The traditional story structure gets deconstructed

“Despite huge changes in the technology of news, the structure of a story today doesn’t look hugely different from one in, say, 1932.”

At the risk of sounding self-serving (you’ll see why below), isn’t it time we really looked at how we could be improving the basic unit of news — the story?

The core narrative structure of the news article — lede (whether anecdotal or newsy), nut graf, context, analysis, to-be-sures, all carefully woven into a tight package intended both to pull readers along and discourage editors from touching a single word — has been around for decades, mostly impervious to new forms of reporting, analysis, publishing, and distribution.

Despite huge changes in the technology of news, the structure of a story today doesn’t look hugely different from one in, say, 1932. Sure, there may be slideshows embedded, video added, interactive graphics and so on, but at heart, the core architecture remains the same.

Should it? Maybe it remains the best way to get important information most efficiently into readers’ minds. Or maybe it’s just us journalists doing what we like to do best.

At Semafor, we’ve taken the story form apart and recreated it in sections that delineate news from analysis from counter-argument from different perspectives. It seems to be working well, but is naturally a work in progress. Axios, with its trademarked “smart brevity’ format, has solved for the needs of overloaded and time-strapped readers. Google’s now-dead Living Stories was an exciting experiment in understanding what information readers already know and didn’t need repeated. Homicide Watch DC was likewise an interesting foray into rethinking news judgment (let’s report on all murders in the capital, not just the “newsworthy” ones), reporting structure (gather facts and let technology help assemble them) and building new audiences (family and loved ones of homicides otherwise deemed not worthy of coverage.)

And yet these are all still on the margins of the industry. (Although Semafor and Axios obviously have no desire to stay there…)

What more could we do, especially now that we have far more powerful technology at our disposal?

How about using ChatGPT‘s powerful language parsing and generation capabilities to turn the news experience into the old saw about news being what you tell someone over a drink at a bar? “And then what happened?” “Well, the FBI found all these documents at Mar-a-Lago that weren’t supposed to be there.” “I don’t understand — didn’t he say he declassified them?” “Actually…”

It would let readers explore questions they have and skip over information they might have. In other words, use technology to treat every reader as an individual, with slightly different levels of knowledge and levels of interest.

Or perhaps harness that with engines like Stanford’s Big Local News project or USC’s CrossTown data analytics platform, which pull and automatically analyze reams of local data, find interesting patterns and send them to reporters, either for follow up or as parts of broader stories. Reuters and Bloomberg already have systems like that for financial data; why not build them into more newsrooms?

In the end, we should be taking full advantage of what tools are out there, marrying the best of what machines can do with the best of what humans can do — not to replace each other, but to create a smarter, faster, “cybernetic newsroom” that can serve readers and communities better.

After all, we’ve changed dramatically as a news consuming public over the decades; think about how Twitter threads, TikTok videos, and interactive graphics have all burrowed their way into our news habits. Why shouldn’t our most basic story form change as well?

Gina Chua is executive editor of Semafor.

At the risk of sounding self-serving (you’ll see why below), isn’t it time we really looked at how we could be improving the basic unit of news — the story?

The core narrative structure of the news article — lede (whether anecdotal or newsy), nut graf, context, analysis, to-be-sures, all carefully woven into a tight package intended both to pull readers along and discourage editors from touching a single word — has been around for decades, mostly impervious to new forms of reporting, analysis, publishing, and distribution.

Despite huge changes in the technology of news, the structure of a story today doesn’t look hugely different from one in, say, 1932. Sure, there may be slideshows embedded, video added, interactive graphics and so on, but at heart, the core architecture remains the same.

Should it? Maybe it remains the best way to get important information most efficiently into readers’ minds. Or maybe it’s just us journalists doing what we like to do best.

At Semafor, we’ve taken the story form apart and recreated it in sections that delineate news from analysis from counter-argument from different perspectives. It seems to be working well, but is naturally a work in progress. Axios, with its trademarked “smart brevity’ format, has solved for the needs of overloaded and time-strapped readers. Google’s now-dead Living Stories was an exciting experiment in understanding what information readers already know and didn’t need repeated. Homicide Watch DC was likewise an interesting foray into rethinking news judgment (let’s report on all murders in the capital, not just the “newsworthy” ones), reporting structure (gather facts and let technology help assemble them) and building new audiences (family and loved ones of homicides otherwise deemed not worthy of coverage.)

And yet these are all still on the margins of the industry. (Although Semafor and Axios obviously have no desire to stay there…)

What more could we do, especially now that we have far more powerful technology at our disposal?

How about using ChatGPT‘s powerful language parsing and generation capabilities to turn the news experience into the old saw about news being what you tell someone over a drink at a bar? “And then what happened?” “Well, the FBI found all these documents at Mar-a-Lago that weren’t supposed to be there.” “I don’t understand — didn’t he say he declassified them?” “Actually…”

It would let readers explore questions they have and skip over information they might have. In other words, use technology to treat every reader as an individual, with slightly different levels of knowledge and levels of interest.

