Minor Identity Crisis at The Observer Blog
Context is crucial in online media, especially in weblogs. Readers should never have to wonder, even for an instant, who authored a posting. Momentary confusion or hesitation can easily translate into lost online readers.
Given that, perhaps the weblog associated with the Guardian's Sunday Observer paper might want to tweak the format for its postings and feeds.
Here's what I mean -- check out this June 12 Observer blog posting: Google "soul searches" over censorship.
The dateline for that posting reads: "By Observer / International 12:01am." That led me to believe that this was a staff-written post. So I got very interested when I read the lead: "Our irrepressible.info campaign, to combat internet repression has continued to gather pace and support this last fortnight."
"Cool!" I thought, impressed that a news organization would launch such a campaign.
In the next paragraph, however, I started getting confused: "Since the campaign launched in The Observer two weeks ago, over 21,000 people have now gone online and signed our pledge for internet freedom, writes Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International."
Reading further, my confusion deepened as I encountered lines such as, "At Amnesty we believe there is much that Internet companies can do in China and elsewhere to protect human rights." (That was not presented as a quote in the posting, but as a direct editorial statement.)
"Hmmmm..." I wondered. "So whose campaign is this, the Observer's or Amnesty's?"
The link to irrepressible.info leads to a site that says it's "an Amnesty International Campaign" and that the campaign is supported by the Observer. The "launched" link leads to this special reports page on the Observer site, where it says: "Some 45 years after an Observer article launched Amnesty, The Observer and Amnesty International have teamed up again to campaign against a new threat to our freedom -- Internet repression."
Interesting! I had no idea of the close historical connection between the Observer and Amnesty. Scrolling down that page, I found this announcement of the campaign, which supplied more current context.
OK, finally it became clear to me: irrepressible.info is a partnership campaign between the Observer and Amnesty International -- and a very intriguing effort worth checking out, in my opinion. It struck me as odd for a news organization to partner so closely with an advocacy group, but in this case the two organizations' deeply intertwined historical roots made this partnership understandable.
Still, I expected to see, maybe at the bottom of the "soul searching" blog posting, a note clarifying who actually wrote the article -- or at least indicating that it was written by staff at Amnesty, not the Observer. But no, to all appearances this is presented as an Observer-authored item.
Lesson: You never know where your online audience is coming from, and what background or context they have. If you're presenting any content that might possibly cause a newcomer to stop and wonder, or perhaps question your intentions or credibility, it helps to clarify such issues with every posting. If I'd been less intrigued or more rushed, I wouldn't have bothered clicking around to figure out this puzzle.
In this case the Observer blog could have included a box at the top of the right-hand sidebar briefly clarifying the partnership nature of the campaign. They also could have modified the byline to say something like "By Amnesty International for the Observer." The site's feed also should clearly indicate authorship of the posting, and the posting itself could be reworded to clarify the relationship.
Such minor tweaks can prevent confusion and thus allow readers to engage more effectively with your content. As more news organizations experiment creatively with collaborative content and projects, clarity about who's who will only grow more crucial.
