Managing longform
and other techniques
How editors and developers can work together
Content Strategy Forum Conference 2014
Nico Brünjes
DIE ZEIT
- estimated 1946
- 500.000 copies sold per week
ZEIT ONLINE
ZEIT MAGAZIN ONLINE
Upcoming…
- some longform history
- what makes a longform
- the longform projects of ZEIT ONLINE
- about editors and developers
- …
Longform history
Art Directed Blogging
There is some criticism though we will meet again later…
Sadly, many designers don’t understand the difference between design and art direction; sadder still, many art directors don’t either: Art direction gives substance to design. Art direction adds humanity to design.
Well designed?
Snowfall
over 2.9 million visitors in the six days of launch
Peabody Award
Purlitzer Price
What happened after snow fall?
Snowfalling…
Criticism
And as you’ve probably guessed, I didn’t read “Snow Fall,” either. I’ve tried to get through it a half dozen times, but every time I found it just too big—too long, too visually distracting, too overproduced. […] With its constantly intercutting videos, its unreadability almost feels intentional. Does the Times even care if I read the story? Maybe you’re just supposed to scroll and watch the videos?
Mission accomplished?
What makes a longform?
From the technical viewpoint…
lean header
very lean header
animated backgrounds
dropcaps
fixed background
local navigation
slideshows
infographic
blockquotes
inline video
…and responsive webdesign.
Responsive web design (RWD) is a web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from mobile phones to desktop computer monitors).
The problems
- huge amounts of text
- lot of code
- text and design don't match
- feature…ism
Introducing…
Editors
- highly specialised in producing text
- short attention span
- caught in the daily process
- organiszed in departments (politics, germany, econnomy, science etc.)
Developers
- organized in teams
- project management skills
- have tools for management
Longform @ ZEIT ONLINE
ZEIT ONLINE's approach
- core should be the reading experience
- so it's longread, not snow fall
- 1st goal is to deliver a reading experience
- text not *that* long
- large and readable fonts and lettering
- across modern platforms
- the features come in addition to the text
- never pull the user away from the text
»Leuchtturm Projekt«
- prototyping, fast execution
- work in one team
- test new technics
- develop for cms integration
CMS
- all (millions of) articles are stored in a huge content storage
- in XML format
- the CMS is capable of editing these files and publish them to the web servers
- on the web server xml is transformed with XSLT into html
- cached, but nearly in real time
build longform beside the content management system
Managing the project
100 Jahre Tour de France
Karl-Marx-Allee
Willkommen in Deutschland
ZEIT MAGAZIN ONLINE
- responsive webdesign
- with ads!
- built in longform
Thank you!
Presented with reveal.js.
Managing longform
By Nico Brünjes
Managing longform
How editors and developers can work together.
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