Writing for Online Audiences

Description: Getting the word out is useless if you don’t have anything interesting to say. In this session we will discuss the structural and substantive differences between scholarly writing for print and online audiences. We will discuss various methods for framing issues, uses new media such as videos and podcasts, and fundamentals of style in online writing.

• 11:27 PM: TTHEpub Welcome to the Live Blog for the writing for online audiences morning session at the 2010 Triple Helix Annual Conference at University of California, San Diego!




• 11:52 PM: Zain Pasha Live Blogging will take place on Saturday, February 20th, 2010 from 9:30 – 10:40am PST




• 2:12 PM: TTHEpub This event will start in 5 minutes.




• 2:14 PM: Zain Pasha Hey Everyone! Zain Pasha, Executive Editor in Chief, Epublishing here, I’m going to be covering this session for the most part, but for the first 5 minutes or so I will be talking so Mira Patel, Director of E-publishing at Cornell University will be blogging. Stay with us!




• 2:14 PM: Zain Pasha Nandita, CTO of TTH has gone downstairs…we’re just waiting for her to get back then we’ll get started




• 2:18 PM: Zain Pasha I wish we had some jeopardy music playing right now Just kidding, about to get started everyone




• 2:19 PM: Zain Pasha Mira, as the primary presenter, what do you think the key points are for this session? What types of things do you want to convey




• 2:20 PM: Mira Hey everyone! Mira Patel here, we’re just waiting on some people to join us. Zain will be going on soon to introduce our newest division (TTH Online) then I’ll take over to outline the goals of E-pub, what makes a successful online piece, and how future E-pub Directors can really facilitate growth at their respective chapters.




• 2:21 PM: Zain Pasha ladies and gentlemen, we are actually playing jeopardy music right now (this is Mira editing Zain’s post! My singing is so much better than the actual music)




• 2:21 PM: Mira Zain, this one’s for you: do do do do do do do, do do do do do! do do do do (that’s supposed to be jeopardy music)




• 2:21 PM: Zain Pasha and no, its not Mira’s singing.




• 2:25 PM: Zain Pasha This is Mira blogging for Zain. Zain is about to begin his blurb about E-Publishing and how much it has grown (!!) over the last year.




• 2:26 PM: Zain Pasha Zain is discussing what the purpose of E-pub is–not just about publishing online. A medium to attract a more diverse reader base and publish more timely, discursive articles to further mesh hard sciences and social sciences.




• 2:27 PM: Zain Pasha Big plus about E-pub–shorter cycles, quick turnarounds, covering events at campuses quickly and publishing information. We can also have different types of writing–op-eds, podcasts, shorter articles.




• 2:28 PM: Zain Pasha Addition of social scientific component to E-pub is key. Basic operations: publish lots of articles from chapters globally. Partnership with Global Solver at Georgetown and campus partnerships with other student organizations.




• 2:29 PM: Zain Pasha New Media is huge! Increases web presence of TTH to generate greater global recognition.




• 2:29 PM: Zain Pasha Mira has taken over, now. She’ll probably have more interesting things to say than me.




• 2:30 PM: Zain Pasha Overview: Goals of E-pub, How to achieve the goals, tips and tricks — writing dos and dont’s, piece varity, and how to start a chapter




• 2:30 PM: Zain Pasha I guess we’re going to update Strunk and White




• 2:31 PM: Zain Pasha Goals of E-pub – education, discussion and debate, interdisciplinary linkages, make an impact: keep people coming back




• 2:31 PM: Zain Pasha We basically want to be the forum for all forms of discourse




• 2:32 PM: Zain Pasha How do we achieve goals – Get peoples attention!!! Keep them hooked and Keep them coming back for more! — I love these headings




• 2:33 PM: Zain Pasha Getting Peoples’ attention: 1) Title and openings are critical, 2) Online readers want quick but enjoyable reads, 3) “Five second rule” — I always thought it was 20 seconds haha. just kidding




• 2:34 PM: Zain Pasha Keep People Hooked: 1) precision in topic choice: relevant and informative, 2) balance: quality research, 3) succinct but developed arguments — basically make sure people like what they read and think its intelligently written. Fundamentally, make sure your writers develop their voice




• 2:34 PM: Zain Pasha How to get to our goals: Variety, variety, variety!!!!




• 2:35 PM: Zain Pasha Article Structure Variety: Interviews, Debate, Op-ed, News Analysis — I also think we should aim to have new media incorporated into this process (videos etc.)




• 2:37 PM: Zain Pasha “Faster, higher, stronger” NYT article – sounds like Kanye West has become a journalist




• 2:38 PM: Zain Pasha Looking at an example of a good article style – “Never too cool for a Hard Workout”, NYT, February 17th, 2009 by John Branch — www.nytimes.com




• 2:39 PM: Zain Pasha This is genius – because they attract people into only sports, only into wellness, or both. This is a great example of integrating different kinds of content into an article. Applied to the triple helix, we can integrate science, society and law




• 2:40 PM: Zain Pasha Next article – another good example on the NYT tech blog — writer lists his own interests in terms of mobile phones –
  bits.blogs.nytimes.com




• 2:40 PM: Zain Pasha What is great about this article — (Berkeley Student) reader interaction




• 2:40 PM: Zain Pasha Jennifer Yang has just joined us, she is basically the reason we are able to have this conference – Welcome Jennifer!




• 2:41 PM: Jennifer Yang hello everyone!




• 2:42 PM: Jennifer Yang by the way, second session starts at 11:15. Zain, stay put in your room. anyone interested in hearing a bit about science policy will be in room 3209




• 2:43 PM: Zain Pasha Will do Jen.




• 2:43 PM: Zain Pasha Do you want to start an E-pub chapter? – First, email tthepub@gmail.com and we will get you started.




• 2:43 PM: Jennifer Yang did we link the articles that are being discussed?




• 2:44 PM: Jennifer Yang yes, we have a guy who is actually trying to start it up




• 2:44 PM: Jennifer Yang there are berkeley kids there right?




• 2:44 PM: Zain Pasha Discussion about starting Berkeley E-pub




• 2:45 PM: Zain Pasha Advertising in departments outside of hard sciences departments — look at social science departments, humanities




• 2:46 PM: Zain Pasha Get writers from print to take their article research and turn it into a shorter piece for TTH Online – take an objective research article and turn it into an opinion piece — or if you have two articles that disagree, get the two writers to debate each other out




• 2:47 PM: Zain Pasha Discussion of Literary cycles and how long are they




• 2:51 PM: Zain Pasha Looking at the TTH Online website.




• 2:59 PM: Zain Pasha Check it out: triplehelixblog.com




• 3:00 PM: Jennifer Yang this is my inexperience in e-pub knowledge, but how do you propose making an e-pub sector? should we have the same writers or have a whole different staff?




• 3:02 PM: Zain Pasha I think we should definitely have e-pub writers, but I think print and e-pub should be seamless. The writers for e-pub should be the same quality as those for print so they should be able to write for both.




• 3:02 PM: Mira So this workshop was a success! Contact me if you want any more information about what goes into making a new E-pub division successful: map228@cornell.edu




• 3:03 PM: Jennifer Yang quality over quantity! hahaha




• 3:03 PM: Jennifer Yang awesome work, guys




• 3:03 PM: Mira Also, Zain will be posting the slides online for anyone interested.




• 3:03 PM: Jennifer Yang Sweet~




• 3:05 PM: TTHEpub Thanks for following everyone, I’m going to post a transcript of this in 2 minutes to the TTH Online Website – triplehelixblog.com

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