Quotes, RSS Feeds, Story Timelines

So I was checking up on the latest presidential candidate news and looking at the blog and I realized...oh dear, my "Quotes" entry from last week is missing! My avid readers...they were expecting it! The disappointment!

I don't know what happened...I blame Safari. People are blaming it for everything else blog-related.

This is what I remember...I don't have the book with me so this won't be too in depth...

1. Quotes are good when they personalize, add credibility to, or just spice-up your story.

2. You should quote colloquialisms unless they unfairly represent the source (who might speak in a dialect that looks unflattering in print).

3. I remember that the "problems with quotes" section was a lot bigger than the "benefits of quotes" section. I also remember the solution to every quote problem was to quote in a way that didn't misrepresent the reader or show bias. I feel like the "problems with quotes" section could have been a lot shorter if they had just said that once.

4. I learned a lot about attribution:
- Only attribute at the beginning of a quote when direct quotes from two different speakers follow one another.
- Put the noun or pronoun before the verb, unless the source has a long title:
"I like that," the sheriff said.
"I like that, too," said Bill Sawyer, direct of public relations for the Madeup Institute.
- Only use present tense attribution in feature writing:
"I like being president of the PTA," she says.

I like quotes. My only problem is that I like to interview people. Usually I interview people longer than I have to. I ask a lot of questions. Sometimes they don't even apply to what I'm writing about. So what I'm left with is a bunch of information, and a decent amount of quotable information. I want to use it all -- anything I got out of a source with my super amazing interviewing skills should be in print...right?

I usually only need one or two quotes from an individual. That means I have to choose what does and what does not make it into the story. I'm very indecisive. I can spend a good twenty minutes weighing the pros and cons of using one quote over another. It makes for slow goings.


RSS FEEDS: Before reading the Poynter Institute's E-Tidbit on RSS feeds, I really wasn't sure what these things were. I love the concept. National and metropolitan newspapers and broadcast news programs deliver the day-to-day, local, national and world news. RSS feeds, however, don't have to collect information based on its timeliness or geographic relevance -- stories are packaged together according to content. Thus, individuals subscribing to RSS feeds aren't necessarily getting what journalists think they need to know, but what the individual actually wants to read up on.

My only beef with the article is that I still don't know what "RSS" stands for.


USING A TIMELINE TO TELL A STORY: The El Pais Al Qaeda timeline was really cool. It was a great expample of how online journalism allows a reporter to show the story rather than tell it. My only question is -- who developed that package? Did some web guy take a bunch of old newspaper reports on Al Qaeda attacks and piece them together in that timeline? Did an editor come up with the timeline idea, tell a web guy to make the animation and then tell a reporter to do research on Al Qaeda attacks? Did an online journalist do it all?

I'm definitely interested in online journalism, I just don't quite understand how it works.