Blogs and News Publications

The assigned readings stress the idea that technology is dulling the sharp minds of the men and women of the 21st century. Obtaining information has never been easier or less time-consuming. We go to websites craving instant satisfaction. We search for our desired slice of news, and leave the rest of the information pie untouched. Tonight's authors mainly blame Google. On this immensely popular site, all a user has to do is type his or her search content and click on the first link that appears. In the golden days before the Internet, before the art of skimming a book was replaced with high speed scrolling, before the Dewey Decimal system caved under the weight of the almighty search engine, the process of finding information was much different. The sheer simplicity of discovering what you want online is one of the main complaints addressed by tonight's articles. Now people can filter out all the information they don't want when doing an assignment or reading an online news article. When paging through a book students are forced to come into contact with additional information. Books and print newspapers greatly assist in educating readers by bombarding them with extra facts, figures and content while skimming for the page they want. As tonight's authors note, this happens far less on the Internet. In a way, Google allows people to obtain information with tunnel vision. People are far less likely to stumble across additional, fascinating information when completing a narrow search on Google.

A way to combat this trend on my news site, may be to try and stage instances of serendipity. In a risky maneuver my site will briefly eliminate the traditional search function user have grown so attached to. Of course, my site will still have a search function. No doubt, users would become exceedingly frustrated while navigating a site without a handy search tool. The difference is, our search tool will not just spew out articles related to the words typed into the search window. Only the first three hits will be related to the user's search. The other hits will be randomly selected from our daily news stories and our archives. This will give some of our readers a chance to make exhilarating discoveries, in the same vein of traditional newspaper readers. At the same time, this function will not anger people who are in a hurry, because the first three hits will actually relate to their desired search. Hopefully this function will stimulate the deep learning tonight's authors feel users are missing out on in the Internet era.

My online publication will also have to be visually appealing. The articles said that most users only spend a few minutes or mere seconds on news sites. One author called this "snacking" and compared the process to his young daughter channel surfing from the couch. As the authors revealed, if users do not like your site, they will have no problem clicking away from it, just as a TV viewer would change a channel. For this reason we need to draw users in immediately. Our site cannot appear clunky or too jammed up with text. Too many users complain of information overload, as so many news sites try to cram in as much news as possible in a tiny window. This is why, as I have mentioned in prior blogs, my news team will adapt a classic newspaper, front page style for the homepage. The look will remind readers of the traditional newspapers they no longer read over breakfast. The design will hardly overwhelm users with an absurd amount of detail.

The articles also mentioned that the majority of documented visits to a website are purely accidental. Users mean to end up at some other site and somehow stumble upon the wrong web page. Our site will be far more popular if we can somehow convince these accidental wanderers to visit for a while. This will also be accomplished by our unique homepage. As I mentioned, our homepage will adopt the look of the front page of a newspaper. The only difference is that this page will feature far more pictures than text. Like the articles said, users only digest small portions of information at a time. They clearly prefer shorter articles to longer ones. So our front page will feature wonderful photographs with the tiny snippets of information that users adore. However, if the user decides to click on the photo or short textual description, they will be taken to the entire article on a different page.

We will also send members of our staff onto the Internet to delve deep into the blogosphere. Blogs generate a major amount of attention to sites. These other sites are not always blogs, but often picture databases, or in our case, a news publication. We will have staff members entering blogging communities and discussing our site, attempting to generate a positive buzz, which will catch on and send bloggers to check out our news site. From there these bloggers will come to our site and have the opportunity to tackle new issues on the blog available on our webpage.

Allowing time for staff members to penetrate the blogging community will be beneficial, whether it generates more users or not. This is because, as the articles said, poignant news stories are often lurking within blogs. Some of these blogs will undoubtedly be filled with rich information that will give my staff of journalists a wealth of ideas. These visits to blogs will surely produce many story leads.

As Persephone Miel addressed, despite the broad circulation of the Internet, some populations are still widely ignored. My site will do its best to engage these users and report on the issues that are important to them. Citizens of Kyrgyzstan showed the world how powerful blogs can be. They were able to rally support against their crooked government by using blogs to expose their dictator's wrongdoings. The blogs arranged meetings, informed readers that their leader was a tyrant, and allowed citizens to unite in a way that was forbidden outside of the blogosphere. Every year my news site will do a massive fundraiser in an attempt to raise money for countries with limited Internet access. We will donate the money to campaigns, like the one Miel is associated with, while striving to spread information to the remote parts of the world. We will also report on foreign countries that are too often neglected by traditional news sites, in favor of national stories.