Or perhaps harness that with engines like Stanford’s Big Local News project or USC’s CrossTown data analytics platform, which pull and automatically analyze reams of local data, find interesting patterns and send them to reporters, either for follow up or as parts of broader stories. Reuters and Bloomberg already have systems like that for financial data; why not build them into more newsrooms?

In the end, we should be taking full advantage of what tools are out there, marrying the best of what machines can do with the best of what humans can do — not to replace each other, but to create a smarter, faster, “cybernetic newsroom” that can serve readers and communities better.

After all, we’ve changed dramatically as a news consuming public over the decades; think about how Twitter threads, TikTok videos, and interactive graphics have all burrowed their way into our news habits. Why shouldn’t our most basic story form change as well?

Gina Chua is executive editor of Semafor.

Anika Anand   Independent news businesses lead the way on healthy work cultures

Felicitas Carrique and Becca Aaronson   News product goes from trend to standard

Alex Sujong Laughlin   Credit where it’s due

Sue Schardt   Toward a new poetics of journalism

Shanté Cosme   The answer to “quiet quitting” is radical empathy

Michael Schudson   Journalism gets more and more difficult

Laxmi Parthasarathy   Unlocking the silent demand for international journalism

Jim Friedlich   Local journalism steps up to the challenge of civic coverage

Ben Werdmuller   The internet is up for grabs again

Peter Sterne   AI enters the newsroom

Anita Varma   Journalism prioritizes the basic need for survival

Janet Haven   ChatGPT and the future of trust 

Rachel Glickhouse   Humanizing newsrooms will be a badge of honor

Kerri Hoffman   Podcasting goes local

Nicholas Jackson   There will be launches — and we’ll keep doing the work

Sue Cross   Thinking and acting collectively to save the news

Julia Angwin   Democracies will get serious about saving journalism

Sue Robinson   Engagement journalism will have to confront a tougher reality

Sarabeth Berman   Nonprofit local news shows that it can scale

Gordon Crovitz   The year advertisers stop funding misinformation

Ayala Panievsky   It’s time for PR for journalism

Peter Bale   Rising costs force more digital innovation

Cari Nazeer and Emily Goligoski   News organizations step up their support for caregivers

Wilson Liévano   Diaspora journalism takes the next step

Hillary Frey   Death to the labor-intensive memo for prospective hires

Janelle Salanga   Journalists work from a place of harm reduction

Victor Pickard   The year journalism and capitalism finally divorce

Michael W. Wagner   The backlash against pro-democracy reporting is coming

Masuma Ahuja   Journalism starts working for and with its communities

Jakob Moll   Journalism startups will think beyond English

Zizi Papacharissi   Platforms are over

Mario García   More newsrooms go mobile-first

Sarah Stonbely   Growth in public funding for news and information at the state and local levels

Joanne McNeil   Facebook and the media kiss and make up

Taylor Lorenz   The “creator economy” will be astroturfed

Brian Stelter   Finding new ways to reach news avoiders

Amethyst J. Davis   The slight of the great contraction

Snigdha Sur   Newsrooms get nimble in a recession

Cory Bergman   The AI content flood

Surya Mattu   Data journalists learn from photojournalists

David Cohn   AI made this prediction

Mauricio Cabrera   It’s no longer about audiences, it’s about communities

Daniel Trielli   Trust in news will continue to fall. Just look at Brazil.

Esther Kezia Thorpe   Subscription pressures force product innovation

Kirstin McCudden   We’ll codify protection of journalism and newsgathering

Jenna Weiss-Berman   The economic downturn benefits the podcasting industry. (No, really!)

Julia Beizer   News fatigue shows us a clear path forward

Jessica Clark   Open discourse retrenches

Elite Truong   In platform collapse, an opportunity for community

Mael Vallejo   More threats to press freedom across the Americas

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon   Well-being will become a core tenet of journalism

Burt Herman   The year AI truly arrives — and with it the reckoning

Eric Nuzum   A focus on people instead of power

Anthony Nadler   Confronting media gerrymandering

S. Mitra Kalita   “Everything sucks. Good luck to you.”

Jennifer Brandel   AI couldn’t care less. Journalists will care more. 

Parker Molloy   We’ll reach new heights of moral panic

Cindy Royal   Yes, journalists should learn to code, but…

Jacob L. Nelson   Despite it all, people will still want to be journalists

David Skok   Renewed interest in human-powered reporting

Anna Nirmala   News organizations get new structures

Ryan Nave   Citizen journalism, but make it equitable

Joe Amditis   AI throws a lifeline to local publishers

Dannagal G. Young   Stop rewarding elite performances of identity threat

Emma Carew Grovum   The year to resist forgetting about diversity

Gabe Schneider   Well-funded journalism leaders stop making disparate pay

Kathy Lu   We need emotionally agile newsroom leaders

Simon Galperin   Philanthropy stops investing in corporate media

Ryan Kellett   Airline-like loyalty programs try to tie down news readers

Molly de Aguiar and Mandy Van Deven   Narrative change trend brings new money to journalism

Mariana Moura Santos   A woman who speaks is a woman who changes the world

Eric Holthaus   As social media fragments, marginalized voices gain more power

Barbara Raab   More journalism funders will take more risks

Tamar Charney   Flux is the new stability

Eric Thurm   Journalists think of themselves as workers

Christoph Mergerson   The rot at the core of the news business

An Xiao Mina   Journalism in a time of permacrisis

Lisa Heyamoto   The independent news industry gets a roadmap to sustainability

Kaitlin C. Miller   Harassment in journalism won’t get better, but we’ll talk about it more openly

J. Siguru Wahutu   American journalism reckons with its colonialist tendencies

Johannes Klingebiel   The innovation team, R.I.P.

