May I have some less, please?
We think it’s time to lose the “kitchen sink” approach. Photo: alexis, Creative Commons, some rights reserved
For more than 10 years, NCPR has been emailing news and information to subscribers, who generously allow us space in their inboxes. And over that time we have developed a kind of routine.
Each weekday, for example, we send out what we have been calling a regional news brief. But in fact, it is not so brief and it is assembled daily for your reading pleasure by a robot that hits our feeds and dumps the programmed results into an email. So each weekday you get every news story published that day, and every community calendar event for that day, and all the recent In Box blog posts, and all the top stories from NPR, and the current Photo of the Day.
Today’s “brief” contained 36 pieces of content, 16 of which also included 30-60 words of introductory text each. We have come to think that, a) this is too much stuff, b) it’s not particularly user-friendly, and c) it doesn’t work very effectively to direct people to the most important things they need to know each day, or to the really interesting stuff they might not otherwise run across.
Starting next week, we are going to try a different approach. Here’s what we’re thinking–a short handcrafted curation of four or five features and stories each day–the best or the most important work that we are doing, or that other producers in public media are doing that day. Maybe a few sentences summarizing other news with a link to the news portion of the website. We’ll keep the Photo of the Day, and we’ll try to always include something else that will delight and divert, as well as inform. And that’s it–short, simple, and designed to play nicely with phones and small screen devices.
There will still be links that go to the calendar or to the weather at NCPR, so you can easily get what you want there. But if you don’t need to know what is playing at the NAC in Ottawa tonight, or who’s at the coffeehouse in Glens Falls, or you aren’t interested in every piece of AP copy we published this morning, you won’t need to wade through all that stuff. And it will be written and sent by a real live person each day.
Once we work the kinks out of the daily news email, we’ll take a crack at betterfying the weekly Listening Post. Your suggestions are welcome in a comment below.
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I don’t really see anything wrong with the way it is. It only takes a minute or two to scan and you can easily ignore the sections you don’t care much about. I’d rather choose what I want to read more about than have someone else choose only 4 or 5 stories they think are the best or most interesting.
Do what is best for you. I don’t receive the news brief and find it easy just to come here and read what interests me.
Yes! Let us know when the short version is ready. I will re subscribe
Though I do receive thenews briet, I rather agree with Pete Klein. NCPR is my homepage so it
s easy to just use it.
Off-topic, but I think it’s really funny you went to Creative Commons to get a picture of dirty dishes overflowing a kitchen sink. When I’m at the station on Saturday, I’ll take… er, leave you a few pictures like the one above. Who knew it could be such a useful image?
There’s just too much information in the Information Age. Bots aren’t smart enough. Human curators may help. But there is just too much material being created and presented. No amount of artful editing will alter the fact that no single lifetime will be able to absorb – or need – all that is being generated. And where does that reality leave the (self-described) limited resources of NCPR?
In a perfect world, I would have the time to sit down and read the incoming e-mails and FB Posts I receive on a regular basis. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t happen. I recently unsubscribed to a number of electronic newsletters from a variety of sources.
I do read your news brief when time permits and the format is fine in its current form. Changing the format may not increase the frequency of my reading All In.
I, too, find the current email quite useful. I use it to see if I missed anything on the 8 O’clock Hour because I was distracted. I could go to the website, but if nothing else, I’ve become accustomed to this email’s face. I’ll try the new format, but since the old one is prepared by a hard working but hopefully low wage ‘bot, maybe that could stay on as an option.
Not subscribed to the e-mail news briefs so it won’t bother me ,but if cutting it back can save money that can be used for other programming go for it . Most of the time I only scan the e-mail I get anyway as most of what’s not spam would be considered junk mail that I delete
Last things first: Don’t mess with The Listening Post! I love, love, love it. Okay, maybe not ALWAYS, but a great percentage of the time (how’s 99 sound?)
I do read the regional briefs when time permits, but I agree that there’s just too much info included. I applaud the decision to use people to streamline content.
Brevity in less than a 1000 words is always welcome.