a second look

Initially today was going to be about Neil Postman, the Postman referenced by this blog’s name. However, life as usual, pulled me a different way.

Deadlines are interesting creatures online. In print, once it goes to film and press, it is usually over. What is done is done.

As with web sites, it is easier and sometimes welcome to revisit a multimedia piece a day or two after launching to see if there is anything to polish, correct or tighten. Sometimes that second look can be the difference between OK and great.

More often than not, for work on deadline, the second look is not a bad idea. For longer projects and single creator pieces, I am not sure the second look is always needed, but another set of ideas in production always helps.

Recently we put together a piece on deadline that was OK, shift differences, deadlines and other issues saw us publish a piece that was not up to our own standards. With some post publishing conversation, revisiting the initial edited material and some ‘spit balling’ of ideas, a better narrative was created that flowed and was tighter, despite being a bit longer.

A second look was all it took.