Blog Wrap up

And so the quarter is coming to an end. Time for projects, papers, and finals. Oh Yay! Over this past quarter, I have kept this blog in order to analyze different news sites. With this, I have also talked explored new media and it is changing.

When looking at these sites, I was looking to see what type of news they presented, what multimedia was offered on the sites, and the interactivity available for readers. The news offered on the different sites varied.

On New York Times, it was mostly covering American news but not forgetting foreign news also. This offered a good balance for someone looking for national news but someone who is also interested in what is going on in the world. Since this is a news site, interactivity is limited to keep standards high I assume. In terms of multimedia, this site offered a lot. From pictures in articles to slideshows and videos.

BBC on the other hand focused on international news. Since BBC is a UK company one would expect most of its news to be specifically British, but that is not the case which is what makes it a good source for news with a different point of view than American. Another good job in multimedia offering pictures and videos. There is more interactivity offering viewers to have direct input on topics in “Have Your Say.”

Vivir Latino, a community specific blog looked at issued relating to minorities. Looking at the name one would expect there to be mostly Latino news, which is for the majority true but this blog also posts news that relates to minorities as a whole. Multimedia wise it offered pictures and the occasional videos. Interactivity here came in the form of allowing comments.

Jack and Jill politics focuses more on the African-American Community. Everyday it would offer a variety of news on different issues but focusing a lot on the new president. Interactivity was great on this site allowing users to post their own discussions and issues on a open daily thread called. Multimedia was videos and pictures.

Pajamas Media was a conservative site offering a variety of articles on different news issues with a conservative point of view. This site offered pictures and videos. In terms of interactivity it allowed reader comments.

Talking Points Memo was a liberal news blog offering stories from a liberal perspective. This site offered photos, slideshows, and videos. Interns of interactivity it offered the ability for users to leave comments.

Out of the three criteria, the most important to me was interactivity. This is because blogs can post whatever they want but allowing the reader the opportunity to keep them in check is important. This way users can have an input on news and be able to have people to talk with about issues that they are interested in also.

The key difference in print and newscasts against blogs and online news is that the latter has the ability for someone to post whatever they want. Online has more of an ability to serve readers by giving them multiple ways in which to receive the news. People can read it, watch it, or just look at pictures about it.

While doing this class I was also exposed to new media I would probably have avoided otherwise or would have only joined when necessary. Still no clear way about how I feel about this. So much different new sites are being developed, some I still find useless, Delicious, others interesting, Twitter. Maybe one day I’ll finally give in and join all these, but not right now.

I think online news is what is in store for the future, so far I like it.

What new media do news sites use

Now that I have talked about what new media that I use, I decided to look at what sites so the sites I'm following use. I went to look at stories that would come up on the blog roll and see what options they offered.

New York Times

• Likedin
• Mixx
• Permalink
• Digg
• Myspace
• Facebook
• Yahoo Buzz

BBC

• Delicious
• Digg
• Reddit
• Facebook
• Stumble Upon

Talking Points Memo

• YouTube
• Digg
• Delicious
• Reddit
• Facebook
• Newsvine
• Stumble Upon

Pajamas Media

• Email
• Print
• Digg
• Myspace
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Favorites
• Delicious
• Goggle
• Live (MSN)
• Stumble Upon

Jack and Jill

• YouTube

Vivir Latino

• none

Looking at these lists, it seems that most sites are looking for ways to facilitate users being able to spread the word on a certain article besides e-mail and copy-and-pasting links to people. Some of these options including Digg are sites that help users find and share stories that they find interesting and help give users suggestions on what they might like. Others, such as Facebook, are social networking sites that help users post links and stories for their friends to see and read.

"New Media" and you! (Well me really...)

Today's internet world is quickly changing. Even for someone like me a "digital native" it is difficult to get accustomed to all the new ways to use the internet. In class today, guest speaker Bruce from KQED public radio talked about the evolution of journalism from the start where many newspapers competed to today's world where newspapers are struggling to stay afloat.

Seeing all this technology evolve today, I can't imagine how difficult it might be for an old fashion journalist to adopt to today's new ways of communicating and getting news.

Here is Valeria's take on different new media sites.

Facebook
My favorite networking site. I started with Myspace and moved on to Facebook when I got to college. This site was quickly expanded to high school and now to anyone who wants to join. The original purpose being for students to connect to fellow classmates and help each other with school, now it has moved on to people not having to actually talk to each other about their favorite music just simply look someone up and read their information. Many changes have happed that have upset its faithful users and still are more to come, but none of that has dettered used from the site.

Twitter
At first I hated the idea of Twitter and did not understand the purpose. I saw it as simply constant Facebook status updates. Though I still see it as a just telling people what you are doing, I appreciate being able to direclty tell something to someone. Where in Facebook you would write on someone's wall, here you just 'tweet' at them and they can respond. The real reason I started using Twitter is when I saw that some of my favorite celebrities use it and actually respond to fans. I still have not had the guts to try and tweet at any, for now I shall just read the tweets.

