FINAL PROJECT!!

This is mine and Megan's final project, "The Obama Phenomenon." Enjoy! And don't forget to check the "reporters" button at the end.

good design, bad design

One news Web site with good design is the Boston Globe. It might not be the best-designed site, but I enjoy think it has several good features worth mentioning. The Page-One stories are front-and-center of the Web site, and right next to that is a scaled-down version of the front page. I think this is a great part of the design of the page because it lets viewers see the news in the same format that it was delivered to subscribers that morning. I think it’s helpful to readers of the Web site to see the photos and stories in that format even if they don’t have time to pick up the paper. It also has easy-to-navigate menus with “Special Reports” and weekly section inserts. It also has guides to regional editions for people living in the suburbs. The site is colorful without being overwhelming, and a useful link at the top to www.boston.com, a site with general information about the city, including weather updates, special exhibits, and more features on the city. The Globe’s site is not perfect, but I think it has a good layout and design and is easy to navigate for people looking for news updates and features.

I also like the Web site for Haaretz, the leading newspaper of Israel. This is the English-language Web site, which I read fairly regularly. I think it has a great design and layout. There is a scrolling newsbar at the top with updating headlines, and new stories at the top with timestamps next to them, so that readers know when the latest stories have come in. The rest of the site is well-organized with by section, i.e. “diplomacy,” “defense,” “opinion” and “national.” I also like the colors the Web site uses, and the use of photos and visuals is appealing. I enjoy reading the stories on the site because I find it interesting, something that is not always the case with news Web sites.

I have two Web sites with bad design. The first is on a national level, and it is the Miami Herald. I will be doing my TM there this spring, so I have been reading the Web site to catch up on news of the area. It is not well organized, and it is not too user-friendly. There is only one graphic, and all multimedia features are hidden at the bottom, listed as a series of videos – but they are small and difficult to find. The layout is uninteresting; nothing about the design or layout makes me want to stay on the site and keep reading. I normally read the New York Times, and Web sites like that one and MSNBC and CNN have colors, interesting Web content, and plenty of easily-navigable sidebars and menus. The Miami Herald’s Web site also features most of the paper’s stories under other menu titles on the left side; overall, it is not easy to find stories that one might be looking for. It is not an effective design for a Web site and needs a major overhaul. The main fault is that it’s boring and difficult to find things in, and I think it could entice more online readers if the Web site was improved.

On a more personal level is the Web site for Daily Northwestern. I have been working for this newspaper in some capacity ever since I started at Northwestern in Fall 2004. Since that time, the Web site has certainly improved, but it is still in need of some work. The Daily’s blog only updates for ASG elections and Dance Marathon, and is otherwise largely ignored. The Most E-mailed/Commented/Popular stories feature on the right is a good step in the right direction, as is the archive search available on the left. On the other hand, while the headlines are big, the lead-ins for the stories that appear under the headlines are tough to read. The Web site would benefit from being better-organized and having more updated content and web-only content.

flash with audio, take 2

I re-posted the flash movie with audio. Try it again here.

movies now with sound

This flash movie has audio!

It is of me interviewing my roommate, Communications junior Andi Braunstein, about a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert she just attended. She is pictured in the movie on the right, and I am on the left.

pew research part 2

According to the findings from section 3 of the Pew results, more educated people enjoy keeping up with the news more. This is not really a surprising series of statistics; people who put more time and effort into learning will be more interested in reading the news as a way of learning more. People who studied at a higher level of education are, in general, more interested in learning, and watching or reading the news represents a way of learning about the surrounding world. This might be not be the case with someone who stopped at a high school education – or lower. Many people also cited being busy, which I think is where the Internet comes in handy. People who are at work all day might want to come home and relax with a movie or tv show or something light-hearted instead of the news, but they would surely have time to spend 5 minutes checking the headlines in the office.

I thought the segment on diving TV news among party lines was very interesting. According to many articles I have read, a target demographic, the 18-28ish crowd, tends to get their TV news from shows like Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, two popular “fake news,” or news-satire shows on Comedy Central (Stewart’s Daily Show is mentioned in the poll). They might not always have the most information the fastest, but they present the news in an entertaining way that appeals to many people. Additionally, both shows are fairly liberal, and have appeal for those who might otherwise tune into Democratic shows. Personally, I know this is true for me. I still read newspapers and check news online, but if I am going to watch it on TV I would prefer Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert to some of the others on Pew’s list, like Larry King or even MSNBC, which is considered fairly liberal.

