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Wordle is a quick, simple solution to create an illustration for a text-heavy document. Check this out:
GateHouse News & Interactive Division is working on a document to explain our digital strategy, which was announced last week. When I copied and pasted it into Wordle, it created that nifty graphic, a "word cloud." If you want to see it in use on a newspaper site, check out the Pittsburg Post-Gazette's Pipeline website.
All you do to create your own word cloud is go to the Wordle website and click on "create." Copy and paste your text, click "go" and Wordle does the rest. You can change the font, color and whether you want words to appear horizontally, vertically or some combo. The program uses an algorithm to determine which words to highlight. The ones you use most frequently appear more prominently in the word cloud.
Give it a try, and let me know your results.
Jean Hodges served as a reporter and editor for more than 20 years and led groundbreaking projects that won national acclaim before coming to GateHouse to launch the company's news service. She worked most recently at the Chicago Sun-Times' Daily Southtown, covering the south side and south suburbs of Chicago. Before that she worked at the Killen (Texas) Daily Herald, the Clovis (N.M.) News Journal and the Ely Standard in Cambridgeshire, England. She now works with GateHouse news organizations on content strategies, Web initiatives, plus she leads training programs such as webinars and LEDE, GateHouse's leadership program.
