How to Break Away From Articles and Invent New Story Forms

As publishing has moved to digital forms, journalists have discovered it is quite possible — and sometimes preferable — to tell a news story without writing an article.

But how?

The American Press Institute, with the help of Melody Kramer from NPR and Kennedy Elliott from the Washington Post, packed a room at the Online News Association conference for a workshop called “Oops, we broke the article machine. Imagining what comes next.” The interactive session set participants to work on generating ideas. The exercise is liberating and almost always generates new ways of looking at news. What we did is also something you can try in your own newsroom.