Digital media has become more important as the Internet has expanded and improved in a short span of time. Nearly everyone has had to adapt to the way that information is now stored and presented online and this new frontier has created a window of opportunity for people to explore different ways to present stories online. Newspaper companies are no exception. With newspaper staffs shrinking and companies racing to find out how to use the Internet to complement or overtake the traditional print newspaper, digital media is an exciting realm for print journalists. Michelle Kearns, a Fellow for the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism at Ohio State and reporter for the Buffalo News, is one such person who has studied the ways in which information can be presented in innovative ways. "Writing online is becoming more interesting, more often, and less formulaic to soften and attract readers online," Kearns said. Print news articles are usually straight to the point and follow a set blueprint. Because of the Web, however, new forms of writing are being explored everyday. Kearns first began teaching these writing techniques in Accra, the capital of the Republic of Ghana. She used a series of articles from the Washington Post to teach a group of journalists in the country. The articles were very short and written in a literary journalism style. "I thought this would be a fun way to experiment with something different, just like the U.S. is trying things different," Kearns said. "Short form forces people to compose a story in a few paragraphs and write in an engaging way while not being intimidated." After putting together a grant proposal, Kearns decided to test some new ways of writing on other groups, including some OSU writing classes. "My idea was initially of interest to writers but everyone needs to know how to write to post it online," Kearns said. "The idea is to get anyone to loosen up; sometimes people get overwhelmed by it." The research Kearns has accumulated from her test classes has been a success and she will soon be sharing it with everyone. "I plan to have multimedia and an article finished by winter for presentation," Kearns said. For more information about Michelle Kearns and the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism you can visit their site at kiplingerprogram.org.
Eden Gaskill can be reached at gaskill.11@osu.edu.
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