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How much do readers really understand?

The answer: it varies. The problem is it varies a lot.

I was in the middle of writing a guide on writing a guide for online news content (how meta) when this came across the radar:

The editor of the Greensboro N.C. paper spent time interviewing loyal, 7-day subscribers to the paper last week. More than one reader confused letters to the editor with editorials:

Occasionally, readers mistakenly assumed that letters to the editor reflected the paper’s position. One person said that our editorial on the Imus statement showed our liberal bias. (We’ve taken no such position.) Another said our constant anti-war editorials did that, too. (The editorial board, embracing the importance of editorials on local issues, has rarely written about the war.)

Newspapers have some explaining to do.

Read the whole post, “Changing (and not changing) with the times”.

Popularity: 82% [?]

Posted in Industry, Journalism, News Orgs, Observations, Print, Readers, Transparency.

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Continuing the Discussion

  1. A guide for writing a guide to the content on a news site : Joe Think » Online News Blog Archive linked to this post on April 17, 2007

    [...] Joe Think: Tales about relevance, context, storytelling, and local journalism « How much do readers really understand? [...]

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