build your website. The software offered is usually very basic and you may have to follow a fairly rigid template, but it will probably serve your purpose. You might choose to have several pages outlining your experience, including samples of your feature writing. On a simple, single-page website, the author of this book was able to give a summarized c.v., with details of the features and books published and the tutoring services offered. Email and postal addresses, telephone numbers and links to publishers were included.

The disadvantage of using free webspace is that your URL (web address) will be something unwieldy and unmemorable, like http://www.service-provider.com/members/yourname/index.htm; service providers also reserve the right to put their logo and advertising on each of the pages you build. To avoid this, you can register a unique domain (www.yourname.co.uk). There are dozens of companies which will allow you to register a domain (search for ‘domain names UK’, or check the list available at http://www.internic.net/origin.html), and most also offer to host your website. You will need to pay for hosting as unique domains cannot be hosted on an ISP’s free webspace. Registering a domain name is relatively cheap: about £15 per year for a ‘.co.uk’ domain. If you register with a US company, you can often get a ‘.com’ domain for as little as $4.95 per y ear. Hosting the domain will incur additional charges depending on how much space you need.

If you want to buy your own domain but don’t fancy learning to code HTML you’ll need a website design editor. There are many commercially available software packages, though you’ll probably find that freeware or a shareware package like Arachnophilia are sufficient for your purpose. Though it is a cumbersome process, you can even build and save web pages using Microsoft Word. Whichever tool you choose will take you a little time to master, but you can easily find a helpful online tutorial.

Remember to keep your site simple and coherent. No website at all is better than a poorly designed one, or one that is out of date, or boring. It is best to avoid gimmicks, animations, and things that flash and ping. A few simple, minimally designed pages detailing your c.v., your professional experience and including some samples of your writing is enough. Don’t forget to include your qualifications, membership of any associations and – most importantly – your contact details.

Blogging

If you have the time and commitment to write for your site regularly, create on online diary or weblog – often called a ‘blog’. Blogging is personal; like a commentator with a byline, you have the opportunity to stamp your individual voice on events and issues that you are passionate about. The most important thing is that you write and keep writing: a blog that is not updated is wasted space. Check out Blog.com for advice and useful tools. A blog can be something you create for an existing blogging community such as Blurty or Live Journal, or you can put your blog on your own website and promote it through Blogger and Blogwise.

The incredible success of blogging demonstrates an audience’s hunger for human stories, but it also means that blogging is no longer simply used by individual writers; political campaigns and corporate PR use blogging to spread their message. Most bloggers give readers the opportunity to leave their comments, and there have been hugely successful blogs which have catapulted their authors to national attention, but don’t be impressed by stories of bloggers being snapped up by mainstream publishers. Just because the Baghdad Blogger and the ‘Washington sex blogger’were offered lucrative book deals doesn’t mean it’s a shortcut to fame. Treat your blog simply as an opportunity to write regularly, of giving yourself a byline and making your voice heard.

Promoting your website

However beautifully designed and perfectly pitched your website, if anyone other than your Mum is to find it, it must be optimized and indexed by search engines. Before you submit a site to be indexed, it should be optimized. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves using keywords and phrases, both in the body copy of your pages and in invisible headers (called metatags), and ensuring that simple things like page titles and external links to your site properly reflect the site.

The software you use to build your web pages will allow you to insert keywords and a description of your site in the metatags. Include 10 to 30 keywords directly related to your work (e.g. journalism, journalist, sports journalist, technical writer, copywriter, subeditor), each separated by a comma. Some search engines – notably Google – ignore keywords, but still include page titles and the description metatags when indexing your site. Make sure all your page titles include one of these keywords or phrases. The description is a short paragraph (200 words) that will appear on the search result. Make it simple and clear, and avoid using ‘sales pitch’ jargon.

When writing the body copy of your site detailing your work and your experience, remember to use these keywords and phrases. If you are not sure which words to use, there are a number of Keyword Suggestion Tools on the Web.

Even optimizing your site, however, is not quite enough. Nowadays search engines rank a page depending on the links into and out of your site. In theory, the more pages which link to you, the higher your ranking. However, simply exchanging links with lots of friends may not help your ranking, since most search engines analyse the importance of the sites providing the links to your site. Focus on linking with sites with good rankings. Have your site included in the sites of professional associations or agencies of which you are a member and ask colleagues to include a link to your site. Remember that search engine spiders read the text of the link and this may help your rankings for those keywords. So a simple link like www.mywebsite.com, even if followed by a description, is less effective than if the words ‘Experienced Technical Writer’ contain a link to your site. Search engines assume that if people are linking to you with those words, they must be relevant to your site.

Once your site is optimized, it should be submitted to a number of search engines for indexing. There are a number of websites and software programmes (Virtual Stampede, or Microsoft’s Submit-it!) which provide help in doing this for a fee. You can submit your site personally (look for Submit URL or Submit your Site) but search engines do not make it easy. At Google, for example, you must first click About Google to find a link where you can submit your site. It is a time-consuming task, but well worth doing. Submit your site to three or four major search engines, and to any specialized search engines you feel appropriate. Remember to submit each page of your site. Then wait: all this takes time, often about four to six weeks to be indexed.

WRITING ONLINE

Feature writers in the press often have a reputation, a byline that brings them respectful attention. They have earned their column inches. They have often discovered important facts that they are pleased to dispense to a selected audience. Their analyses or arguments are often highly valued, even when disagreed with. Online writers have to recognize they’re in a different world.

