I was surprised by how positive a review some of my classmates gave The Cavalier.  I personally didn’t like it very much.  Mostly, I didn’t like the absence of pictures below the fold.  However, after reading Angela’s blog and the comments left on it, I think I was able to moderate my dislike a little bit.  Josie pointed out in a comment to Angela that The Cavalier’s page was more “user-friendly.”  On a second look at the webpage, I could really see what she meant.  While there were no more pictures, there were clearer divisions between sections.  It is very easy for a reader to see where the “Recent News” section is, where the “Sports” section is, etc.  In this way, if a reader wanted to read an article from a particular section, it would be a lot easier for them to find.  

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 In all three of my classmate’s blogs that I have read so far, I seem to be the odd one out as far as opinions go on the Harvard Crimson’s layout.  Angela gave it a C, Josie was not overly impressed, and Derek while commenting that it was professional, didn’t really keep his attention.  While I would not claim that the layout was perfect, there are some small things they could do to improve it (such as making their masthead more prominent or adding a pdf of the print edition of their paper), I thought it was overall pretty well done.  They had a slideshow, videos, plenty of graphics, and lots of articles.  Perhaps part of one’s preference is entirely personal.  I mean, what looks good to me, may not look good to Angela.  And what looks good to me may not look good to her.  It would be so hard to be a layout editor, because no matter what you do, you can’t please everyone.    

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The Cavalier Daily’s masthead is big enough.  It is clear that it is the title of the paper and not just another headline.  However, I do not think that they make it clear enough that it is a college paper’s website or that it is the University of Virginia’s paper.  In fact, I searched over the entire homepage and cannot find anything that names the association.  Above the fold looks good, there are lots of pictures.  However, as one scrolls down, the website becomes less and less interesting.  There are clear divisions between the sections of stories, but there are NO graphics.  It’s just text, text, and more text.  Frankly, it doesn’t entice me to keep scrolling down or to click on any of the articles.  I do like that they have a little section where you can see today’s print version of the paper.  Harvard did not have that.  This way readers can chose which format they prefer. 

To bring in a third comparison though, take a look at The Flat Hat’s page.  The Flat Hat has a large masthead in a fun font.  It clearly says below the title of the paper that it is affiliated with William and Mary.  They have the weather in the upper right hand corner, like many print newspapers would.  It gives little blurbs of information about the longer article below the headlines, it intersperses pictures throughout the page to keep the reader interested.  It divides the articles into sections.  There is a newscast video for those who prefer watching/listening to the news.  You can chose to view the print paper in a pdf format.  There does seem to be fewer articles on their homepage, but I personally like it’s layout better than both The Cavalier’s and The Harvard Crimson's.

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I think it’s a bit strange that The Harvard Crimson’s masthead is so small.  The title of the paper is not any bigger than some of their headlines.  When you open the webpage, the first thing that comes to your eye is not the name of the paper, which is not really a good thing.  I do think they make good use of graphics though.  They break up the different articles with a slideshow of pictures which goes along with the major articles.  They have thumbnails that go along with the blogs in the right hand side of the page.  They have a series of more pictures at the bottom of the page.  And they even have two videos on the bottom right hand side of the page.  Below the major headlines, they have little blurbs or outtakes of information from the article, which helps the reader know if they want to click on the link for more information.  They also have the page neatly set up into categories, such as “Top Stories,” “Opinion,” “Sports,” “Magazine,” “Arts,” “More News,” “Most Read.”  Over all, I would say they keep things visually interesting with pictures and headlines.  The only real fault is how small the masthead is. 

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In light of the recent (November 7) groundbreaking for the Flight 93 memorial, I am investigating how the school district and other area officials will handle the loss of funding from property tax for the local school. 

• Welcome to Shanksville-Stonycreek School District—this is part of the local school’s official website.  This section of the website gives information on the school, the area, and the residents.
• Flight 93 National Memorial—This is the National Park Service’s official website for Flight 93.  It includes information on the groundbreaking ceremony, the memorial design, video clips from residents and others involved, and more. 
• People bound by a cause can achieve great things—This is an editorial about the Flight 93 memorial written by a local man which was published in the Tribune-Democrat (Johnstown's paper).  He expresses his pleasure over the beginning of the construction.
• “We made it’: Ground broken for Flight 93 memorial—This is an article from the Tribune-Democrat about the groundbreaking. 
• Ground broken for Flight 93—This is the Daily American’s (Somerset’s paper) article on the groundbreaking.  It includes a video of the ceremony.
• PILT FAQ—This is the Department of the Interior’s FAQ on Payment in Lieu of Taxes, which is a possible way the school may be able to make up for some of the lost funds from property tax.   

