As our soundslides project come to a near end I hope to give you the progress of my teammates Zach Miller and Andy McDonald. This post will be from my experience of their work as of Friday June 5, 2009.
Zach wrote his portion of the print story on Wednesday about the baseball team. By Friday (today) he had finished with all his captions, pictures and audio commentary from an interview he had with sophomore Chance Hargrove. Today we all met and Zach was able to put together his soundslides.
Andy went to Portland to cover the NWAACC softball tournament and as of Wednesday he too had his print portion of the story done. By today he was able to get all his captions, audio and pictures that he was going to use, but unfortunately was unable to get them up onto soundslides. Our plan is to help him get that done by Monday.
Other than that we just need to polish up our print story. Andy came up with the lead to tie all of our parts together and Zach came up with the conclusion.
Check out my next blog to see my most current progress.
Jun 5, 2009
May 29, 2009
Team Soundslides - My Work
For this post I am going to inform of the progress being made on Andy, Zach and my progress in creating the NWAACC soundslides. I will focus just on my aspect of the progress and look for my next post to see what the rest of our group has done.
On Wednesday, May 20 I took a trip to Spokane, WA to cover the NWAACC Track championship, taking photos, collecting information and getting audio. I took around 350 pictures and performed about 10 interviews for our soundslides project.
Since the time I got back, I have spent my class time importing the audio and pictures to the computer and have recently been working on refining the pictures that I took into ones that I will use for the slideshow. This has been a long process because I have to refine 350 pictures into about 15 of the best that will go in the slideshow.
As of now I have about 10 pictures chosen for the slideshow and next week I will begin work on editing my audio and putting captions with the pictures.
Check out my next post as I give the progress of the rest of the group, Zach and Andy.
On Wednesday, May 20 I took a trip to Spokane, WA to cover the NWAACC Track championship, taking photos, collecting information and getting audio. I took around 350 pictures and performed about 10 interviews for our soundslides project.
Since the time I got back, I have spent my class time importing the audio and pictures to the computer and have recently been working on refining the pictures that I took into ones that I will use for the slideshow. This has been a long process because I have to refine 350 pictures into about 15 of the best that will go in the slideshow.
As of now I have about 10 pictures chosen for the slideshow and next week I will begin work on editing my audio and putting captions with the pictures.
Check out my next post as I give the progress of the rest of the group, Zach and Andy.
May 15, 2009
Online Journalism site winners
After examining each of the sites that either won the Large site breaking news award of finalist for it I have come up with the site I thought was the best.
I liked the Los Angeles Times setup for the wildfires. I liked how easy it was for the user to go to whatever they wanted to get the coverage.
This site included photos, an interactive google slideshow that the user could find out what areas the fires were affecting and where shelters were located and a link to precautions people can take that lists centers and other valuable information in each county.
I actually thought the San Diego Tribune site had more information and resouces, but I thought it wasn't displayed as good as the LA Times did it. The San Diego Tribune had a ton of video's and included an audio slideshow along with google maps. The problem was that it took you straight to the print context.
Users online are different than readers in print. Online users want exactly what they are looking for right away. Displaying your information that allows the user to choose what to look at worked better for me than the San Diego Tribune version that took you straight to the print.
I liked the Los Angeles Times setup for the wildfires. I liked how easy it was for the user to go to whatever they wanted to get the coverage.
This site included photos, an interactive google slideshow that the user could find out what areas the fires were affecting and where shelters were located and a link to precautions people can take that lists centers and other valuable information in each county.
I actually thought the San Diego Tribune site had more information and resouces, but I thought it wasn't displayed as good as the LA Times did it. The San Diego Tribune had a ton of video's and included an audio slideshow along with google maps. The problem was that it took you straight to the print context.
Users online are different than readers in print. Online users want exactly what they are looking for right away. Displaying your information that allows the user to choose what to look at worked better for me than the San Diego Tribune version that took you straight to the print.
May 8, 2009
NowPublic
So what I got from NowPublic is that it is a very large citizen journalist site. According to the site, it has thousands of reporters in over 140 countries.
NowPublic was created by a company based in Vancouver, Canada and is the largest news organization of its kind. The site is funded by Rho Ventures, Rho Canada, Brightspark, GrowthWorks and members of the New York Angels.
