With the introduction of new technology, journalists struggle with how to efficiently use the technology to present the news. Storytelling in Web journalism is "still TV circa 1949," concurs Lamar Graham, a professor and director of the Digital Journalism Program at New York University and a former senior editor at Rolling Stone.com.

Journalists working online still find themselves stuck in traditions that served their readers better in print, such as the inverted pyramid. This formula calls for putting the important information up at the top of a story. "More useful would be an introductory statement of some kind explaining how to navigate through the larger story," said Kevin Kawamoto, assistant professor of communications at the University of Washington and an occasional contributor to freedomforum.org. Freedomforum.org asked some professional online journalists for some tips on how to write online.

Some tips for online storytelling

-- Get to the point. "Our average online news reader is coming to us for less than 10 minutes and is reading about six to 10 pages. What they look for is targeted information and what I call instant gratification," Chris Fruitrich of USATODAY.com says. "Writers, editors, and designers should focus on trying to keep everything on the 'top screen' ... that is, nothing below the scroll, except in the case of full stories. Readers also don't like to scroll, and if you force them down a page to find links, etc., you are likely to lose them," he added.

-- Move beyond wire content. "The Web is turning more and more into a redistribution mechanism for wire content, and it looks like the winner is going to be who does the most interesting things with it. That includes infographics, interactive features, streaming video, etc. Use charts, use photos, use sound, but add some value to the wire stories or Yahoo! will swallow you whole," said Lee Clontz, interactive producer for CNNSI.com.

-- Don't play games with dates. "One of the single most frustrating and problematic habits I see in online reports are dates and date stamps," says Mary Norman Jacobson. "On FACSNET I'm implementing a style standard of month-day-year in every date citation. Even worse are sites that don't include ANY date."

-- Use first-person narrative judiciously. "Students seem to think that the Web gives them the right to write more in a first-person voice," says Graham. "That may be true and may bring the 'journal' back into 'journalism' to some degree. But I tell them to resist that impulse, because the news is still about newswriting."

-- Assume your reader has the same time pressures you do. Don't overload your page with plug-ins, enormous graphics or multimedia files unless they are truly necessary for your story. If it's going to take 14 minutes for your page to load, your readers probably won't bother, anyway.