How to understand the "readability" of an article?
One: It may be written in an interesting way, captivating the reader as a form of leisure entertainment; or it may be highly practical, providing specific guidance for work or life; or it may feature novel events that satisfy basic desires for novelty; or it may be philosophical, offering enlightenment and reflection; or it may have beautiful prose with aesthetic value...
I believe that readability can be summed up in one sentence: the article itself has value, and the reader gains something from reading it, making the effort worthwhile. The readability we advocate should be positive, healthy, and inspiring.
New Writing Style: Focus on the readability of the article
The readership and market-oriented nature of the Car Friend Newspaper dictate that overly serious, rigid, and highly specialized articles are not suitable for publication. Even if the articles involve complex principles or profound knowledge, they should be simplified as much as possible for Car Friend Newspaper, even made "user-friendly" or entertaining and humorous. A stern and overly profound tone will not attract readers and is indeed repulsive. Therefore, implementing a new writing style is crucial to enhancing the readability of Car Friend Newspaper.
Car Friend Newspaper is not an official organ newspaper. Its reporting and sourcing fields are extremely broad, and its editorial team is predominantly young, which are all advantageous factors for realizing this new writing style.
"To translate, distill, divide, and summarize" are the prerequisites for achieving accessible and readable articles. Short sentences, short paragraphs, and short articles are also quick ways to improve readability.
To make the manuscript "hook" the reader and encourage them to read willingly, editors must always keep the reader in mind.
When selecting manuscripts, one should "think from the reader's perspective," standing in the reader's shoes and using their needs as the benchmark for choosing manuscripts. At the same time, editorial techniques should be used to strive to improve the quality of the manuscript.
When revising manuscripts, first, the most newsworthy information should be "extracted" to capture the reader's attention. Second, the "ease of reading" of the article should be enhanced to stimulate the reader's interest in reading. During editing, every method should be employed to facilitate the reader's reading experience. For example, when editing longer articles, a summary-style introduction can be added at the beginning of the article to enhance the guiding function and reading interest. Additionally, subheadings can be added to the article.
News Planning: The Key to Enhancing Readability
In journalism, there is a saying: "News is a fragile commodity" and "Today's news is tomorrow's history." Simple news reports are fragile and have limited development space, whereas news planning is different. News planning involves collective creation, pooling wisdom to uncover valuable gems and fresh insights from seemingly unremarkable news leads. Moreover, it effectively expands and utilizes news resources, allowing for keen observations of current facts, recollections of past histories, and predictions of the future, finding trends between the past, present, and future, thereby expanding the temporal and spatial scope of news reports and enhancing the vitality of news.
News planning can be divided into broad and narrow senses. Broadly speaking, news planning includes both media self-planning and news report planning. In the narrow sense, news planning specifically refers to the planning and organization of news reports, which includes determining the topics for each stage and planning the news reporting activities, i.e., thinking and imagining about what to report and how to report it. It is a creative design, command, and control by the news agency for a period or a special topic's coverage. The purpose is to fully excavate the news value of objective matters, choose the most appropriate timing, and use the most appropriate methods to launch the report to achieve the expected communication effect.
News report planning is a continuous process that unfolds over time and is more frequently implemented in daily work than media planning. In a certain sense, news report planning is an extension and concretization of media positioning. News report planning plays a vital role in enhancing the readability and improving the quality of newspapers, especially weekly newspapers.
A seasoned journalist once said: "Today, the concept of exclusive news has undergone profound changes. Exclusive news no longer merely means capturing the first moment or location; it also implies unique perspectives, unique methods, and striving to uncover deeper news facts regarding the same news event than others, articulating new viewpoints and ideas. Especially, attention should be paid to the unknown causes, reasons, and trends behind the known facts of readers. Journalists can employ techniques such as analogy, metaphor, data analysis, etc., and use unique methods to explain events." These words highlight the necessity and significance of news planning.
Through news report planning, the news value of facts can be fully excavated and highlighted, utilizing reporting methods to achieve better communication effects. Without planning, passively organizing content based on submissions, the entire report would appear aimless, scattered, and mediocre, lacking order and impact.
So, how should weekly newspapers conduct news report planning?
Firstly, they should not overly focus on exclusive news but instead aim for reports that withstand the test of time compared to daily newspapers. This requires comprehensive consideration of the depth and breadth of the news, the quality of text and images, and the effective combination of text and images.
Secondly, attention should be given to choosing the most appropriate timing and using the most appropriate methods to launch the report.
Thirdly, depending on the level of attention the report content receives, the appropriate scale and rhythm of the report should be chosen.
Lastly, various editorial techniques should be skillfully applied to implement "composite reporting" and strengthen the reporting effect (this method is simple and easy to learn and apply). That is:
Grouping similar items - combining several manuscripts of the same type or form within the same timeframe. This method allows the articles on the page to be orderly divided, clear in structure. Meanwhile, these articles often form their own independent units on the page, making it convenient for readers to read.