The information in section 6 about the prevalence of electronic devices, particularly electronic ones, could be either a pro or a con for the news industry. It’s true that someone could use a hi-tech Blackberry or cell phone to get headline updates e-mailed to themselves. But they could just as easily set their DVR to record the news, go home that night, watch the first five minutes to see the headlines, fast-forward to sports at the end, and completely skip everything else. Is this person more informed because they took advantage of technology? Not necessarily. But the study also shows that an overwhelming majority of people don’t get updates on their PDAs or cell phones, so just because it’s the technology is available does not mean everyone will want to make use of it.

As for the inability of the public to recognize the three facts (Condoleezza Rice, GOP, Vladimir Putin), that’s a statement about American interest in the news and not a failure of the news media. The journalists are reporting these things, but Americans are not retaining information; they skim the headlines with little curiosity and apparently come facts don’t stick. Or maybe they were never interested in the first place. In either case, it’s disturbing. On an unrelated note, I once read an article that said an alarming number of people could not identify Iraq on a map of the Middle East. Thousands of Americans are fighting there now, and I think that’s a bit of a disgrace as well (to say nothing of whether or not they should even be there in the first place). The cell-only survey seemed consistent with a younger, less-affluent audience, especially the higher numbers for online news and the Daily Show and lower numbers for print newspapers.

the medium matters: how people get their news

The Pew Research Center recently released a report, “Online Papers Modestly Boost Newspaper Readership.” Many of the statistics used are pretty much what I expected: for younger demographics, more people get their news online, while older demographics are more likely to get their news in print form. It has shows that older people are showing the biggest growth in percentage of people who get their news online. I can understand that older generations are more eager to learn about the internet, while younger ones take it for granted since they have always had it. The report states that 1 in 3 Americans regularly get their news online, which sounds pretty accurate to me. I don’t know if it’s true of my friends and myself as college students, but for society as a whole it does not seem like a stretch to see that many people turn to the Web as a primary source. In a previous reading, we read that many journalists used to view the Web as a supplementary zone and dumping ground for news from other venues, but now journalists are beginning to realize the value of reaching more people easily through the Web.

One of the statistics that surprised me was the one that said that 53% of Americans went online the day before. Maybe my perspective is skewed as a college student or someone from an urban area, but I would say that number should be MUCH higher, especially since they say the internet action can be from work or home. I would say that 80-90% of people I know are online at least once day, even if only for a few minutes. I also found interesting the amount of time people spent each day with different kinds of news coverage. I think part of the reason so much time is spent on TV news is that people tend to turn something on and then leave it in the background while they do other things. For example, turning on the 6:00 p.m. news while eating dinner means a person can have that information in the background while they take care of other things. In other words, a person might not actually be watching for the full 67 minutes cited in the report. Conversely, someone browsing through Web sites is probably actually paying attention the whole time, so they can spend less time with the news but absorb more of it. They can specifically look at the stories they want instead of letting all the news go in the background and waiting for the one story they might be interested in.

I liked what they said about the reputation newspapers have. The section describing how people like to “relax with the paper” I found particularly reassuring. As someone who looks forward to being a print journalist and who also finds something comforting about holding a newspaper and sitting down to read it, it is comforting to know that other people share those same people. Additionally, the section on newspapers points out the speed and convenience of getting news online, which I commented on in the above paragraph. In the breakdown of what people read in newspapers, I was surprised by the increase in interest in religion stories. I thought there would be a bigger increase in interest in international news, especially since 9/11 and the war on Iraq. Instead, more people are interested in local news and business and religion pieces. I think that also reflects the medium in which people get news, but as far as the newspaper sector goes I found those numbers a little surprising.

convergence: blessing or curse?

In his article “The Meanings and Implications of Convergence,” Rich Gordon writes about the different types of convergence in the media. Though he notes several ways to separate the different fields, the best way seems to be: online media, TV and newspaper/print journalism. Gordon talks about how in the beginning Web sites were “viewed as junior partners” (67), even though they were often a last resort for news and content. Now, many news outlets are developing a whole range of separate content appropriate for the Web. This content, such as multimedia galleries, interactive features and audio and photo extras, are aimed at a different audience than the print and TV media, a point that Gordon makes in his article.

Backpack journalists, as Gordon mentions several times, are examples of another fast-growing trend. Although, as he points out, “there will always be a need for specialists,” there is also going to be a demand for journalists who can go back and forth between the disciplines (72). This type of journalist represents the ideal for proponents of convergence, because instead of having a separate write for TV, newspaper and online for the same story with the same facts, one journalist will be able to record audio and take photos for online as well as write for broadcast and/or print. He points out that many journalists are “already being asked to gather information in multiple formats” (69). This means that journalists now in schools like Medill who are being prepared to do just that will find themselves in an advantageous position when they enter the job market.

