The other sides of Who, What, Why, Where, When, (and How)

I have been talking to some smart people about ‘digital editing’ — trying to formulate a viewpoint on what that looks like in newsrooms and within media organizations now and moving forward.

Given I see through a Product lens, I expected my perspective would be divergent from the norm. But not so much. The values and skills of ‘traditional’ editing obviously have not changed. Much like everything else in the newsroom, we have just added complexity.

Publishing journalism now involves multiple new considerations— audience, platform, cadence, analytics — all related to how do we publish and measure more than what stories do we tell.

So, if you turn the original ‘Who, What, Where, When, Why & How’ around to face our audience and distribution tactics, it can serve double duty:

WHO is the audience
WHAT is the story
WHERE are you distributing
WHEN are you publishing
WHY will people read this
HOW are you measuring impact?

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As a P.S. — On Twitter Josh Stearns suggests a tweak in the framework:

Audience:
WHO are your communities
WHAT do they want to know
WHERE are you connecting with them
WHEN do they need it
WHY will people read this
HOW do you know?

That is a fantastic edit so I am thinking there are three legs — Journalism, Audience, Publishing so my original list may benefit from a refocusing on Publishing/Revenue while Josh’s is perfect for Audience as I noted with the label above his list. This also turns the ‘two W’s’ into three — so ‘WWW.’ I am sure we can work with that.

This could use a bit more thought — but first draft:

Publishing:
WHO is the target audience
WHAT is the strategy
WHERE are you distributing
WHEN are you publishing
WHY will readers engage
HOW are you measuring impact?

Also published to Medium: https://medium.com/media-stack/digital-editing-means-doubling-your-ws-f24381151048