Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Forget the digital doomsayers, said Jill Abramson. “Long-form narrative is not only alive but dancing to new music.”Other prominent journalists echoed The New York Times managing editor’s optimism about thriving in a Twitter age at Boston University’s annual narrative journalism conference last weekend.Abramson said devices like tablets and iPads give long-form narrative new ways to reach new audiences.

She said her paper focuses on integrated storytelling in series like “A Year At War,” with multimedia “freshening” the story by letting readers “see, feel and almost taste” soldiers’ and families’ experiences.She added that new tools can’t trump journalism basics. Wary of “narrow specialists,” she worries that journalism schools’ new technology training may detract from traditional shoe leather reporting values....

The Pulitzer Prize for breaking news tends to go to a massive team effort, often one in which a dozen or more reporters feed material to one, two or even three writers, who pull together the main story. Papers like The New York Times and L.A. Times used to call this the “swarm” approach to breaking news. Send a ton of reporters into the field. Make sure nothing is missed. Put your best writers on the story.

That’s what makes “Veteran Kills 12 in Mad Rampage on Camden Street,” Meyer Berger’s 1949 story of a mass shooting, so remarkable. The swarm was one guy: Berger....

A Sunday morning tweet from NYU’s Jay Rosenprovoked a conversation about why journalists call the opening of a story a “lede.”

Jennifer Connic, a social media producer at NJ.com, tweeted, “I kind of like lede still. I can’t describe why, but I do. Maybe it’s my newspaper roots.” Steve Buttry responded, “I don’t think you should spell it ‘lede’ unless you can remember how molten lead smells. I can, and I don’t...”