Some Examples of Callouts

Callout example 1

The author avoids bubbles around the callouts and keeps the text minimalistic. Each callout has a bold title followed by regular text. Callout lines end with a filled circle rather than an arrow. This works well. I’m not sure why the author stacked all the callouts on one side of the image, except perhaps to save space.

Callout example 2

The inclusion of callout bubbles around the text makes the graphic look too busy. The callout bubble format takes the visual emphasis off the device and places it onto the callouts themselves. Callouts should be more in the visual background, not the foreground.  The writer also uses triangles formed from the callouts themselves to function as arrows. This increases the amount of visual attention placed on the callout format. With so many callouts, the callout bubble format looks clunky and cluttered.

Callout example 3

Again, boxes around the callouts draw too much visual attention to the callouts themselves. This visual attention competes with the image. The lines of the callout boxes combine with the yellow connecting lines to create a sense of busyness and clutter.

Callout example 4

Besides the obviously wrong choice of a pink font, which blends too easily in with the pink color of the house and hurts the eyes, the text is fairly minimalistic. The author here avoids arrows on callout lines as well to reduce the visual energy. The author also uses the space around the graphic rather than stacking all callouts on top of each other on one side. This works, but the loud pink font still calls too much attention to the text. A softer, quieter black font would have done a better job at minimizing the massive amount of text around this graphic. The soft gray color of the callout lines is a good choice. If the author had used pink callout lines in addition to pink text, it would have been a nightmare.

Callout example 5

Callouts are short names only here. Given the abundance of callouts, the author wisely chose a minimalistic style for the callouts, with simple callout lines that avoid even circles or arrows. The problem with this graphic is that we have no descriptions of any components, so names such as “Rotary Encoder buttons” are meaningless. The author needs to take a less comprehensive approach to describing the image. Or else the author needs to provide a reference to more information in some of the callouts.

Callout example 6

The author’s use of referential numbers will be useful for translation of this content. Geoff Hart makes this point in Integrating Text with Graphics in Procedures (Dec 2010 Intercom), but also notes that the text loses much of its power by separating itself from the visual element it describes. Geoff writes:

The primary disadvantage is that this approach separates the symbol (the number beside part of the image) from its meaning…. That increases the cognitive difficulty of using the graphic because readers must lead the task at hand (examining the graphic) to perform a secondary task (finding a number in the key to read its explanation), then must return to the image so they can ponder the relevance of that explanation.

Geoff says that as long as you don’t have to keep moving back and forth between the graphic and the explanation, this format can work all right. In these cases, the graphic would serve a referential purpose, where you need only one or two pieces of information.

Callout example 7

Clearly at some point you enter a state in which a graphic has too much text. The author should reduce the number of callouts as well as drop the borders around the callouts, which only increase their size and visual attention.

Callout example 8

The callout lines here are right angles, similar to what you might draw in Visio, with no rounded corners or arrows. While these square connectors may reduce the visual energy by giving the reader symmetry, the lines are a little hard to follow. This convention more closely aligns network diagrams and an older graphics style. The author could probably round the corners to modernize the look, or use straight lines with a soft color that doesn’t draw too much attention when crossing the image.

Callout example 9

With this graphic, the reader has to make the connection between the numbers and the callout. No callout lines connect the two at all, which increases the cognitive load to interpret the graphic. The double instances of the numbers amplifies the perceived amount of notes and callouts on this relatively simple graphic.

Callout example 10

Notice how these big blue callout formats amplify the presence of the text. The arrowheads make the callout lines look less elegant. The various slants of the callouts produce more visual busyness and gives the graphic an amateur look.

Callout example 11

The author uses yellow callout lines with black callout text. This contrast is an interesting choice. Would gray not have worked here? Against a white backdrop, the yellow lines fade out and are hard to see, so there’s a visual strain in trying to connect the callouts to the areas they point to.