Thematic grouping - forming a cluster of multiple manuscripts under the same theme with different angles and focuses, gathered under one theme, such as subdivided manuscripts of important thematic reports, multi-directional interpretations of major news events, etc. The advantage of thematic grouping is that it facilitates readers' reading and understanding. Readers do not need to read large blocks of text to obtain information but can grasp most of the news facts by reading the titles, making reading more relaxed and easier to understand and remember the content.
Relevant grouping - forming clusters of manuscripts with internal logical connections, guiding readers to read and indirectly conveying editorial concepts. The advantage of relevant grouping lies in the mutual supplementation and corroboration between manuscripts, transforming single-direction news information into multi-directional, increasing the breadth and depth of news information. In such combinations, the most important aspect is expanding the connotation of news information, including accompanying relevant manuscripts such as opinions, tips, background, links, etc.
The selection of themes for news report planning, setting the scale of reporting, selecting interview subjects, determining reporting methods, and preparing background materials, etc., are all inherent components of news report planning and will not be elaborated here.
People and Stories: Necessary Pathways to Enhance Readability
Salt is considered the king of flavors in a chef’s eyes. In the eyes of media professionals, people and stories should become the "salt" for creating a great readability feast. Not only are they indispensable, but the timing, method, and amount of addition are all worth exploring.
Professor Li Xiguang of Tsinghua University's International Communication Research Center said, "Journalism teaches the art of finding and writing stories. The foundation and core of journalism is the art and science of storytelling."
American journalist Franklin, who won the Pulitzer Prize, also said, "Writing news with a storytelling approach means using dialogue, descriptions, and scene settings to vividly depict the plot and details of events, highlighting the exciting and dramatic stories hidden within the events."
An article in the China Press once stated, "‘Storytelling journalism’ is a method increasingly used in news gathering and writing. This method enhances the objectivity and readability of news reports, filling them with fun and human warmth, providing a new thought and method for news writing."
Where there are people, there are stories, and telling stories cannot be separated from people.
News that tells stories usually pays close attention to characters' actions and speech, the details of events, and environmental imagery, focusing on mining elements of humanity and sentimentality in news facts, describing people's living conditions, capturing vivid and lifelike scenarios, and showcasing the truth, goodness, and beauty of humanity, thus increasing the readability and appeal of news and enhancing the effectiveness of news dissemination.
The currently popular "Wall Street Journal style" is about storytelling, with a clear structure and distinct layers, excelling in visualizing and imaging news, effectively transforming dry and monotonous reporting into vivid and lively accounts. Classic works in journalism like Edgar Snow's "Red Star Over China" and Fan Changjiang's "China's Northwest Corner" are famous examples of storytelling. Many media outlets today also have columns dedicated to "News Stories."
Telling stories can engage readers' interest in news, not just for small topics or specific events but also for major topics and comprehensive reports where storytelling can be equally effective.
The Wall Street Journal is a master of storytelling. Using storytelling techniques to open articles is a distinctive characteristic of the Wall Street Journal, focusing on readability and attraction, avoiding the seriousness and rigidity of in-depth news, and consistently viewing societal changes through small yet significant perspectives.
It is evident that newspapers advocating and employing storytelling in news writing and publishing more story-based articles align with readers' psychological preferences, quickly enhancing the newspaper's readability and achieving good communication effects.
Good Use of Pictures: Pictures Are a Newspaper's "Eyes"
As competition intensifies, newspapers must fully exploit and reinforce their selling points to attract readers and secure market share, and pictures (which can be either news photos or decorative images) are the best "selling point" for newspapers.
"A picture is worth a thousand words." The advantage of news photos lies in their ability to convey more vivid imagery, greater authenticity, and stronger direct emotional impact, capturing readers' attention visually and psychologically, thereby enhancing the efficiency of news information dissemination.
For layouts, pictures play an irreplaceable role, whether highlighting key points, complementing text, or adjusting the density and balance of layout structures, etc. Some cite foreign newspaper layout examples, pointing out that news photos are the "pride of heaven" in international newspapers, with front-page stories always accompanied by photos, reflecting the demands of the era and readers.
Nowadays, news photos have become a powerful tool in the competition among market-oriented newspapers, permeating all areas of news reporting. Reading newspapers has transformed into "reading pictures," leading some to exclaim that we have entered the "era of pictorial reading," while others even call for photojournalism to take center stage on newspapers, urging editors to center their news pages around pictures...