Gordon also talked about the news environment is changing slowly, so slowly in fact that some journalists who are more resistant to change might not even notice that things are changing at all. I can see how this would be appealing; for a journalist pleased with his medium and unwilling to adapt to a new one, the changes that are occurring could seem overwhelming (71-72). But though these changes might be occurring slowly, they are still occurring, and journalists will need to adapt to that.

videos worth more than 1,000 words?

In her article "Digital Photojournalism," Cheryl Diaz Meyer writes about the changing nature of photojournalism in a digital age. Drawing from her experience as a reporter in Afghanistan, Meyer writes about the difficulties of working from remote locations. Photojournalism is a field that requires the most up-to-date technology in order to maintain the quality of the photos. When photojournalists have to report from such remote locations, they need the equipment not only to take the photos, but also to transmit them back in a timely fashion. And you need both kinds of technology; not the right cameras and the video and photos will suffer, but if you can’t transmit them properly they will get back too late to be newsworthy. Taking care of the equipment seemed like a difficult task, especially without people who are trained to properly fix and use the assorted cameras, satellite phones, and other electronics. It seems like in many case the reporters just didn’t know what to expect; Meyer says a fuel filter could have saved them a lot of heartache, but she just did not know what to expect.

Actually working in the field seems like it presented a whole different set of problems. Either you sacrifice speed and get a smaller, more lightweight phone, or you take the more cumbersome one and then have an easier time transmitting photos and video. The main problem is that the people who are more qualified with the equipment are not the best reporters, and the most qualified reporters often don’t know how to use the equipment. The entire situation becomes a series of catch-22s for which there is not necessarily a better solution. Just as journalists face the challenge of updating their writing and content for a Web-driven audience with blogs and constant updates, so too must photojournalists learn to incorporate videos and digital media into their work as well.

What I liked about the article was the section on page 99 featuring Keith Jenkins, the former director of photography for washingtonpost.com and current photography editor for the Washington Post Magazine. Meyer quotes Jenkins as saying that he does not think newspapers will "change their natures," but that the quality of Web sites will continue to improve. I really agree with this chain of thought; I understand that there has been a recent decline in newspaper readership, but I don’t think this needs to mean the end of the newspaper. Newspapers will still be an important venue for print stories and still photos, but at the same time Web content will continue to expand and feature the newest kinds of technology. In time, people will be able to enjoy both; newspapers on a daily basis, and the Web for faster updates and a better variety of graphics, videos and interactive features.

midterm project

Here is my midterm photo gallery, "The Music or the Misery."

New Orleans of Future May Stay Half Its Old Size

New Orleans of Future May Stay Half Its Old Size
By Adam Nossiter

This article, which has been adapted for the Web, was originally published in the New York Times on January 21, 2007. Get the full text here.

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 20 — Is this what New Orleans has come to — a city half its old size?

But some economists and demographers are beginning to wonder whether New Orleans will top out at about half its prestorm population of about 444,000. At the moment, the population is well below half, and future gains are likely to be small.

“It will be a trickle based on what we know now,” said Elliott Stonecipher, a consultant and demographer based in Shreveport, La. “I would say we could start losing people, especially if the crime problem doesn’t get high visibility.”

The new doubts, surprisingly, are largely not based on the widespread damage caused by the flood, but rather crippling problems that existed long before Hurricane Katrina.

Before the storm, some economists say, New Orleans may have had more people than its economy could support, and the stalled repopulation is merely reflecting that. The city was already losing people at the rate of perhaps 1.5 percent a year before the hurricane.

Political leaders, worried about the loss of clout and a Congressional seat, press for people to return. But a smaller New Orleans may not be bad, some economists say.

Large-scale concentrations of deep poverty — as was the case in New Orleans before the storm — are inherently harmful to cities. The smaller New Orleans is almost certain to wind up with a far higher percentage of its population working than before Hurricane Katrina.

“Where there are high concentrations of poverty, people can’t see a way out,” said William Oakland, a retired economist from Tulane University who has studied the city’s economy for decades. “Maybe the diaspora is a blessing.”

Others, however, worry that permanently losing so many people threatens the city’s culture.

“Culture is people,” said Richard Campanella, a Tulane geographer who has written extensively about the city’s neighborhoods. “If half the local people are dispersed and no longer living cohesively in those social networks, then half of local culture is gone.”

The low population figure, 191,000 was reported by the Louisiana Recovery Authority in November last year in the most credible survey to date.

“Our expectations were just wrong,” said James A. Richardson, an economist who directs the Public Administration Institute at Louisiana State University. “I don’t believe it will ever be 450,000 again.”

With no real place for the poorest of the evacuees in the economy before the storm, New Orleans may have permanently lost that part of its population. Supporting that notion is an unpublished analysis by Mr. Oakland, the former Tulane economist, which shows unusually low rates of participation in the labor force before Hurricane Katrina.

