Comments on: The long story. The Feature Story.

By: Liz

Liz — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:46:51 +0000

At the University of Minnesota, we recently launched a new home page (www.umn.edu) and put an end to printed publications. We try to present stories now in many different ways and trying to figure out when other elements should be introduced (eg, multimedia).

Here is a feature story we just posted: http://www1.umn.edu/news/features/UR_CONTENT_088861.html

Not sure what the best approach is, as we are trying to break it down ourselves, but for the most part I think the resolution is bringing multiple elements together.

By: Jamie

Jamie — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:21:48 +0000

Check out http://www.cmu.edu

By: Ron

Ron — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:50:21 +0000

I think it really depends what you have in-house to generate and sustain these sorts of stories. I think they’re needed and I know I’ve been at a few institutions where this has been part of the conversation, but so many schools are stretched and frankly, are so entrenched in their current processes that it can be a hard pivot to stop doing what “we know works” to allocate time and effort towards something new. I suspect that this one of those areas where the leading institutions with the wherewithal to initiate will continue to lead the way and then that will give other schools who might want to do it, enough political cover to initiate such things on their own, in the name of keeping up with the Joneses.

By: Jamie Scheppers

Jamie Scheppers — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 20:01:38 +0000

Thanks for the shout-out! We have fun doing what we do and it’s nice to be recognized for it.

By: Rich

Rich — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:38:04 +0000

I know the University of Kansas has a features page, but I don’t know if this is a regurgitation of the print product (if one such exists).

http://www.features.ku.edu/

A lot of the stories seem to be “webby,” ranging from only text to only a video/photo gallery to any combination in between (and even QT 360 VR tours!). The design could be cleaned up and consolidated a bit, but you can see there is real effort to tell a story on what the university and its students are about.

By: Georgiana Cohen

Georgiana Cohen — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:04:47 +0000

Not to toot my own horn, but we do straight-to-web feature writing on a weekly basis at Tufts. Our archive is here:

http://www.tufts.edu/home/feature/?p=archives

The features, which are currently the main feature of the homepage at http://www.tufts.edu, are a mix of stories, slideshows, video, photo galleries and other content. There are some magazine features mixed in there, but the vast majority is original, bred-for-web feature content.

By: Billy

Billy — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:19:50 +0000

Hi Drew, good examples. I’m new to higher education so I can’t come up with any examples as good that I’ve come across but I’m certain that this is a direction that we should all be taking. I’ve been working on museum and gallery websites for the last few years and we were certainly developing in-depth web-only features.

I’m always disappointed to see links straight through to press releases on public-facing homepages. It’s become the cliched standard test for job applicants for web editor posts to ask them to take a press release and make it suitable for web, but then in reality so many organisations just dump the press release out, complete with notes for editors and press officer contact details at the bottom.

Features ‘born and bred for the web’ can do so much more than the printed magazine article, with well-researched links to high quality relevant material, the opportunity for readers to interact with feedback, addition of video, etc.

By: Karine Joly

Karine Joly — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:10:13 +0000

Duke Research is a web-only magazine published every month with stories - often multimedia - developed just for it. Karl Bates, Duke Research Editor, will be giving in early March an encore presentation of the webinar he presented for the series Stop the Presses last June: http://higheredexperts.com/stopthepresses