Blogs
There are many different sites to blog on, LiveJournal, WordPress, and Blogger. These are web logs where people can start a blog about basically anything from cats to climbing. I love blogs. I started using them in high school where I had one of my own where I would just write about my life and it was open just to friends. Now I have moved away from that and have this blog (yay!) and use blogs for music, television, and sports. What I love the most about blogs is the communities they create. Even though you might not get to know other users, you get to recognize the user name and create a virtual friendship.

Try some of these out!

Interactivity within sites

My favorite part about blogs is the interaction between users on the site. This ability helps to create a community within the site's users. Even if the people never meet, they get to recognize user names and their likes or dislikes. While reading through the different sites i decided to list what they offer in terms of user input.

News Sites:
New York Times offers users the ability to comment on articles in the page. These comments seem to be monitored closely because after a while comments are no longer accepted.

BBC News offers little user input. Readers can email articles to others. There is a section called "Have Your Say" where users can discussed topics posted by the website.

News Blogs:
Talking Points Memo offers users the ability to comment directly on the articles page.

Pajamas Media
This site also gives the reader the ability to comment on articles.

Community Specific Blog:
Jack and Jill Politics probably has the best in user interaction. Everyday there is a post titled "Open Thread" where the users put up what news, link, or videos they want and others can comment on them. People here can also put up open discussion questions not necessarily news.

Since I am a big fan of blogs and user interaction, I think that Jack and Jill is the best blog. Unlike the rest, this site offers user the ability to post what they want, not just in comments but also in topics. Understandably news sites cannot do this because needed to keep quality but they should allow more user involvement I think, like the news blogs. I find it distracting to have to go a completely separate page to see what others think about the same topic, so i enjoy having comments below the article like Talking Points Memo and Pajamas Media.

Since you can tell I love comments so much, feel free to.

Community specific languange

When reading through the blogs Jack and Jill and VivirLatino I have noticed the language used in both the blog itself and the comments use language specific to the community.

An example from Jack and Jill is the first comment on a picture of Sasha and Malia Obama at the inaguration day parade looking bored. Because this community is targetted towards the African American audience, this kind of language is probably seen as acceptable.

The blog VivirLationo incorporates a spanglish language approach to their blog. For example their description section starts out with the Spanish greeting "Hola!" with the description following being in English. This language says that he blog is intended for bilingual readers, though people familiar with the language and its slang could probably also read it without much difficulty.

Between these two blogs, Iwould feel more comforatble commenting on the second, this is probably because I am Latina. When reading the first comment on Jack and Jill I felt uncomfortable and thought that I never post slang like that on a blog even with the ethnic invisibility of the internet.

Beat Blogging

In today's technologically advanced world, it seems that just about anyone can become a journalist. While blogs and sites such as Twitter pose a threat to traditional journalist styles, these can also be helpful to today's journalists.

Blogs and online news sites have become the main way people are getting their news nowadays. Journalists are now taking advantage of these things to help better their own stories and how they get their news. Many news sites lately I have noticed have taken blogs into consideration when publishing stories. Stories will focus on subjects that people have been blogging about.

At a lecture by Katherine Fong "Do innovations like beat blogging & citizen journalism improve inclusion?" she talked about the Mercury News' attempt to have beat blogging. Fong talked about the blog Green Tech Beat where people could join and talk about green initiatives. While she said that the blog had not been all that successful because of the lack of time the author had to put into it, the blog was going in the right direction. One aspect of the blog that was helpful was to the author was that members had to answer questions such as occuption and why they were interested in a blog about green technology. This helped the blog's author, Matt Nauman find people to connect with when he needed help on certain topics.

Beat Blogging has helped news sites and news blogs alike. Input from readers and viewers can help enhance stories to give a first person perspective. For example on community specific blogs such as Jack and Jill people can help by giving their input on their opinions on the inauguration day ceremonies or by thier own experience if they were there. The same applies to big newspapers such as The New York Times. People can help add to stories by sharing what they felt being at the ceremonies.

Mixing technologies

Today much more technology is interconnected, for example people can now get Facebook updates to your mobile phone. Similarly, now you can get news and sports updates on your phone wherever you go. As explained in the Briggs textbook, the internet is now adapting to different technologies such as the new phones and ipods.

Though I am a fan of technology, I like to keep them separate. I have had a cell phone for a couple years now and even though they now offer phones with many features, I just use my phone to call people on. I do have some friends who get sports updates on their phone to follow games that they either can't attend or watch.

As intrigued and tempted I am to purchase the new iphone i try to refrain away from it because of all the temptation the phone comes with. Staying away from text messaging during class is difficult enough, I couldn't imagine trying to avoid checking my facebook on my phone and try to listen to a lecture.