This morning in the train, I just thought about how web writing is so different from print journalism.
Let me quickly hash out the contrasts:
Editing. After six years in print, I came to realise what my strengths and weaknesses are and sub-editing or copy-editing (checking the content for errors and inconsistencies, plus sprucing it up to be more attractive and readable) is not one of them.
In my last job, I was an assistant editor so this was an essential part of my work. I remember having sleepless nights over an awkward phrase or a stray comma or a plain headline. Once it’s published, it’s there for posterity and a constant reminder of what went wrong if it did. It’s important and some people make a great living out of it but I don’t want to make it my career.
With the web, if there are any small mistakes, just dive back in, re-jig it, and press submit.
Headlines. In print media, headlines are very subjective. Sure, you should always follow the rule of thumb that it should be relevant to your body text. But the reality is, you are writing for your editors who have a certain style they approve. If you don’t get this, expect endless mocking and correction.
On the Internet, you need to optimize your headers for the search engines. What does this mean? You need to have direct headlines so the search engines can easily pick up on what your content is about. Most blogging platforms will use the words in your header to form the URL and search engines crawl content according to links. In other words, search engines “read” links and what’s in them.
But this brings in the debate of “Will SEO kill creative copy?” Check out The New York Times’ article on this issue. I think this is inevitable as things move so fast on the Internet — what’s this minute’s news is already yesterday’s news, you don’t have time to waffle over that snazzy one-liner. You’ve got to be clever and quick in creating eye-catching headlines in a search-engine friendly way.
News point. But, having said how fast the virtual world works, it’s easy to find news points (the news or trend your article is based on) — you read it in a news wire in the morning, and boom, your article can be out in the afternoon. In magazines, weeklies work at least two weeks ahead, monthlies three months in advance and dailies work on a weekly story roster. An ex-colleague who transitioned from a newspaper to a magazine said she found writing for a monthly rag the most stressful because you have to anticipate trends three months in advance.
Gone are the days of frantically leafing through foreign magazines from the U.S. and Europe (the trends there tend to take a few months to reach Asia) to steal ideas that will impress the editor.
For web writing, you’re writing for Google, a faceless, mysterious entity who is probably more predictable than certain editors (especially those fueled on caffeine and PMS).
For print, you work your ass off for one single paycheck per month but you get lovely rewards like a trip to the Maldives and designer perfume (but you have to write about it).
The perk in web writing? If you play your SEO cards right, your earnings can exponentially increase and the hell you went through would be more than worth it.
I rest my case.