Callout example 12

The callouts here are minimalistic and professional looking. Notice how the reduction in callout formatting increases the professionalism and clarity? The author also chooses a soft gray rather than a hard black for each callout line and end point — this helps reduce the focus on the callouts and places more visual attention on the image. The callout supports the image rather than dominating the image.

This minimalistic approach echoes a point Alan Porter makes in the last STC Intercom. Porter quotes one of Edward Tufte’s definitions of graphic excellence:

Graphical excellence is that which gives the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space. (The Global Language: Using symbols and icons when Delivering Technical Content, Dec 2010 Intercom.)

In other words, Tufte calls for a minimalism with graphics — express the idea in the fewest strokes, with the least ink. Leave out the noise. Jean Luc Doumont recommends the same graphic minimalism in his book Trees, maps, and theorems. In “Achieving simplicity and harmony” (p.75), Jean Luc argues that with formatting, writers should use “a healthy dose of self-restraint” instead of indulging in the many layout possibilities that desktop publishing software offers.

Callout example 13

Here the author uses rounded callout lines rather than the square connectors. The rounded/bent nature of the arrows produces more of a sense of motion. Notice how the “Cable clearance” callout has a different callout style — pinkish dotted lines, rather than blue? Presumably this is because the callout lines intersect other callout lines, and the author wants to avoid this collision, which produces visual cacophony. However, the different color of the callout lines here suggests that the “Cable clearance” callout is in a different category or class than the other callout lines. There’s a semantic problem with changing callout line formats.

Callout example 14

This is my favorite callout example. Despite the abundance of callout text, the text doesn’t dominate the rather small image. The callout headings are minimal and in a narrow font to reduce visual space. The callout lines — light black — are as minimal as they can be, and lack even a dot or arrow at the end.

Although graphics programs offer a lot of opportunities with callout design, many times the design only detracts from the intent of the callouts. Don Moyer explains that the focus on design can sometimes backfire:

sometimes so much effort goes into aesthetics, special effects, fancy shadows, glowing objects, and 3D wizardry that the scope and structure of the story is neglected. (The Trouble with Visual Explanations: A Quick Look at Common Problems, Dec 2010 Intercom)

In other words, the “professional” execution of graphics can sometimes overshadow or even  divert attention from the image’s central meaning. This last example reinforces the strength of minimalism when it comes to callouts. Le

Conclusions

Callouts should not distract the focus away from the image but should supplement the image. To keep the callouts in the visual background, make the callouts as minimal as possible, avoiding callout bubbles, box formatting, or background shading. These design-heavy types of callout formats work if you’re trying to “call out” attention to the presence of the callout text, or if you have just one or two callouts. But when you have an abundance of callout text on a graphic, as we often do in technical illustrations, shouting attention to each callout foregrounds the callouts at the expense of the graphic and leads to a clutterered, busy, amateur look. Each callout screams, “Look at me!,” and when you have 6 to 8 callouts on a single image, the effect is too much noise.

When it comes to callout lines, avoid arrows at the end or any other graphics that draw too much attention to the line. Especially if the lines will be slanted in various directions, keep the width narrow to avoid drawing too much attention to conflicting slants (which produce negative visual energy). Choose a soft color, such as light black or gray, to reduce attention on the lines. Keeping with the minimalistic technique, maintain an adequate padding of white space between each callout.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_xyVw06OZ4

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Sometimes people talk about this potential move, from print to an online format, with a doom and gloom that would make you think they’re foreclosing on a house or planning a funeral for a close relative or giving up their children for adoption.

When I hear these discussions, it blows me away because I can hardly believe what I’m hearing. I admit, the look and feel of paper can provide a comfortable reading experience if you’re immersed in a 200 page novel lying on your bed on a rainy day. But the Intercom and other professional magazines or journals are not novels. With professional publications like these, the online format better matches the reading behavior of the audience. In fact, online formats provide more than a dozen advantages that print formats lack, including everything from interactivity to portability, feeds, metrics, multimedia, and more.

