October 23, 2015
Cultivating Connections: Writing for the Modern Audience
In a capitalistic world, working for a news website is about increasing online traffic—and thus profit—rather than informing citizens about current events, issues, and important figures in the world. The average modern audience consumes news in a brief, straightforward manner. Popular news websites thrive using the blog post formula, which includes short paragraphs enhanced with audiovisual material. This past summer, Mariza Mathea worked for the English edition of an online news platform called enikos.gr based in Athens, Greece. She translated articles from Greek to English, followed Twitter for up-to-date news, tracked events online, searched for audiovisual material to support stories, and condensed larger articles into more accessible forms. Her experience taught her that in modern news, quantity is more important than quality, and that catchy titles that slightly exaggerate reality can attract more viewers. This presentation aims to discuss how the modern audience receives news, and the fact that the purpose of mass media is now the mass production of news rather than the conveyance of substantial information.
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