It was interesting comparing the different views my classmates had on links.  Jeanine voiced that links make her feel a bit overwhelmed sometimes.  They result in a never-ending cycle of information seeking.  In contrast, Angela stresses in her comment on Derek’s blog that she loves links and that, “it's fun traversing the web through links…”  On my own blog, I found it hard to even narrow down all the functions that links fulfill.  So, I think it’s safe to say, that links are extremely powerful.  They can either really please a reader or annoy them.  As Dr. Jerz pointed out in class, sometimes you will be excited about a link and then you click on it and find it to be completely useless.  There is nothing more disappointing then being promised something and then not getting it.  So links speak loudly.  You don’t want to use too many or too few, or to link to a place which isn’t actually helpful.  As in most cases, you have to search for some kind of middle ground and be careful what you link to.     

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In reading both Angela’s and Kaitlin’s blogs on the multimedia news feature, I began to see more of the positive qualities of it.  Angela made it clearer to me how the interactive nature or the feature would interest viewers, while Kaitlin made it clear how unbiased and informative it was.  Both of their blogs steered me to consider the real function of this feature.  It seems like it would make a great informative tool to use in a classroom.  It teaches where the garage goes and what happens to the recyclables.  It seems like there is a lot more information and a lot less news.  They did have a good idea about getting that information across.  With the words, pictures, lists, interaction, and video clips, it would work well for almost any learning style (although, we all agree the videos need a little work).  But this makes me wonder how much of this feature is news and how much of it is just informative…

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Derek on his blog opined that it might not be such a good idea for newspapers to so clearly allow their position on politics and social issues to be known.  He explained that this encouraged divisions between readership (democrats read one paper, republicans another) and that it also foster bias in news articles.  While I think Derek makes some really great points, I also see advantages to newspapers being very open and clear about their standing on current controversial issues.  When they are forthright and clear about where they as a paper stand, it is easier for readers to read articles with a critical eye.  The example I used in my comment to Derek was that if I know a paper is against the death penalty and I read an article in that paper about the death penalty, I will know to read that article carefully, searching for any biases.  I would ask myself: did they interview all sides? Were they fair?  I think not only knowing the papers position allows the reader to examine the articles through a clearer lens, it also would encourage the reporters to be more unbiased.  If the readership knows where the paper stands on an issue and is viewing the articles with more suspicion, the reporter will be forced to be doubly cautious on reporting it and being fair to all sides.    

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Both Angela and Jenn in their blogs helped me to further consider the role of multimedia in the news.  Angela in her discussion of a slideshow on Megan Fox pointed out that a newspaper would never have the space to print all 18 pictures that the internet was able to.  I think this is a really important point.  There is only so much room in a newspaper.  Journalists must sort through all the articles and prioritize what will make it in and what won’t.  They have to ask themselves what picture will fit in the space and will be the most eye-catching?  On-line news does not have to worry about these concerns.  They have unlimited space.  If they have 18 pictures and want to use them all, they can do it.  If they have video clips, they can use them. 

Jenn also interestingly pointed out how powerful this limitless space and interactivity can be.  With so much space, they can use links to draw the reader from webpage to webpage in an endless cycle.  I know I’ve intended to read just one article before and ended up reading about five or six because of links.  This allows the reader to get more of what they want, but it is also much better at trapping our attentions. 

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From Robert  J. Haiman’s Best Practices for Newspaper Journalists:

“And once a reporter thinks he is on a hot trail…it seems virtually impossible, no matter how many facts you have to present, to get him off it” (57).

As usual, I am going to relate a news writing principle to the more general principles of academic paper writing.  It would seem that sometimes journalists get a little ahead of themselves, before they have done the research.  I think this happens frequently with students (yes, even including me sometimes) when they write research papers.  They have some preconceived idea in their head and they research around this idea.  If there are two articles that agree with them and 30 that disagree, they will ignore the majority and just focus on the minority that supports their opinion.  This is easier to do and it challenges your beliefs less.  This is part of the reason why I like doing research before I have too solidly entrenched myself in my thesis.  The real skill is being open-minded and paying attention to everything that is out there.  Once you’ve taken a look at everything out there and carefully thought about it, now you can consider what angle you want to take.  But even when you have picked your angle, you can’t ignore the opposition.  You need to address it.  In a research paper you need to explain why they are wrong and your side is right.  It’s the same type of thing in a newspaper article (minus the explaining why you’re right).  You need to interview the opposition and the side you feel is “right”.  When a reporter begins writing an article from a “’preconceived thesis’” (57), nothing good is going to come from it.  Just as in academic papers this type of blind conviction frequently leads us away from the really good, complex paper, this type of reporting results in articles on “non-news” and articles with skewed “frames” (58).  Do your research and don’t avoid any side.

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In order to consider what the function of links are I took a look at the article “Where the Botched Children’s Book Adaptations Are” on Wired.  Below is my list of functions they fulfill:

• While it is easy enough to look up information on something you may not be familiar with by simply going to a search engine and typing in the unknown word, using links directs readers specifically to what the author may be referring to. 

• It allows authors to give credit to someone else who they may have gotten ideas from.

•  It helps direct the reader to more information. 

• It saves the reader time from having to look whatever it is up, instead they just have to click and wait for the page to load. 

• But most importantly, it gives the author a good way to make their article briefer.  Instead of having to go into an elaborate explanation or summary of something, the author can save both their time (by not having to provide this information) and the readers’ time (who if they already know about the information don’t have to slog through the author’s recap).   