I’ve had some thoughts brewing all week about how people read online, not just online versus print. It’s somewhat of a collage of assertions I’m relaying here. The gist of it is that any organization or company would be crazy not to convert their paper-based magazine, journal, or newsletter into an interactive online format.

Reading Habits. When it comes to professional, job-related information, most people read on the job, during little breaks, when they’re tired of some task, or during the morning when they’re checking their e-mail and the news, or during lunch as they’re eating, or on the bus or train if they ride one. Some even read a bit in the evenings, but not as much, and rarely do they consume professional, job-related blogs on the weekends. With these reading habits, short online content that is easily accessible from a computer where most people are working better meets the reader’s needs.

Digestibility. With articles for online magazines, you can push articles out little by little, several times a week, rather than dumping 20+ articles on readers all at once and overwhelming them, as periodic print magazines do. Because you can push out articles in a more digestible rate, reader consumption of the content increases. Of course if you push out 20 articles at once through an RSS feed, the effect is the same as pushing them out all at once in print.

Portability. With online content accessible from portable mobile devices, you can read the content anywhere without forethought or preparation. For example, you can read it while you’re waiting in line, waiting for your computer to reboot, when you’re in a boring meeting, or alone in the cafeteria, or at church, or in the bathroom, or in the car while your spouse is picking up groceries. Of course you can read a print magazine in similar situations — if you’re always carrying a print magazine in your back pocket. The trouble is, opportunities for reading often sneak up on you at various times of the day. Having the content accessible at your fingertips through a BlackBerry, iPhone, or other device can mean the difference between reading and not reading.

Interactivity. With print content, you can rarely talk to the author. But with online articles, you can usually click the author’s name and find an e-mail address or contact form, or you can leave a comment below the article, or link to the author’s site (which often sends a pingback to the author’s email), and you can receive feedback from the author the next hour or day. The ability to interact with the author to share your thoughts and reactions makes reading more of a conversational, personal experience that is more engaging.

Selection. Because online forms can draw upon a global audience and stream content from hundreds of sources into a running list with thousands of titles to choose from, you’re more likely to find articles that meet your specific, niche interests. In contrast, print magazines usually have only about 10-20 articles and must keep the content at a general interest level. Because the online experience provides such a broad selection, you have greater chances of finding content that is relevant, focused, and applicable to your own interests than with print formats. I wrote about this principle previously in Damping Versus Selection.

Speed. Print magazines often require several months notice between the time you request an article, the time the author submits it, the time necessary to edit the article, lay the magazine out, proofread it, publish it, and distribute it. In contrast, online articles can omit most of these steps and publish content quickly and conveniently, even overnight. Because of this speed, online formats can tap into real-time news, stay current with the latest topics, and not worry about whether an article released months from now will still be relevant. Readers also like to know that they’re getting the absolute latest news, down to the week or even day.

Cost. Online content is usually laid out in a few standard templates with advertising in the sidebar or embedded within the article. The layout is inexpensive, and the distribution is even less expensive. Online content has almost no printing costs, and no need to outsource the content to a contract agency that creates the layout, draws dozens of accompanying illustrations, and mails the content to readers across the world. These reduced production costs generally compensate for the loss of revenue from print advertising. The result is that you can give more content away to readers for free. In this model, both the readers and publishers benefit.

Advertising Opportunities. Most advertisers don’t harness the full potential of advertising opportunities available to them in the web format. Rather than just use static images in banners and sidebars, advertisers can incorporate multimedia, including short videos, flash, audio, polls, and interactivity. Users are just a click away from entering the advertiser’s site and learning more about a product (whereas with print, users have to turn on a computer and manually type in a website). Advertisers also have an opportunity for guest posting, because space is not a limitation. If more advertisers took advantage of multimedia in the interactive web space, they would discover that online advertising can be more powerful than static print advertising.

