Back when I slung words for a living, I spent as much time as anyone lamenting the inverted pyramid. It’s part of the newsroom culture to deride the beast as soul-destroying, not-real writing and just plain ugly.
But I’ve crossed over to the heretical side when it comes to the combination of summary lede and facts in descending order of importance. I still don’t think it’s art (although, in the hands of an artful writer it can be), but I appreciate it more and more for its simplicity.
Because we’re immersed in a flow of information, there are times — many times in fact — when, as a reader, what I want are the facts, quickly and compactly. I don’t care about setting, atmosphere or even emotion. It’s the who, what, when and where that matter most in much of the news. With an inverted pyramid story, I can get that and move on.
This doesn’t mean I don’t want thoughtful analysis, immersive journalism, well-wrought turns of phrase. It also doesn’t mean that I want a web full of inverted pyramid stories, any more than I want a web filled with narrative journalism (which often reads as contrived) or any of the other possible forms for storytelling.
As people increasingly seek out news, and as the concept of single source or single authority gets increasingly weak, the need to hook us with clever ledes or writing tricks goes away, and the value of quick, compact, well-presented basic information increases, at least when it comes to a lot of what we’ve traditionally defined as news.
The inverted pyramid, it runs out, isn’t the devil’s spawn after all. It’s just another tool for storytelling and one that I think editors and reporters may need to spend a little more time exploring.
Tags: inverted_pyramid, journalism, writing
Really good post. My news reporting professor told me once, the means of disseminating news have changed but the process of reporting it stays the same
[...] Notes from a Teacher – Appreciating the inverted pyramid "As people increasingly seek out news, and as the concept of single source or single authority gets increasingly weak, the need to hook us with clever ledes or writing tricks goes away, and the value of quick, compact, well-presented basic information increases, at least when it comes to a lot of what we’ve traditionally defined as news." (tags: writing journalism online) [...]
[...] Canadian J-School Prof. Mark Hamilton writes that in the web era we seriously need to revisit the inverted pyramid with our students. I agree. Web news is all about getting the most information in the quickest [...]
I think you are 100% correct Mark.
In my own field (video) the lesson is even more cogent. Text is non-linear – you can scan back and forth intelligently and reliably – not so with a linear medium like video. I cringe when I hear journalism educators recommending techniques (story arc, sequencing etc) derived from film-making for use in online video.
To be sure the techniques still work fine and unfortunately they will win awards – but building to a carefully-crafted climax has limited value when 95% of the audience is likely to click out in the first few minutes.