News
News is generally easy to stretch or shrink, as typical news genres traditionally edit the material so the most important information comes first.
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This structure is known as "the inverted pyramid," and it is the classic structure of stories in Western newspapers. Other structures are described in journalism literature, such as the "diamond," or the "Wall Street form" (Fensch
) but the inverted pyramid is by far the most common.
The first paragraph, known as the lead or the deck sums up the main points of the story in two or three carefully crafted sentences. Then follows the elements of the story in falling importance. Although the inverted pyramid originated in newspapers, it is also the dominating form in broadcasting media news, traditionally being seen, as Ytreberg
has shown, "the right and only way to do newswork" (p. 361).
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In large broadcasting organizations with many newscasts of different length each day, such as BBC World or CNN, one will often watch an interview or a reportage in a longer newscast, and then see a short excerpt in bulletin later in the day.
On the Web, this could easily be turned into a stretchtext version. After the short version of the story is played, the user could choose whether to continue into the longer version, or skip ahead to the next news item.
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BBC News has already implemented something similar with its News Player, where the headlines from the latest newscast are presented as a written menu.
When a story is selected, the news presenter's manuscript is provided as a written introduction to the chosen film segment.
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This is fairly similar to the footnote principle described above, but it could also be described as a skipping function. After watching some of the film, the viewer is given the opportunity to skip ahead to the next item.