Content Manipulation. Because online formats give you the ability to rate articles, and then sort by the most popular, or highest rated, and to automate the ratings based on page views, trackbacks, and emails, you can create compelling groupings of the most popular articles online. These lists can create more interest in the content, as they draw upon the curiosity of readers. Top 10 lists, most e-mailed articles, most clicked-on posts of the week, or lowest rated articles groupings simply aren’t possible with print.

Metrics. With print formats, you can’t rely on automated metrics tools apart from human surveys to calculate the degree to which each article is read. In contrast, online formats give you a suite of tools to track readership. Google Analytics, Woopra, Omniture, Performancing — you can use any of these tools to find detailed information about reader demographics, time per post, time on the site, most read articles, click paths, and more. Your metrics aren’t a guess.

Search Engine Optimization. With online formats, your content is findable by the whole world. People in remote countries can search and discover you. Open access and indexing of your content on Google gives you visibility, which increases your readership because it makes you discoverable. The more you search engine optimize your content, the more findable you are, which means you can actively grow your audience each day. Print formats, in contrast, aren’t easily discoverable by users unless they buy your magazine. If it’s a niche magazine, chances are it isn’t in the supermarket checkout line, so how do people find out about it? And without access to the content, how do they trust you enough to pay for a subscription?

Feed Manipulation. Most online formats have RSS feeds, which you can manipulate in interesting ways. You can create mashups of feeds that integrate multiple sources, filtering, truncating, and outputting the feed titles according to what you want to see. You can display one RSS feed on multiple sites (for example, a “What We’re Reading” type of feed from Writer River). Most importantly, readers can pull in hundreds of feeds into a single feedreader and actually stay updated with all the content (at least the content that interests them). You can’t do any feed manipulation with print formats. Nor can readers keep up with hundreds of sources. At most, you may subscribe to five or six magazines and a journal or two.

Community. Perhaps the coolest thing about online formats is the community that develops in the comments. It’s not just a one-on-one type of experience between you and the author, but rather a community of readers interacting with each other. It’s a truism that many times the comments below an article are more interesting than the article itself. Articles with a lot of comments also increase your site’s search engine visibility, drawing more readers who can find you through keyword searches. Comments are user-generated content that increases your site’s findability and value. Again, print formats lack this advantage.

Concision. Although the quality of well-researched, thought-out, and carefully structured book material is on a level above what you usually find online, I frequently find that books carry on and on about ideas they could wrap up in 20 pages. Typically, a book author must write at least 200 pages to publish a book, whether the content merits the entire length of a book or not. In contrast, online authors give you the information in short, powerful bursts. The online author gets quickly to the point, without wasting your time or padding the content with fluff to fill the pages of a book. You don’t have to slog through 35 pages before the author gets to the core of the message. For more on this, see “How the Web and Weblog Have Changing Writing.”

Niche content. In a world that is trending more and more toward specialization, we need niche content. Even in a field such as technical communication, which some might feel is already niche, really isn’t. The field has at least a dozen subfields, including information architecture, usability, content management, single sourcing, design, video, technical writing, DITA, and more. We want to learn about what we want to learn about. Online magazines and blogs provide niche content in ways that print magazines can’t. Print magazines must rely on general industry interest. According to the Long Tail, the global audience available online allows niche products to survive and even dominate mainstream products in revenue.

Completion. I recently listened to an interview with Heather Armstrong (Dooce) about her experience writing a book versus writing blog posts. She compared writing a book to pulling her brain out through the top of her skull. A book is almost never finished. It drags on for years. Books require you to structure an arc throughout hundreds of pages. In contrast, a blog post is something you can finish in an evening. You can feel completion. And you receive feedback immediately after publishing it. You get the whole writing experience in a much quicker, painless way. You don’t have to wait for years to experience it all (if what you’re working on for years even gets published). The same might be said of readers: they can completely consume your content in one sitting, rather than chipping away at it for weeks.

