Do you want a better publication? Build your articles a house.
This weekend, I swung by Campus Progress’s Washington D.C. office for their annual Journalism Training Summit as part of the Dartmouth Free Press.
Although the timing could have been better, and it would have been nice to not have been the only one in my publication here, overall, I’ve gained a lot that I feel I can take back to Dartmouth.
On the 10th Floor of the building housing the Center for American Progress, we had seminars about building a publications staff, how to take good photos, what really makes journalism impactful, and a score of other topics. The most important piece that I took away from here for the DFP, though, is the concept of architecture in a publication.
The DFP has had various challenges with finding the correct content to cover. We’ve also found that many of our stated goals have not lined up perfectly with our actual articles.
Architecture, or creating “homes” for your content as Bret Begun from Newsweek describes it, could helps us, and your publication, greatly.
The idea behind architecture is that each part of your publication is preset with a certain theme or type of article that fills a certain “section.” Although this sounds like it limits your publication’s freedom, in reality, it helps focus your editors’ ideas.
It’s like design—in theory, you can create “anything.” But to create a real, useful product, you must have boundaries and specifications to keep you from wandering aimlessly forever.
The power of architecture will help the DFP more quickly generate ideas, work in a more focused manner, and ultimately become more efficient as a whole.
Even setting aside everything else that’s been covered during this conference, the idea of architecture alone will make all of our journalistic endeavors more impactful.
Will the idea of architecture help your publication too, or do you feel that the restrictions outweight architecture’s focus? Feel free to comment and share your thoughts.
