There was a ton of insight, energy, considered argument, and enthusiasm at FASTForward08, and it will take me a while to take it in. Let me start by offering an observation that struck me with some force, possibly because I spent about a decade in print journalism writing breaking news and longer pieces for a daily newspaper:

In his rich presentation this morning, Safa Rashtchy mentioned that the importance of being found high in Google searches was so high that reporters at the Times of London were being trained to write “in a way that that makes their articles more likely to appear among Google’s unpaid search results.”

In view of the hugely more complex and rich visions of search on offer at FASTForward08, this bit of journalistic “practice” seems – at least to me – less than wholly promising.

What the conference revealed — through speakers, detailed discussions, and vendor conversations — were more sophisticated models of search involving matches of user and content, textual analysis and the sensibility of the searcher: a multi-faceted approach using contextual depth and mirrored value to connect to various readers seeking the news.

What this suggests to me is that a news story that begins by setting a scene — offering some sense of place and time and narrative interest — could fare better in the sophisticated searches now being developed (we saw the example of Reuters), involving metatagging strategies that go well beyond basic search hooks of who what when and where. Not that these basic factoids are not important – but it’s nice to hope we are looking at a future in which every single news story will not mandatorily begin with a tedious recitation of search terms in which all values of style, intrigue, and narrative skill have been pared away.