Shareability. Content online is immediately shareable. When you read a post you like, you can retweet it, and chances are someone else will share it, and so on until you’ve suddenly reached dozens of potential new subscribers. When content is online, readers have a quick mechanism for sharing through Twitter, blogs, email messages, Facebook, social bookmarks, or other online technologies. Because the content is more immediately shareable, you can grow your audience more quickly and increase your influence. In contrast, with print, about the only thing readers can do is cut out the article and mail it through the postal service.

Multimedia. If you look at the New York Times or the New Yorker, they incorporate a lot of multimedia into their content. The online experience isn’t just about inserting a few Youtube videos here and there. Many times you see podcasts or videos that you can subscribe to, such as discussions with the author or conversations about the latest articles. These multimedia formats provide a whole new dimension to the content. In contrast, print is one-dimensional.

Wrapping It Up

Overall, I prefer to be online is for the whole web experience. It’s not just about interactivity, immediacy, or multimedia but rather all of these components working together to provide an experience that makes that the print magazine sitting in my mailbox, or the 300 page book on my shelf, or even the newsletter PDF waiting in my inbox so much less inviting than opening up Google Reader.

If you’re interested in getting involved in a collaborating reading project, I invite you to become a link journalist on Writer River. Writer River is a social news site for sharing information about the latest news in technical communication. I’m currently revamping the site with more tools and ways to share and discover content — tools not possible in the print world. If you aren’t already registered as an author, sign up now and stay tuned for new announcements later this week.

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Almost the exact same argument could be made about the STC and its financial trouble. In case you haven’t heard, the STC’s finances are facing crisis proportions. Unless membership stabilizes, it could go out of business in a couple of years.

Sarah O’Keefe wrote an insightful post about the need for the STC to increase its velocity, community, and openness. Keith Anderson also wrote about the STC issue, pointing out that the problem started long ago, not just with the recession. Both posts got me thinking about the issue tonight.

I agree with Sarah and Keith’s analyses. I don’t necessarily have a solution to the financial problems of the STC. They do seem to be a bit behind the times. For example, two years ago I was excited to learn the website was going to be redesigned. If I remember correctly, it was announced at a conference. But the only difference I can see now is the big blue buttons and the redesigned logo.

News & Notes is still delivered in an email, without the ability to comment. In fact, when the president asks for suggestions to the financial crisis, I would have loved to see an open, blog-like format for discussion. The Twitter hashtag #stcorg was at least a good idea, though.

Intercom, one of the most valued benefits of membership, is still not online in an interactive way. You can’t comment below articles. To see the articles, first you have to log in. After logging in, you see a screen that gives you options to either “manage” or “pay,” and you realize the navigation bar is completely different. After retracing your steps back to the main site and navigating to Intercom, the site template looks different again (which is fine), but when you click Search Articles, you get a blank screen. Fortunately, there is a little search box in the upper-right corner, if you can find it. It’s just a kludgey type of experience.

The live web seminars would be a good service if they were free. I have to admit, I dislike webinars. Registration is cumbersome, the scheduled hour is never convenient, I loathe staring at a Powerpoint on a screen for an hour, the audio is poor, and they cost too much.

I have more than 120 podcasts available for free on my site, touching on practically every topic of interest to technical communicators. The STC seems to have never caught on to the idea of podcasting. Instead, they view the web seminars as a revenue tool rather than a learning tool. If the true purpose were to help educate technical communicators, they would dedicate a podcasting resource to create engaging, regular podcasts similar to the podcasts available from the New York Times (such as Tech Talk, one of my favorites).

I don’t mean to sound like a complainer. I like belonging to an organization, a professional society. In fact, when I made the switch from copywriting to technical writing and discovered the STC for the first time—my local Suncoast chapter—I loved the group. I learned so much from the interactions with my colleagues. It was a solid support network that helped push me further into the industry and see the best direction to go. Without the organization of the STC, I’m fairly certain that close-knit group that gathered regularly would have never existed.

But if the STC were to dissolve, although it would be a tremendous blow to the communities across the globe, the hundreds of tech comm. bloggers would still create engaging content to read. Academics and other authors would still publish books and articles. Vendors would still continue to develop and innovate products. Listservs would continue to flourish. Conferences (though smaller) would still be held. The profession would continue to thrive.