Emphasizing "equal importance of text and images" in layout editing represents progress in meeting reader demand. What truly needs exploration is how to better integrate text and images to improve reporting standards and meet the challenges of the times. "Equal importance of text and images" is a broad concept emphasizing the importance of pictures, but in actual newspaper operations, the principle of "using images where appropriate and text where necessary" or "integrating text and images" should be followed.
"Equal importance of text and images" is relative to "favoring text over images." The crux of "favoring text over images" lies in "lightening images"—underestimating the use of pictures to represent news. "Valuing images means valuing visual news," not simply using more images for decoration, embellishment, or filling space.
Excellent news photos are concise and immediately understandable, significantly increasing the speed and efficiency of news information dissemination. They break language barriers, adapting to the reading needs of modern fast-paced life.
It is no exaggeration to say that picture news is the bright window attracting readers to modern newspapers, being the "eyes" of a newspaper.
Picture news, to a certain extent, determines the readability of a newspaper. However, the status and role of picture news in newspapers depend on its size. The visual impact of pictures depends on the strength of their news value and the amount of news information they contain. When selecting news photos, those with high news value and abundant news information should be prioritized. The number of photos used depends on the amount of news information contained.
Moreover, in selecting and applying pictures, one should avoid formalism. Both quantity and quality matter, with quality being the key. Quantity alone does not equate to "importance," nor does less mean "negligence," and it is incorrect to assume that more photos on a newspaper equal better quality. There is a standard here that must be observed when arranging layouts. Among a group of pictures or the few single-frame pictures on a page, there will inevitably be primary and secondary ones, not all of equal weight. Editors must clearly recognize and judge which picture carries more weight.
Additionally, the positional relationship between pictures and text must be handled well in layout design. High-news-content, important, and visually impactful pictures should be prominently placed. Poor-quality pictures should be firmly excluded from the layout, without compromise or concession.
A good news photo not only adds infinite charm to the layout but also leaves a deep impression on readers. Some newspapers particularly emphasize using photos to enhance the visual impact of their layouts, often using super-sized photos. However, some newspapers select photos solely based on sensory stimulation, regardless of the content or quality of the photo, and use this as the criterion for enlarging photos. For instance, some newspapers publish large photos of corpses, evoking heavy emotions, while others unnecessarily enlarge non-news-related pictures to fill space, practices that are undesirable.
News photos can make newspapers appear versatile, intuitive, and credible. Nowadays, whether domestic or international newspapers, "equal importance of text and images" has become a consensus. Moreover, the quality and quantity of picture usage serve as important criteria for evaluating layout quality.
Innovative Layouts: Meeting Readers' Demands for "First Impressions"
The "first impression" a layout or newspaper gives to readers is largely conveyed through layout design elements such as color, emphasis, density, and coordination. The visual effect of the layout directly determines whether readers will like it.
The quality and quantity of a newspaper are composed of multiple factors. Besides the editor's selection and modification of manuscripts, whether the layout design is meticulously crafted is also a crucial factor determining the quality of the newspaper. The elements constituting layout language include characters, images, lines, colors, etc., which form the physical space of the layout, as well as the space, arrangement, structure, and variations in the layout. As readers become increasingly demanding of a newspaper's "first impression," how to cleverly utilize various layout languages to make the newspaper layout eye-catching, novel, and easy to read has become a topic that newspapers must give sufficient attention.
Layout is the carrier of content, and its role is to reinforce and amplify the content. The purpose of layout design is to attract readers, facilitate reading, and enhance market competitiveness.
Layout language is the expression of a newspaper's personality, a symbol of its brand, and a representation of its image. It is the external manifestation of the newspaper's content but is not a passive reflection of the content; rather, it is an active response to the content. As a form of expression, layout language has relative independence but is inseparable from the content, not only playing a significant guiding role in readers' reading but also directly affecting the newspaper's propaganda effect.
Layout language is an art of aesthetics. Its deeper meaning lies in using it to express a culture, an atmosphere, a pursuit... A successful newspaper treats the newspaper as a piece of art, not only pursuing perfection in details and elegance in tone but also valuing the overall harmony and appropriateness of its style.
I believe that a successful layout should, in terms of content, first select top stories according to the principle of "proximity" without being confined to any particular format. Secondly, a layout should strive to select a strong, uniquely conceived news photo. Thirdly, attention should be paid to editorial quality, striving to achieve "startling expressions." Special attention should be given to headline creation, striving to overcome generalizations, blandness, sloganization, and obscurity.
In terms of form, attention should be paid to layout design, striving to achieve a harmonious blend of text and images, reasonably utilizing lines, and ensuring a visually appealing and grand design. Observing the domestic press, the majority of newspapers with strong market competitiveness or those well-regarded by readers have a layout style that fully embodies the newspaper's character. For example, the Beijing Youth Daily, which uses black and white art to create bold and striking visuals, and the Beijing News, which exudes elegance and cultural sophistication, are all worthy models to emulate.