Hello there!
Sometimes, the pieces of the puzzle only fall into place later - and often it’s a seemingly random trigger that does it.
A few weeks back, we hosted a webinar on the importance of tagging articles. Without adding tags to stories, it becomes much harder to analyse data. This remains a key focus, especially for media outlets that seek to gain insight into their audience’s needs. And it’s not always done consistently.
To be honest, I also feel a certain resistance when I have to do it. The reason for this resistance became clear to me while listening to an interview with a Dutch tech journalist who puts a lot of effort into writing about the tech sector as unbiased as possible. With an open mind and persistence, she manages to create stories that shed new light on a sector that has often been portrayed negatively in recent years.
For example, she was interviewing an entrepreneur who operates adult websites - and objects to European legislation requiring visitors to scan their ID cards for age verification. "It’s just not something you're eager to do when you’ve got an itch in your crotch", assured the entrepreneur, who was brave enough to speak openly on the subject.
Here’s the insight: finding the best sources, earning their trust, verifying facts, placing the story in a broader context, and ultimately crafting it into a well-written narrative - that’s where all the energy goes if you’re a journalist. As a colleague put it this week: tagging feels like someone else’s job.
It's simply not what most journalists signed up for.