Print journalists can be reluctant to adapt to writing for the Internet, feeling that it lacks the kudos of serious journalism, or that online journals sap some of the writer’s authority. But online editors have begun to recognize that better words bring more hits. They are often aiming to serve several purposes simultaneously: inform, educate, entertain, interest (well, we know about that), but also promote and sell. It’s another challenge for the feature writer.

Understanding the market

Though the Internet is full of shovelware – useless information, usually from print sources, that has been cut and pasted onto web pages – there are many opportunities for the writer: specialized journals of every stripe need features, and copywriters are needed to fill the websites of government departments, educational institutions, tourist boards and business organizations. These opportunities are global and there are bulletin boards and websites which specialize in listing jobs for freelance writers, including Elance, Journalismjobs.com, Writers Weekly, Dice (for technical writers) and MediaBistro. The jobs offered at these sites may be for online or print work.

Targeting specific ezines or websites is much like pitching to print magazines: decide what interests you. There is little point offering to write for Bloomberg if you have no interest in the money markets, or for CNET if computing bores you. The sites you will want to write for are those you would want to read. Don’t limit yourself to online publications in your area or even your country: a Hong Kong website may be thrilled to have a UK ‘correspondent’; a Los Angeles-based movie site may be interested in articles with a British or European slant.

Once you have found websites where you feel you can make a contribution, you can pitch the editors with specific ideas. Make sure you know the site intimately before you do this: their approach to writing, the subjects they cover and the style guide or guidelines they impose on writers. You may have participated in surveys or questionnaires on the site, posted messages on their boards, spent time and thought considering what the site currently offers and what you can bring to it.

Check the About Us (or Contact Us) section of the website to get the name and contact details of the site, or section editor. A concise, thoughtfully worded email should indicate your previous experience and include ideas you have for features you might write. Remember to include a link to your website, where the editor can read your blog (if you are writing one) and get an idea of your writing style from previous work. If you don’t have a website, include good and relevant writing samples, or at least the offer to send them on if requested. The writing samples must match the genre: your pitching is likely to be more successful when your samples match the writing in the ezine or website you are targeting. Just as in print publishing, this is a hit-and-miss approach; you do not always receive an acknowledgement of your request. Don’t be deterred. If the thought of pitching to websites is daunting, looking at some poor specimens will encourage you. Concentrate on targeted websites as a user, make notes, then rewrite/rearrange material and provide a new sample. If the site is hosted locally, try to arrange a meeting with the site or section editor. While waiting for your big break, you can hone your skills on ezines.

Ezines are the online equivalent of fanzines, and many are produced by a minimal staff and pay little or nothing, but offer an audience and valuable experience in writing for the Web. Even if the ezines you first write for are not very well known, by constantly writing you can develop your voice and with it an audience, which will help you to move forward.

There are several successful and prestigious ezines out there. Many are general interest magazines: look at Slate (owned by Microsoft), which boasts well-known authors/journalists among its contributors; Jackhammer; Salon; or the wonderfully spiteful satire of Capital of Nasty, but there are many more which specialize in everything from classical music to politics. As you would with print magazines, study them rigorously before deciding who to pitch to.

When dealing with ezines, remember the market is volatile and ezines often run on enthusiasm and passion alone. This may not be the most lucrative work, but it is important always to remain professional.

Writing techniques

The values of online journalism are the same as the values of print journalism. As in any medium, your success will depend on the accuracy and authority of your news stories or the style, wit and voice of your features. In the words of Laurie Peterson, supervising producer for iVillage, ‘online journalists must have all the skills of those in other media: good interviewing skills, solid research capabilities, tenacity, speed, accuracy, flexibility, a good B.S. detector and crisp and vivid writing.’

The main difference between off line and online writing techniques is that while people buy newspapers and magazines intending to read them, on the Internet people generally browse. You must grab their attention and hold it if they are to read on. This means that, on the whole, online writing is more concise and pithy and should offer the reader greater interactivity.

Before you write, always ask yourself what an online article can offer that print or broadcast media cannot. Time and space requirements mean that print and broadcast media cannot cover every angle of a story. Is there a local angle to a major story or one relevant to readers of your favourite website? Write it! Print and broadcast media are also limited in the context they can provide to news stories. It is difficult to get a full picture of complex events. Ask yourself how you can add to existing stories, provide much-needed context or shed light on a specific angle.

Much is made by online editors of the ‘fact’ that users won’t scroll. As newspapers do, they refer to text ‘below the fold’, meaning the reader has to scroll the page in order to read on. It is a concern that is overdone. Blogs and online magazines have proved that if you write well, users will scroll and read on. But there is some truth to the cliché: you cannot simply shovel a 4000-word piece conceived for a newspaper onto a web page and hope the reader will be captivated. Reading from a computer screen is hard on the eyes. Readers scan pages quickly and if they don’t find what they’re looking for, they leave. Mike Ward, in his book Journalism Online, suggests you use no more than half of a text written for a print publication. So, rethink the article, breaking it up into manageable pieces and bulleted lists which the web designer can use to create multiple interlinked pages. Make individual sections capable of standing alone. Ask yourself whether graphics, surveys, user polls or multimedia content might make it a more compelling online experience.

Above all, if you are going to write for the Web, be passionate. Talent is not enough. You may start out writing for poorly paid ezines where only your enthusiasm for your subject and for writing itself make the long hours and pitiful wages bearable. A love of writing and a passion for your subject shines through and it is this, just as importantly as your command of English or your store of arcane information, which will help you succeed.