When it comes to marketing a story, i.e. getting someone to read it, the medium is important. With a magazine you might get a cover blurb, the table of contents, a photo, a headline, a subhead, and a lede (the first one or two paragraphs). When it comes to marketing a newspaper story, it’s a photo (maybe), a headline, maybe a subhead or a kicker (which goes above the headline), and the lede.
The modern web is a different beast. You get the first 74 characters of the headline, maybe, and the lead photo, which we call a topshot. In certain situations, you might see the first couple of sentences, but that’s increasingly rare with the way search and social work. It means we’ll spend a lot of time on headlines, as we’ve covered before. It’s not unusual to have 12-14 headlines for an important story.
Almost as important is the topshot, which allows us to add some text that maybe didn’t make it into the headline. It allows us to stand out when you do a Google News search for something. Jason, in particular (and Jesus Diaz) really pioneered the grabby text headline and has continued to make our topshots, I think, the best in the automotive news sector if not news overall. Peter Vieira, our new Editorial Production Manager, has also helped us to elevate our game, taking the template that Jason laid out and expanding it.
While Peter and Jason make most of our topshots, we all follow the templates and we all sometimes find ourselves moved to create something. Here’s what happened with the very strange topshot on the story These Photos That Chrysler Left On Its Media Site Are Some Of The Most Depressing Ones In Automotive History and how we ended up with it. Is it great? I don’t think it’s great, and I’m the one who made it.
First, we opened with the headlines, but we already had a decent idea of the headline we wanted:
Then came the topshot, which Peter had an idea for:
“Hopes Were High” felt too weak, but “Stabbed in the back” was maybe too strong?
I turned the workers into ghosts! This is where I put the press release about opening up the factory in Mexico behind the workers and left the guy in the middle in. The guy in the middle is, by the way, then Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle.
Did he do fine? I sort of vaguely remembered him doing fine, but honestly, he could have been dead. He’s not, at least according to his Wikipedia page:
James Edward Doyle Jr. (born November 23, 1945) is an American attorney and politician who served as the 44th governor of Wisconsin from 2003 to 2011. In his first election to the governorship, he narrowly defeated incumbent Republican governor Scott McCallum. Although in 2002 Democrats increased their number of governorships, Doyle was the only one of them to unseat a Republican.
Prior to the governorship, Doyle served as Wisconsin Attorney General from 1991 to 2003. He is currently an attorney ‘of counsel’ in the Madison, Wisconsin office of the law firm of Foley & Lardner and serves on the corporate board of Epic Systems and Exact Sciences.[1][2]
So, yeah, he’s doing fine.
It did kind of make it look like Governor Jim Doyle betrayed them. He didn’t. He was also kind of screwed when Chrysler pulled out of the planned life extension of the Kenosha plant. But he’s doing fine now. Don’t worry about old Jim Doyle. He’s fine.
Now I made it all ghosts, although we’ve established clearly that Jim Doyle is not dead.
David then brings up the point that, yeah, we’d have been better off if Jason was around. No pressure Jason, when you’re reading this, but Jason often is able to execute on our half-baked ideas.
We didn’t spend an hour on this (we spent about 30 minutes on it) but we’d gone an hour without publishing anything else so, as sometimes happens, we just called it.
It actually did better than that, but not super well. I thought it was an interesting post. I think this was the best topshot, in retrospect:
I’m open to some better suggestions.
That guy in the picture reminds me of Joss Ackland. He starred in Pet Shop Boy’s You are always on my mind.. they were in a Ford Zephyr 6.
I also thought the ghost text was an odd choice but I read the article. Having experienced the corporate world as both a worker and executive, I have empathy for all sides: the corporate execs trying to find a safe port with a leaky boat, the workers rowing hard without knowing an iceberg is looming, and the unfortunate dude who had to go through with this ceremony knowing it was probably a farce.
So I’m a paid member but only see the non-member message when I try to read this article. Is there a way to reach tech support?
Send an email to : matt@theautopian.com
“Sir, your tool is too large.”
(all I can think, after reading comments on David’s idiotic plan)
https://www.theautopian.com/heres-my-idiotic-plan-to-drive-a-broken-240000-mile-500-toyota-minivan-1000-miles-to-save-my-ailing-coworker/comment-page-2/#comment-279093
Put me in the “that was not the best topshot” category. It felt a little clunky and for some reason I tried to read the press release in the shot to see if some key item was in there. I did find it very weird they were ghosted.
The Best is the Enemy of Good -Voltaire
If it makes you feel any better, I found it very interesting and didn’t find the topshot creepy, but it could have been plain text without any shot at all and I still would have clicked.
I generally try to be positive, but yeah, that topshot was a fail. Jason can’t come back soon enough.
I’d have done the empty factory with the 3 guys just barely recognizable superimposed over it then place it under a missing person’s flyer. Then intro it with the promise, then how after the great press they are no longer around and Noone can find them.
I like this image, can see it vividly in my head!
Thank You, What they say is true you can never get the ink out of your blood.
Hey Matt, I’ve not been able to read Member’s Only Posts, but I pay my subscription every month. Am I missing something?
We’re on it!
Thanks David, I was going to reach out on Facebook but didn’t want to be a bother. Always appreciate your help!
FWIW, I don’t think the number of minutes since you last posted should be a deciding factor for when new content goes up. I realize this post is mostly about the graphic than the text, but I would rather see 5 fully-baked Autopian stories a day than 10 half-baked.
Just publish content when you think it’s ready, and then watch the fireworks as we criticize all of your editorial/graphical judgments in the comments.
Agreed, even as a serial page-refresher.
(That said, given the frequency with which the Autopian Pit Crew highlight the desire to differ from the old site, I don’t worry too much about it; even when stuff like embedded video is discussed in front of us, it’s with transparency and an abundance of caution. It’s evident that Quality trumps Quality at every level.)
Agreed but I wouldn’t mind an email when a new story is available. I realize it might be annoying to some but since moving West and getting on PST I often come just to find yesterday’s stories.
Get an RSS reader (some are free) and you can subscribe to the RSS feed. RSS is not as dead as people think it is.
It was the original headline that drove me to click on and read that article, I’m not sure if the current headline would or not. The image wasn’t that important in my decision for this particular article but I like the ghost people version.
That said, I do agree that every article needs an image. This is an argument I’ve had with the editorial department at my current employment for over a decade now. My pleas that our articles don’t just live on the homepage of our site and that they should also be shared on social where an image is basically mandatory has fallen on deaf ears.
Agreed I was in newspapers circulation for 25 years. You had limited space, a half page above the fold and a set amount of pages. With online journalism every story can post like the days headline. But some sites still design for print.
Our editors just kept focusing on how the articles looked on our homepage. The ones in the main section they would give images but smaller stories in the sidebar were headline only so they didn’t understand the need for an image and they were all “too busy to look for a relevant image”. Just couldn’t convince them that the articles will also be seen elsewhere on the web.
Yes new technology being run by old style.
I’m assuming with the odd pic, “gut wrenching” was too on the nose or possibly seeming to suggest some sort of autopian New Years resolution fitness rant?
Could have gone with ‘heart-wrenching’ and folks would click to see graphic photos of Jason’s bloody chest cavity jammed open with a couple of jack stands.
Right? I don’t remember even a single line about the dangers of losing vital fluid pressure either.
That’s pretty good