My Life and The New York Times, One in 8 Million

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It's been a while since the last time I was on nytimes.com; maybe a few seconds.  The online version of The New York Times has been my start-up page on Firefox for about a year now, and has become a immense part of my life.  It broke the news to me about Ted Kennedy's passing, the two major shootings in Pittsburgh this year, and most recently, Lou Dobb's resignation from CNN.  While the organization and layout can be hectic, and I don't care much for Chandler Burr, but it really has become an indispensable part of my life.

But my favorite feature of the site is by far One in 8 Million.  I actually mentioned the feature in a comment on Matthew Henderson's blogs recently, because it has featured LGBT people in the past.  It is an audio/visual slide show that highlights a different person living in the Naked City each week, but I can't describe it as well as The NYTimes does:

"New York is a city of characters. On the subway and in its streets, from the intensity of Midtown to the intimacy of neighborhood blocks, is a 305-square-mile parade of people with something to say. This is a collection of a few of their passions and problems, relationships and routines, vocations and obsessions."

It's a really unique concept, to try and profile an entire city one person at a time, and it's a really unassuming (but effective) name for the feature.  The tone and the black-and-white theme reminds me of listening to This American Life as a child, listening to unique and down-right strange people revealing the deepest parts of their lives.

Original Assignment

2 Comments

Matt Henderson said:

I agree that the New York Times does a great job of representing people at their everyday, ordinary best. They really have a way of making people who might not be the most obviously newsworthy interesting just by virtue of their individuality. I don't think features like this would work anywhere near as well in a standard hard-copy newspaper format. There wouldn't be enough room for all of these wonderfully evocative pictures, and you certainly wouldn't have room to put down in text all the stuff people say about themselves. It also wouldn't be as interesting; when you can hear someone talking, you get a much fuller sense of their personality than just reading what they said in an article. That's what keeps these stories newsworthy--getting to observe all the quirks in their voice along with numerous pictures that show them in their normal environments. As they say in the movie business, these kinds of features are more like interesting character studies than plot-driven action movies.

Wendy Scott said:

Andrew I think you have really goood points in your post. The fact that you have New York Times as your home page is pretty legit. I have CNN as mine but I am on that for like two seconds. It is sometimes good in my oppinion to have the news, the newspapers that have websites on the front page if it is not something you seek into looking at everyday. It kind gives me a push to research and get a understanding of what is going on in the world.
Personally I have never heard of the One in 8 Million but I have a a fetish with New York and the city itself so it is interesiting tht they target individual people to get there notes, there point, and life happenings. It was cool to view the stories that were posted.

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