I’ve rambled a bit here. To be a bit more practical, here are a few recommendations to help solve the problems of the STC:

1. Move to more of a virtual office model, with an office in a less expensive area. Rely on more member volunteers to get the work done.
2. Convert Intercom to a blog-like format rather than a print magazine. Same with the Tech Comm Journal.
3. Make the Intercom the centerpiece of the STC site, with a more robust search engine and easy navigation.
4. Hire a professional podcaster (not me) to create several podcasts a week, made available on the site for free.
5. Convert News & Notes into an interactive feature of the STC site.
6. Redesign the STC site using a more interactive, web 2.0 platform. For example, provide more of a social network experience (kind of like the Content Wrangler’s Ning, but better) that appears when you log in to the STC site.
7. Keep recording the annual conference sessions, but make them available online for free to all STC members. To reduce costs, forget the screen recording and instead buy high-end digital recorders and train the conference staff on how to use them.
8. Create sophisticated Yahoo pipes or other mashup filters that aggregate online content written by tech comm. bloggers and other authors around the world.
9. Help members stay updated by holding regular tool training sessions using a service such as Adobe Connect.
10. Create an stc.tv site modeled after wordpress.tv, where chapters can share recordings of their presenters. Provide training on how to record chapter presentations (either audio or video or both).
11. Allow members to join all SIG listservs for free as part of their membership rather than restricting it to just one.
12. Provide a more comprehensive job database, with people actively incorporating jobs from a variety of sites. Allow recruiters to post jobs for free.
13. Provide more guided learning tracks for the different paths people can take in the profession.
14. Rather than ignoring it, leverage Geoff Sauer’s tc.eserver.org–the most visited tech comm resource in the world.
15. Provide resume evaluation services for job seekers.

Overall, I think most of these services should either be free to members or highly reduced (for example, the $79 webinar fee should be more like $5). The idea that information on the web should be available for free is a constant theme that’s hard to fight against. Closing off and restricting access to information, with the assumption that doing so increases member value, seems to run contrary to directions the web is heading.

For example, the New York Times previously tried charging for access to the op-ed columns. Eventually they let go of that model and opened them up for free. The SXSW conference records their sessions and distributes them online for free. Rather than hurt attendance, it seems to increase it. Free is the information economy of the web. Overall, more people would join the STC if they saw the value that it provides. But even when you join the STC, the value you feel isn’t apparent.

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If you don’t have access, you can read the original post I wrote, which is nearly the same article but without the awesome graphic that the Intercom designers added.

My Writer River article in STC's Intercom magazine

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How do I know this? Well, a couple of months ago I saw a summary of my blog post on video cameras and SMEs mentioned in the STC Intercom’s Cut & Paste section (shown below).

(Direct link to Intercom article above.)

My original blog post wasn’t really that interesting and, after discovering Jing, I would in no way use a video camera in place of Jing.

But that’s no my point here. My point is, how did the Intercom editors at the Society for Technical Communication come across my blog? Are they regular readers? (Of course, everyone should be.) I shrugged my shoulders and didn’t think more of it.

Then a couple of weeks ago, my friend Ben Minson, also a technical communicator, mentioned that a post on his blog — “When Tech Writers Don’t Read Directions” — caught the attention of Intercom editors as well, and they asked to publish an excerpt in Intercom.

How did they discover Ben’s blog, which is less than a month old?

I asked departing assistant Intercom editor Cecily Waters for insight on exactly who is keeping up with the blogosphere at STC headquarters. She said that the managing editor of Intercom has Google Alerts set for the words “technical communicator” and “Society for Technical Communication” and some other phrases.

With those keywords in mind, let’s take a look at an excerpt from Ben’s post:

The common perception that all technical writers do is produce instructional manuals isn’t totally undeserved; after all, that is where the profession got its start. While the field of technical communication has branched out considerably, a technical communicator’s job still involves giving directions of some sort. … I violated the Unspoken Rule myself twice this week in regard to the Society for Technical Communication.

