More excellent back-to-the-future thinking has come from The St. Petersburg
Times, the San Jose Mercury News and the Raleigh News & Observer, all of
which boasted excellent story serialization efforts over the past year.
First, from St. Pete:
The Times published a 29-day serialization last year of a story of a family torn apart by AIDS, called Three Little Words. Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute wrote it.
Anecdotal response, says Clark, is that the series drove circulation because it attracted many new readers. Whole communities were talking about
it, says Clark. It created a habit and a sense of anticipation.
Clark said he proposed the project because it applied the ideas behind short, concise writing with a book-length topic. It involved suspense, cliffhangers, and mystery to keep readers coming back every day. A public journalism component played into this project because, afterward, 300 people attended a session
sponsored by Poynter to talk about the series.
| | San
Jose Mercury |
Clark also read summaries into audiotext so people could catch up if they
missed an installment. A website also was set up so computer users could
access the series.
San Jose offered its readers The Last Best Thing, a serial novel. It was
a parody of life in Silicon Valley, available on Sundays and Wednesdays
and on the paper's web site.
Readers who chose the web site could be part of the fictitious virtual
company, send e-mail to its employees and help shape company policy.
By following hyperlinked text they could have quite a romp through
cyberspace.
In Raleigh, the N&O's Pete & Shirley sprang from a conversation between
the paper's book editor and projects editor who were talking over pizza
about the many wonderful authors who lived in the area. Which, Executive
Editor Anders Gyllenhaal said, led to the question: What would it be like
if we could get them to write a novel together? The answer, he says, was
Pete & Shirley, which 17 authors, from Kaye Gibbons to Lee Smith to Tim
McLaurin to Clyde Edgerton contributed chapters to.
The N&O serialized the story in late 1995, launching it with a front-page story by its book editor about the remarkable challenge of corralling, guiding and editing the group of independent souls.
Gyllenhaal said the book took many twists and turns, touching on themes
from cross-dressing to snake handling, from country music songwriting to
literary stardom. While the plot didn't always hang neatly together, Gyllenhaal says, it was a success from the N&O's standpoint. After running in the newspaper, the book was published by a local house and remains on sale in North Carolina.
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