A time-saving alternative for readers?

Maybe you’ve noticed: Increasingly, stories in The News & Observer are not really stories. They’re ASFs.

“Alternative story forms” are a new trend in journalism designed to streamline communication between newspaper and reader. This information-presenting format strips excess verbiage from traditional journalism and boils information down to just the facts, ma’am. So, reports to readers now may turn up in question-and-answer format, bulleted info morsels, news presented entirely by graphic or chart, abbreviated stories that don’t leap from the front page to inside the paper, and other formats that depart from the old news story style.

Last week, you saw an example with The N&O’s coverage of President Bush’s immigration speech. Arguably the most important national story of the week, it was treated on the front page with a two-sentence summary and nine bulleted highlights of Bush’s speech. Inside were fuller stories fleshing out and reacting to the plan.

Alternative story forms are designed to address the reason that people most often give for not using newspapers: “I don’t have time to read.” The ASF is intended to make reading the paper easy, useful, even fun.

“We know readers are time-starved,” said Thad Ogburn, The N&O’s assistant metro editor. “That’s one thing we hear all the time – they want us to just give them the facts.” Ogburn is heading a committee at the paper that is putting together an ASF bible to guide editors and reporters in usage of the technique. He says the alternative form, if used properly, can convey as much as or more information than a traditional story in less space and in more digestible form.

ASFs usually are shorter than traditional stories. But lest you think newspapers are doing this out of laziness, Ogburn says the extra effort for conciseness and visual appeal often makes ASFs more work for the reporter and editor.

Andy Bechtel, an assistant journalism professor at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, teaches alternative story form to his students. A former N&O editor, Bechtel says he sees increasing use of the style among newspapers across the country as they try to broaden their appeal to readers, especially the youth market.

“This is another way to convey information to your readers,” he said. “On certain occasions this might be the best way, and other times it might not be the best way.”

The best deployment of the new tool that I’ve seen is The N&O’s treatment of college graduations. Instead of a series of long boring narratives on the speeches and every-year ceremonial trappings — usually of interest only to the grads and their families – stories are broken into digestible info nuggets such as “What the speaker said,” “Notable graduate,” “What parents were saying” and “Not mentioned” (at Duke last week: “The word, ‘lacrosse.’”)

These quick hits from the campuses, accompanied by lively art, were so popular last year that colleges were calling to make sure their ceremonies were treated the same way.

But the new style can put off readers. On April 22, The N&O took a routine advisory from the state Division of Public Health and turned it into a Q&A tutorial on whether it’s safe to eat fish caught in North Carolina waters. Sample questions: “Should I stop eating fish?” “Where does mercury come from?”

This non-story was displayed on the front page of the City/State section with a photo from a Raleigh fish market. Reader John Poteat was disappointed in the ASF treatment, calling it “only a blurb in the Metro section” that he said didn’t do justice to a serious state health advisory. (I found the package to be complete and informative, not hurt by excessive word ornamentation.)