Wednesday, March 16, 2011

AP’s new curveball: Wire service will tell baseball stories two ways to help cost-cutting clients for road games » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Future of Journalism

A cornerstone of old media admits that the internet echo chamber must be acknowledged, and its denizens kept happy, even when they read their local newspaper.  (Hey, it’s only sports, right?)

Say the Red Sox beat the Royals at Fenway. The lede of a traditional AP game story would focus on the Sox. But the hometown version for Kansas City AP clients would put the emphasis on the other dugout: “The Kansas City Royals continued a six-game losing streak last night, falling to the Boston Red Sox 6-2…”

A good editor can handle a basic rewrite in 10 minutes, Petrak said — but those minutes are precious when it’s 12:20 a.m. and the paper has to be on the lawn at 6. Sometimes, if there isn’t time, an AP story is printed without editing, “and the readers aren’t getting what they want,” he said

AP’s new curveball: Wire service will tell baseball stories two ways to help cost-cutting clients for road games » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Future of Journalism

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