Introducing Developing Stories: An experiment in featured content

Last week I laid out details about our editorial team and guidelines when it comes to finding and featuring content on Current.com. Today we're launching a brand new community-based experiment built on top of our editorial practices which, for lack of a better name, I'm calling "Developing Stories."

What is a Developing Story?

This doesn't always hold true, but quite frequently we notice that stories we feature on Current.com actually speak to a larger, ongoing story in play. Sometimes these stories are stretched out over longer periods of time (e.g. the ongoing discussions around public options in healthcare reform, or the debates surrounding gay marriage), and other times these stories are developing rapidly over the course of hours (e.g. Elections 2009, Afghan presidential elections, or Michael Jackson's death).

Starting today, we'll begin identifying certain featured stories that we think have the opportunity to be "developed" further. These stories will be added to our Developing Stories group, and we'll clearly mark it as such on both the story page and whichever image is picked to accompany the story.

What does it mean to have a story picked as a Developing Story?

This is the cool part. Getting your story featured as a Developing Story is like having the stage handed over to you. We're looking to take a closer look at the underpinnings of these stories, and we're giving you the opportunity to take on the role of online investigative journalist in the process. As long as things continue to progress in a relevant way, your story will remain featured on Current.com.

OK, so how does all of this work?

Well, it's pretty simple actually. When a story is selected to feature as a Developing Story, the editor will add it to our Developing Stories group, and message you in a comment on your story with a link to some guidelines and tips to help you develop your story. Here's how you'll develop your story:

1. Follow your story: Keep a watchful eye for new developments regarding your story. Have there been new stories with different angles published? Another great approach is to investigate the subject matter addressed in your story, see where that takes you. You might discover a story that mainstream media hasn't picked up on yet.


2. Update to keep your story current: When you find updates, interesting supporting information, or new angles on the story you will need to update your original story with a revised headline, new information, new media (image or video), and links to the details. This is the important part: Do not submit an entirely new story, instead make your edits in the original story description and title. We want to develop the story within the original post that you submitted, and your changes will be reflected on the homepage immediately.


3. Archive old information: Your original story will still be limited to the 5000 character limit in the description, so you might find that you run out of room quickly. It would be a shame to lose your research, so archive older portions of the story in a comment on the thread below your original post. For example: Once Karzai was declared President, we no longer need to hold onto links and information about the chance of a runoff election. So copy and paste those paragraphs and URLs into a comment, and preface the comment with "STORY ARCHIVE." It's important to be able to see how the story progressed, and discussions might still branch off of these elements, so we don't want to lose them altogether.


4. Watch out!: The rest of the community is going to know that you are developing a story, and anyone interested in getting featured will be eligible to scoop you on your own story (more on this below). This means you'll need to stay on top of things as they develop.

Once a story has run it's course, we'll cycle it out of the featured rotation. But, keep an eye on the matter over time. If you happened to develop a story on gay marriage laws a week ago and a new development breaks in that story, it would be best to revisit your older story in development, update it with new information, and attempt to revive the story into featuring prominence.

I have a story, and I think it should be a Developing Story...What do I do?

Developing Stories are picked by the Current.com Editorial Team, but we are always open to suggestions. If you want to get your story on our radar for consideration, please tag it with "Current Developing Stories," "Developing Story," "Developing Stories," or "Current Developing Story" when you submit to Current.com. PLEASE NOTE: Tagging is not the same as adding to a group. The "Current Developing Stories" is a CLOSED group managed by the editors, so you will not be able to add stories there. Tagging, however, will allow you to be seen by our editors we will monitor that tag for potential stories to develop.

[Ed. Note -- Someone asked if we could use something simpler as a tag for these, something like "CDS" or "dev stories." The issue here is that these tags already correlate to other information. "CDS" represents that archaic music format known as the compact disc, and "dev stories" sounds like a variation on developer tales. I've added a few more options that we'll keep an eye on, but for now lets stick with these. Thanks]

But...does this mean that the same folks will always be featured?

Well, the possibility that our more proficient community members will take the spotlight for longer periods of time is very, very real. However, being featured as a Developing Story is by no means permanent. Think of the "Developing Story" banner as an alert that this type of story is on our radar. Someone might already be developing a health care reform story on the homepage, but they have to eat and sleep at some point. If you scoop developments in the story out from under them, you'll find your story swapped into the featured spot in place of the original poster.

Here's how that works:

1. Keep an eye on Developing Stories: Our group is the best place to get an indication of stories we are looking to develop. Visit it often, then hit the Interwebs and do a little investigating of your own. You never know, you might find an angle that the original poster didn't consider, and it might be your ticket to scooping the story out from under them.


2. Pitch your scoop to get it on our radar: We'll be following Developing Stories very closely, so if you find a potential scoop in a story, here's the best way to call it to our attention. First, submit an item with your scoop, and be sure to tag your story with "Current Developing Stories" and include a link to the Developing Story you're attempting to scoop in the description. Next, post a link to your scoop story in the comments on the Developing Story and clearly call out that this is an angle you think the story should take.

Now to be fair, this is an experiment. It isn't going to be perfect out of the gate, but it seems like an opportunity to open things up a bit more on Current.com and get a little friendly competition started. We rely on you for researched stories, so the more original and unique your angle is, the better chance it will have to become a Developing Story.

As I stated initially, not every story will be considered "Developing Story" potential, and we'll likely ease into this with only one or two stories a day at first, just to see how things go. Developing Stories are still subject to our editorial guidelines for featuring, so make sure you're up to speed on those. You may also want to keep in mind some of the recent changes made to our submission tool.

Sound good? Let us know what you think!