Jody Brannon   We’ll embrace policy remedies

Gina Chua   The traditional story structure gets deconstructed

Delano Massey   The industry shakes its imposter syndrome

Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau   More of the same

Megan Lucero and Shirish Kulkarni   The future of journalism is not you

Pia Frey   Publishers start polling their users at scale

Martina Efeyini   Talk to Gen Z. They’re the experts of Gen Z.

John Davidow   A year of intergenerational learning

Richard Tofel   The press might get better at vetting presidential candidates

Ståle Grut   Your newsroom experiences a Midjourney-gate, too

Basile Simon   Towards supporting criminal accountability

Tim Carmody   Newsletter writers need a new ethics

Nikki Usher   This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!)

Moreno Cruz Osório   Brazilian journalism turns wounds into action

Larry Ryckman   We’ll work together with our competitors

Jesse Holcomb   Buffeted, whipped, bullied, pulled

Alexandra Borchardt   The year of the climate journalism strategy

Eric Ulken   Generative AI brings wrongness at scale

Sarah Alvarez   Dream bigger or lose out

Doris Truong   Workers demand to be paid what the job is worth

Matt Rasnic   More newsroom workers turn to organized labor

Leezel Tanglao   Community partnerships drive better reporting

Sarah Marshall   A web channel strategy won’t be enough

Paul Cheung   More news organizations will realize they are in the business of impact, not eyeballs

Jonas Kaiser   Rejecting the “free speech” frame

Francesco Zaffarano   There is no end of “social media”

Amy Schmitz Weiss   Journalism education faces a crossroads

Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper   Mission-driven metrics become our North Star

Don Day   The news about the news is bad. I’m optimistic.

Alex Perry   New paths to transparency without Twitter

Ariel Zirulnick   Journalism doubles down on user needs

Andrew Donohue   We’ll find out whether journalism can, indeed, save democracy

Jaden Amos   TikTok personality journalists continue to rise

Tre'vell Anderson   Continued culpability in anti-trans campaigns

Sam Gregory   Synthetic media forces us to understand how media gets made

Danielle K. Brown and Kathleen Searles   DEI efforts must consider mental health and online abuse

A.J. Bauer   Covering the right wrong

Walter Frick   Journalists wake up to the power of prediction markets

Rodney Gibbs   Recalibrating how we work apart

Emily Nonko   Incarcerated reporters get more bylines

Dominic-Madori Davis   Everyone finally realizes the need for diverse voices in tech reporting

Dana Lacey   Tech will screw publishers over

Karina Montoya   More reporters on the antitrust beat

Andrew Losowsky   Journalism realizes the replacement for Twitter is not a new Twitter

Susan Chira   Equipping local journalism

Josh Schwartz   The AI spammers are coming

Kaitlyn Wells   We’ll prioritize media literacy for children

Al Lucca   Digital news design gets interesting again

Jarrad Henderson   Video editing will help people understand the media they consume

Jessica Maddox   Journalists keep getting manipulated by internet culture

Priyanjana Bengani   Partisan local news networks will collaborate

Upasna Gautam   Technology that performs at the speed of news

Joni Deutsch   Podcast collaboration — not competition — breeds excellence

Nicholas Diakopoulos   Journalists productively harness generative AI tools

Jim VandeHei   There is no “peak newsletter”

Laura E. Davis   The year we embrace the robots — and ourselves

Errin Haines   Journalists on the campaign trail mend trust with the public

Sumi Aggarwal   Smart newsrooms will prioritize board development

Raney Aronson-Rath   Journalists will band together to fight intimidation

Alan Henry   A reckoning with why trust in news is so low

Bill Adair   The year of the fact-check (no, really!)

Bill Grueskin   Local news will come to rely on AI

Nicholas Thompson   The year AI actually changes the media business

Brian Moritz   Rebuilding the news bundle

Ryan Gantz   “I’m sorry, but I’m a large language model”

Stefanie Murray   The year U.S. media stops screwing around and becomes pro-democracy

Joshua P. Darr   Local to live, wire to wither

Sam Guzik   AI will start fact-checking. We may not like the results.

Kavya Sukumar   Belling the cat: The rise of independent fact-checking at scale

Alexandra Svokos   Working harder to reach audiences where they are

Mar Cabra   The inevitable mental health revolution

Jennifer Choi and Jonathan Jackson   Funders finally bet on next-generation news entrepreneurs

Juleyka Lantigua   Newsrooms recognize women of color as the canaries in the coal mine

Cassandra Etienne   Local news fellowships will help fight newsroom inequities

Christina Shih   Shared values move from nice-to-haves to essentials

Khushbu Shah   Global reporting will suffer