The keywords that set off the Intercom editor’s Google Alert no doubt included technical communicator, technical writer, technical communication, and Society for Technical Communication.

(By the way, you can set up your own Google Alert here. I used have a few alerts, and they were actually quite accurate, especially if you’re trying to track mention of your name or blog.)

When I write posts, I often change the title to reflect a more search-engine-optimized phrase by using the WordPress SEO plugin. Keyword optimizing your first and second paragraph with the same keywords increases the SEO even more.

Now you know the keywords that trigger alerts to the Intercom editor, currently Ed Rutkowski. In fact, if I had a unique name like Ed, I’d also set a Google Alert on that too.

Given the keywords I’ve spread all over this article, this post will probably trigger one of Ed’s alerts. So Ed, if you’re reading this, be sure to drop me a line and say hi.

The thing about Intercom is that I think that these articles could all be blog posts. It would be a lot handier to read these articles in a Google Reader style because currently, to read these articles online, you have to open PDF file after PDF file (think slow), and that’s only if you’re a member (in the era of social buzz, password-protected content rarely works, unless you’re the Wall Street Journal). The content itself is also not higher in quality than tech comm postings from good bloggers, such as Tom Johnson. (“Recommended tech comm articles and how to read them for free”)

I agree with Heidi, but it wasn’t until I read Paul Graham’s reasoning that I began to truly be convinced that blogs could equal or surpass print media in quality. Paul writes: 

I’ve noticed for a while that the stuff I read on individual people’s sites is as good as or better than the stuff I read in newspapers and magazines. And now I have independent evidence: the top links on Reddit are generally links to individual people’s sites rather than to magazine articles or news stories.

My experience of writing for magazines suggests an explanation. Editors. They control the topics you can write about, and they can generally rewrite whatever you produce. The result is to damp extremes. Editing yields 95th percentile writing—95% of articles are improved by it, but 5% are dragged down…

On the web, people can publish whatever they want. Nearly all of it falls short of the editor-damped writing in print publications. But the pool of writers is very, very large. If it’s large enough, the lack of damping means the best writing online should surpass the best in print. And now that the web has evolved mechanisms for selecting good stuff, the web wins net. Selection beats damping, for the same reason market economies beat centrally planned ones. (“Web 2.0″)

Damping and Selection

Paul says that at times editors dampen the original articles by making them more moderate, less extreme. Five percent of the time, this damping actually diminishes the articles’ quality. Given that blog authors don’t dampen their posts, blogs have the potential to surpass the quality of print media — at least for those 5% of articles that are hurt by editors. Five percent doesn’t seem like much, but given the vast numbers of blogs, 5% can add up. Blogs allow all of the content that would otherwise be filtered squeak through and find visibility.

The second part of the argument is selection. No one will argue that, on average, an article from a magazine is higher quality than a blog post. However, when you buy a magazine, such as STC’s Intercom, you typically get 10 articles. Of those articles, only about 5 are interesting. That’s a quality ratio of 1:2.

With blog posts, rather than 10 articles, you get about one hundred times that. I have about 200 feeds integrated into my Google Reader. I’d say on average, I scan down 20 post titles until I find one that’s interesting to me. The quality ratio, then, is 1:20.

On the surface, the ratio looks better for print media. However, here’s the key piece of information: I have 1,000+ blog posts in my feedreader at least weekly, and only one issue of Intercom that comes out monthly. Mathematically, that means on average there are 200 good blog posts for every 5 good articles in Intercom per month. And of those 200 blog posts, at least 5% of them have the appealing content that the editorial process sometimes takes away.

Summary

In sum, not only does published print media suffer from a smaller selection, which makes it harder to hit the target of the readers’ interest, but published media also suffers from damping, which at times inappropriately softens the author’s original thoughts and style. Blogs dominate print media by offering a hundred times more articles, which have a greater probability of aligning with readers’ interests, and the content is never dampened from the original, authentic expression.