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The multimedia news feature from the Arizona Star about recycling and garbage disposal follows two of my three rules for effective use of video.  They did chose an evergreen topic and something was added to the understanding of the viewer through the videos.  However, it violated the time issue.  While no single clip was overly long, there were so many of them that it built up to become too much.  I would have much preferred to just read the information; it would have been a lot faster.  Some of the clips were beneficial though, so I think that if they had used shorter clips or maybe not used so many clips, it would have been more effective.  Especially for the recycling section, there was too much talking in the video and it was the same person for all of them.  It didn’t make things very interesting for the audience. The man was saying informative things, but still I do not think the average viewers’ attention span would be kept by the same person, saying the same type of thing in every clip.  The pictures for each step though were good.  They also kept the text to a minimum and organized it neatly into colored charts and bullets, which made it fast and easy to read and understand.  So my main complaint is just the quantity and length of video.      

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If you just scroll down a little bit on the New York Times’ website, on the left hand side there is a box specifically for video clips.  Since I doubt most people who visit the website are going to go searching for videos, I thought it was interesting to look at what videos the chose to put somewhere prominent, how they are, and how they are done. 

There were four videos, three in the style category and one in the science.  The first two were a little bit longer, they were about five and half minutes each, while the second two were just a little over two minutes.  None of these video clips were breaking news; they were instead evergreen stories which could be newsworthy for some time.  This makes sense, since more effort must go into making this video clips so the paper would want them to last longer. 

Most notably though, all four of the videos focused on subject matter that without pictures/audio would not have had as much of an impact on the viewer.  The first video, “Crossing the Concourse”, capitalized on both the use of music and of visuals.  It was the story of pianist Sara Buechner who was once David Buechner.  The use of video clips helped make the story more relatable to the audience and helped make her challenges seem more real.  The second clip, “Saving Sea Turtles, On Nest at a Time,” chronicled the continuing struggle of sea turtles against such forces as global warming and continued development of land.  The video made the story more effective since it could actually show clips of the baby sea turtles, thereby pulling at the viewers heartstrings.  The third video, “On the Street: Colors,” was basically a series of pictures with audio commentary.  Without the pictures, this video would have been almost impossible.  Describing what people are wearing and then commenting on it, would take twice as long and be much less effective than just showing a picture of it.  And the last clip, "Vows: Melissa & Adam", was the story of how two people met and fell in love.  Again this video was more effective as a video than it would have been as a story, since seeing the two sit with each other and talk about their story gets the emotions across better than simply quoting their words. 

So essentially, it seems that there are three important considerations for video use:

1. Keep them short; none of them were longer than five minutes.  People don’t have the time of the attention spans to watch long videos.

2. More effort is put into a video, so make sure you can get more mileage out of your time, by making it evergreen.

3. Make sure that what you pick to make a video of will be more effectively expressed by being video.  Don’t just make a video, so you have a video.  Pick something which will have greater effect on the reader because it is video and not just words. 

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There was a commonality between Angela’s blog, Richelle’s blog, and the comment I left on Angela’s blog about investigative journalism.  All three of us in our own way recognized the folklore which surrounds investigative reporting.  Angela talked about its romanticism, Richelle compared it to the movie Erin Brokovich, and I compared it to a Lois and Clark episode.  Essentially, all three of us recognized the disparity between the real world and the ideal world where investigative journalism is as easy as the News Manual makes it sound.  Particularly as students with limited time and contacts, it’s a lot harder and a lot more serious than some may realize.  I’m not saying it isn’t possible.  But I do think it’s a lot harder than TV and movies make it look.  In real life, there are real repercussions.  What you write or discover could result in death threats, people losing their jobs, and being sued for defamation.  

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Anytime I consider a pitch for this class or how I am going to go about writing an article my main concern is always who I can use as sources.  Since journalists are not supposed to let their opinion enter the article, the journalist needs to have many quotes from many sides of an issue.  Since we are not writing for a real paper, it is doubly difficult to find people willing to take time from their busy schedules and talk to some random college student for an article that will never be published.  While some people will graciously and kindly take time out of their busy day to help a student-journalist out, others simply don’t have the time to do so.  This is when knowing a variety of people comes in handy.  People that you know are obviously going to be more willing to talk to you.  Furthermore, in some cases, you may not even know that there is an opportunity for a story if you don’t have contacts to clue you in to it.  Nowhere are these contacts more important than in investigative journalism.  Without multiple reliable sources to tip you off, help get you information, and point you to other people to talk to it would be almost impossible to write a good article.  It helps make me appreciate how hard it must be to start out as a new journalist in a new place without any contacts at all.  It would take a good amount of time and care to make and retain these contacts.   The News Manual explains, “We cannot stress often enough how important a journalist's contacts are. These are the people who can give you story ideas, information and tell you when you are on the wrong track. Make as many contacts as you can - and look after them as you would a friend.”  As a student with few contacts, I can really understand how important it is to have contacts and how difficult it would be for new journalists. 

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