The statistics compare the number of people actually working with the total working-age population. Employment had dropped sharply in the city from 1969 to 1999, Mr. Oakland writes.

“The job mobility was very low among the poor, so they just stay where they are, and the social welfare system shored them up,” Mr. Oakland said.

Looking to the future, another 50,000 people might eventually be added to the city’s population, Mr. Oakland suggested, but there are no guarantees.

“The longer it lasts, the more likely it is that our population is plateauing, the longer the uncertainty continues,” said Janet Speyrer, an economist at the University of New Orleans.

As for the graphic to accompany the story, I would take the information removed about unemployment rates and put it into an informational chart or diagram so readers could see the effect over time. Another idea is that there could be a map of the city with unemployment rates and population rates over different neighborhoods so readers could make the connection between densely-populated areas and worsened unemployment. I would also include some photos of the devastation that still exists and compare to photos from before, so readers would have a basis for understanding why all those people were not returning to the city. Many of the statistics in the story would be understood more easily in chart or graph form, and it would be more likely to catch the readers' eye. If there are too many numbers in a story, readers skim right over them. If they are in an interesting or interactive graphic on the side, a reader might take an extra minute to read them over.

i also made this one

For practice in class I also made this one.

flash assignment 3

A slideshow with text. These photos are of National Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day, Winter 2005. If below does not work, try clicking here.

pink is the new visual aid

The photos in newspapers and background footage on the news on TV often cannot do justice to the full depth and range of a story. With the popularity of internet multimedia visuals, the average news consumer has a much better chance of getting a more varied source of news with different facets to the reporting.

On the New York Times Web site, www.nytimes.com, there is a whole page for multimedia projects separate from the articles that go in print and are adapted to the web. For example, they have one particular visual, a photo slideshow narrated by a reporter in the background, that tells the story of a particular army unit in Iraq. The story, “The Reach of War,” has a feature where you can scroll through the photos and read the captions at whatever pace you choose while listening to the reporter, and by clicking on tabs at the top can follow previous stories done on the unit. This type of visual is important because it allows readers to connect with army personnel and get a personal connection to the story they might not have if they were just reading vague facts in print.

Another example of a visual aid can be found at www.newsweek.com, where curious web searchers can view slideshows of the week’s top celebrity photos. Viewers of “This Week in Celebrity Sightings” can browse through the week’s photos and read captions at whatever pace they choose. There are many popular blogs, like pinkisthenewblog.com, where viewers can get their share of salacious celebrity gossip in the style of the shameless celebrity stalkers and gawkers. For a more dignified look at celebrities performing, acting and on the go (as opposed to baring their underwear as they drunkenly stumble out of a Las Vegas nightclub), a legitimate news site with tamer star footage is a welcome alternative.

In the near future, the State of the Union address on Tuesday will be a chance for lots of visuals on a variety of sites. Newspapers, magazines and television stations will likely use the address to re-post certain clips and quotes and have a variety of interactive web features on different aspects of the address, campaign promises and doubts from both major political parties, and ramifications domestically and abroad.

On a less serious note, the Academy Awards in February will likely provide another opportunity for news outlets to come up with photo galleries of grinning winners, graceful losers, congratulatory nominees, and the after parties. And of course, what is any awards season without a Best Dressed list, complete with slideshows of incriminating photos?

the evolution of journalism is common sense?

This chapter from “We the Media” talks about the evolution of journalism, from “yellow” journalists and muckrakers to the open source media that allows bloggers and writers on independent news sites to voice their opinions. It’s true that this atmosphere is changing the way the world views journalism. People are more likely to get their news online than in a newspaper, and blogs are just as prominent – and, one could argue, relevant – as “serious” news outlets like the New York Times and CNN.
The author also talks about how individual people have changed the way people get their news in small steps – first the creation of the Web for businesses and college campuses, then the internet, HTML, personal computers, and eventually the “all-access” situation we have today. I am sure more advances will be made and the way people get their news will continue to change. He mentions September 11 specifically as a turning point, but I almost think that all those changes had already occurred, and the events of 9/11 were just the catalyst to make them obvious to the rest of the world.
Part of the article that I found really interesting was were he said that he was glad to get this chance to work on actively “making [his] journalism better” (18). Many journalists lament the end of “true” journalism. They believe that these online amateurs are not producing valid journalism sanctioned by a major outlet. I thought it was pretty refreshing to see him admit that even though he is a professional, all those amateurs out there could still teach him a thing or two. The popularity of this new media doesn’t need to be the end of traditional journalism, it can instead be a way to change it for the better.

assignment 1

The "button" is in the words...

a flash movie

You have to click to see, but these photos are from a trip to Asilah and Rabat, Morocco in October 2006.