Other Advantages

Blog posts also have several other qualities going for them:

• Blogs are interactive. You can comment on a post, read other comments, interact with the author, point out problems or shortcomings with the author’s argument, or add your own insight. And from an author’s point of view, you get immediate feedback. You know whether your article made an impact or was totally ignored. You know whether your argument was bogus or brilliant.
• Blogs are more current. You’re not reading content that was written weeks or months ago; instead you get to read content that was published minutes ago by the author.
• Blogs are free. It’s tough to compete with blogs when all the content on blogs is free. Even the best feedreaders are free as well. Most print publications, in contrast, cost money.
• Blogs are convenient. You can read blogs almost anywhere now. I’ve been using Google Reader on my BlackBerry, reading feeds when I’m waiting for a bus or when I have other spare moments. The posts are immediately available wherever and whenever I want to read them. And there will always be about a thousand new posts for me to scan through.
• Blogs allow ordinary people to connect with each other. With traditional print media, you end up reading the same people over and over. But blogs allow ordinary people to make connections with other ordinary people. There’s something appealing and real about that.

References

I found the Graham article from On Writing, a blog by Miranda Bennett. About a year ago I listened to a podcast on hackers by Paul Graham and really enjoyed it.

First, settling on just 5 podcasts was agonizing and I thought about it for weeks, constantly drawing up lists and ranking them. I actually submitted 10 podcast recommendations, hoping they would say okay we’ll publish 10, but they whacked it down to just 5.

My Top 5 Recommendations

My top five recommendations are iinnovate, IT Conversations, Edgework, STC Atlanta, and WordPress. There aren’t many podcasts out there specifically about technical communication. But there are a lot of podcasts that might appeal to technical writers, even if the topics don’t address technical communication. I tried to choose the podcasts that I regularly listen to and enjoy, rather than just 5 podcasts that might fit categorically into tech comm.

Podcasts I Also Wanted to Recommend

Here are 10 more podcasts I wished I could have included in my recommendations.

DMN Communications: I love this podcast, and it truly is the only one besides Tech Writer Voices that focuses specifically on technical communication. But as I was creating my list, they hadn’t published a podcast for several months. I wasn’t sure if they would return.

This American Life: A radio show (distributed also as a podcast) that is professionally produced and usually very entertaining. But it’s long, usually at least an hour. I love the little music clips they splice in to add tension and development to the stories. The topics are general interest.

Slate: Short and witty, sometimes political, this podcast is good one to include in your reader and monitor for topics of interest.

Design Critique Podcast: A podcast about usability and design, which can be relevant to technical communicators. However, it can be a little long sometimes. I’ve only been a listener for a couple of months. If you’re into usability, also check out the UX podcast.

The MalContents: A podcast focusing more on the content management side of communication. The information is high quality, but they only publish about one episode a month.

Manager Tools: A great podcast if you’re a manager, or if you simply manage teams or work packages.

SXSW Podcasts: Recordings from the South by SouthWest conference in Austin last year. Authoritative speakers and tech-focused topics.

Podcast Academy: A great resource for podcasters. Often the episodes are conference session recordings.

Slashdot Review: Delivers timely and interesting interesting technology news. It’s short, published several times a week, and right to the point.

Harvard Business Review IdeaCast: A podcast about business ideas. Sometimes this podcast can be engaging, other times lackluster.

Leo Laporte’s This Week in Tech (TWIT): An informative technology podcast run by Leo Laporte, who gathers several people each episode to discuss and analyze the latest in tech news.

Diggnation: Fueled by news published on Digg.com, two co-hosts exchange disagreeing viewpoints about quirky tech news. It can be funny at times, other times crass.

Overall, I recommend adding as many podcast feeds to your reader as possible, and then just scroll down the list for topics of interest to you. Also, don’t forget to add my podcast, Tech Writer Voices, to the mix.