This site utilizes the bloggers, writers and photographers around the world to create its contentand does a good job of it. Multiple sources show that this site is effective such as Time Magazine naming it one of the top 50 coolest websites of 2007 and During Hurricane Katrina, the site had more reporters there than most journalistic organizations have on their entire staff.
NowPublic was created by a company based in Vancouver, Canada and is the largest news organization of its kind. The site is funded by Rho Ventures, Rho Canada, Brightspark, GrowthWorks and members of the New York Angels.
This site utilizes the bloggers, writers and photographers around the world to create its contentand does a good job of it. Multiple sources show that this site is effective such as Time Magazine naming it one of the top 50 coolest websites of 2007 and During Hurricane Katrina, the site had more reporters there than most journalistic organizations have on their entire staff.
May 1, 2009
In: Site
A group of 20 undergraduate students from the University of Washington created a news aggregator site called In:Site.
This site gives readers news through a Facebook application that will normally include arts and culture.
Doing this through Facebook helps this group reach their target audience of 16-25 year olds that as shown through a study only 30 percent of read the news.
The site's main goal is to get news out to the younger generation and Facebook is their plan to do so. The Site is nice because it draws the user to what they are interested in with arts and culture and it allows them to create their own posts.
The problem I have with this site is that this doesn't solve the acual hard news that 16-25 year olds aren't reading. Sure they are at least reading some news but they still aren't reading the hard news that really has made news what it is.
This site gives readers news through a Facebook application that will normally include arts and culture.
Doing this through Facebook helps this group reach their target audience of 16-25 year olds that as shown through a study only 30 percent of read the news.
The site's main goal is to get news out to the younger generation and Facebook is their plan to do so. The Site is nice because it draws the user to what they are interested in with arts and culture and it allows them to create their own posts.
The problem I have with this site is that this doesn't solve the acual hard news that 16-25 year olds aren't reading. Sure they are at least reading some news but they still aren't reading the hard news that really has made news what it is.
Apr 17, 2009
Special Reports
I checked out a special report from USA Today's website and looked at a story about College Coaches making millions.
What is nice about this Special Report is the graphical links and sidebars that have graphs and more in-depth information that normal stories don't usually have.
This report is designed well because the pictures are contrasting in size and has nice graphics and images to go along with the story. The top of the page definitely draws the readers attention well.
The journalistic value of this is the in-depth coverage of the story. These special reports go far more in-depth and give more information than a normal story would give.
What is nice about this Special Report is the graphical links and sidebars that have graphs and more in-depth information that normal stories don't usually have.
This report is designed well because the pictures are contrasting in size and has nice graphics and images to go along with the story. The top of the page definitely draws the readers attention well.
The journalistic value of this is the in-depth coverage of the story. These special reports go far more in-depth and give more information than a normal story would give.
Apr 13, 2009
Bad Web Design
So for this post I will offer you an example of a poor website construction. The site that I found was www.angelfire.com/super/badwebs/ and I will further explain why this site lacks unity, contrast, hierarchy and consistency.
This site is lacking in unity because nothing looks like it belongs; everything is in different colors, fonts and styles. Nothing goes together in this site.
This site does however contrast, but far overdoes this and makes everything very difficult to read.
This site lacks hierarchy because although everything contrasts and there is no unity, nothing appears to be dominant except maybe the red sidebar with the lime green writing over it. It is not laid out in order of importance.
This site is very consistent ... consistently bad. If you click on a link within the unreadable writing you go to a new page that looks completely different from the home page, but just as ugly. No templates are used to create any consistency within this web page.
So there you have it, click on the link above and enjoy the world's worst web site and see just how bad it should never be. I hope I get 100 percent for this Ms. Otanez.
This site is lacking in unity because nothing looks like it belongs; everything is in different colors, fonts and styles. Nothing goes together in this site.
This site does however contrast, but far overdoes this and makes everything very difficult to read.
This site lacks hierarchy because although everything contrasts and there is no unity, nothing appears to be dominant except maybe the red sidebar with the lime green writing over it. It is not laid out in order of importance.
This site is very consistent ... consistently bad. If you click on a link within the unreadable writing you go to a new page that looks completely different from the home page, but just as ugly. No templates are used to create any consistency within this web page.
So there you have it, click on the link above and enjoy the world's worst web site and see just how bad it should never be. I hope I get 100 percent for this Ms. Otanez.
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