The Fourth Estate Unfolds: Journalistic Fears

I know this wasn't assigned but I want to give a voice for this, I care about this issue.

With each passing month the Netscape looks more and more like that of the short film EPIC 2015, while the mergers and brand names are outdated, the message remains the same.

http://epic.makingithappen.co.uk/

Our job is to make sure this does not happen. News must be accessible to everyone, and it must remain in professional hands. So how does this effect our election one might ask?

There's much talk but it's not about the issues. Once in the texan debate was it covered, but then CNN switched to hypothesizing about what the a Hillary-Obama handshake meant.

Headlines all over call Hillary the nearly defeated. Tomorrow they may call her the comeback kid once again. Elections are a popularity contest now, and it's entirely out of our hands.

Supposedly viewers control what they want to hear, and what they are hearing is a lot of jabber. No one is making definitive claims. Yet most of them aren't watching TV. They are in the blogsphere and in video commentary boards. They are chattering about issues yes. Intelligently? Yes. But there aren't raging debates going on with anyone who is not seeking them out.

What happened to debating? This is the polarization many speak of. It is not that our country is divided into two nations named Hippie-Libby Town and Jesus Land. We just aren't talking about our beliefs as we once did. Debates lack fighting. They are too civil. Or they are too violent. Resorting to personal attacks instead of picking apart the issues.

Socially we have "progressed" and this election seems to be about that on the democratic side. No one that was a white male, even if they were saying the right things, such as Biden and Richardson, was going to be kept within the running.

They are the same words being said, the faces have just changed. The coverage about the election is not as different from the 2000 or 2004 election. It's the same old story.

There's just more at stake.

The Difference About Writing for the Web

• What's unique about writing for the Web?
  
• How netizens read
• How to satisfy reader habits on the Web

Netizens are you call them, or viewers as I do, have their hands in so many places that its hard. The web is a unique place because you can write all of your relevant content and then you can add extra pages for people that want to read more. You can post entire photo galleries instead of having to carefully select which picture is going to go on the front page that day.

People interact with you, posting everything from insightful to crude comments on your stories. If they like your story they can take it and move chunks of the information on to their own website or provide a link to your story. Much more simple than the newspaper clippings of the past.

You have to think like a scanner or viewer. Not like a newspaper writer. You have to be able to do everything and you have to be able to do it well otherwise there is no point in going on with the work. You need to format it in an F shape so that your readers can clearly see what works and what does not.

Election Coverage is good but scattered

Find out how Campaign 2008 is being covered by mainstream online media, and other off-the-beaten path online publications. Blog (i) common trends in the coverage and (ii) what in the coverage is/are uniquely OJ stuff:

Each of the websites for News like Time Magazine and CNN.com, that take viewers directly to links about the three candidates and how the primaries are running.

Editorializing. Pollsters have been screwing up on the numbers, so the commentary people have stepped in to tell us how we are going to vote. There are even more vlogging and talking heads than there were during the 2004 election, and its not just Stephen Colbert only though it makes you wish it was.

One trend is, Ditch the Dinosaur named John McCain. I am a democrat but I think that more coverage besides Fox news should also go to John McCain. It's because the primary is running so fiercely and it probably wont end any time soon. Maybe by the start of summer if one of them gets enough electoral votes.

Never Ending primary is another trend. This should be known because what is uniquely journalist about it is how they travel around from state to state, in search of the never ending primary. Election coverage has never been like this. It has given local news a nationalistic pride and parts of the country are given a platform to speak on they have not been offered in years. Suddenly tiny states in the caucus and primary are important. This will be the election of the never ending primary and right now it is anyones guess who will come out on top.

One of the trends is black people vrs. white women. An enigmatic mixed race man and a former first lady and white woman are much more interesting to see duke out and force their country to think about change, an angle the media got out early. I like this trend the least, and I can only see it continuing as their pasts come to light or if they or one of their PR people slip up in a comment. It doesnt aid the election or issues but it does keep people interested.

Of all these I think the most journalistic and newsy is actually Yahoo. It gives clear definitions on all the candidates and how their campaigns have changed or made the news that day. It has a political dashboard, and refuses to take sides.

It is the most unbiased easily accessible spreadsheet on the net, and my source for online election coverage.

Welcome to the first post of the rest of your life....that sounded wittier in my head.

LitBlog's primary purpose is to give you literature from the broad definition of it. This means what I give you or provide links to isn't supposed to be "academic" or boring. I won't be the pennicle of high culture but I can promise you I won't be like any other blog with poor reviews of movies you have seen or single posts of awful photoshopped images in the vein of lolcats in which martin luther king jr. says I Has U a dream but i eated it.

and now....

The Work of H. H. Munroe

There are only a handful of nineteenth century authors consistently seen by the average reader which is a shame, because it every so often happens that a man of wit slip through the cracks. It's hard not to love a man whose last words were "Put out that goddamn cigarette!" H.H. Munroe or Saki as he went by is easy to read. This is unheard of in most short stories. Anyone who has taken an english class can attest that to that. Here are two shorts that give you an idea what you are getting into. The first is an awesome werewolf story about stupid people and the art of illusion.

http://www.online-literature.com/hh-munro/1887/

I'll be posting more from him later.

Unauthorized Parody of the Day

Thanks to the internet unauthorized foreign copies of works have resurfaced. This is brilliance from the eastern block. If you have ever been a kid, then you know winnie the pooh. But do you know Vinni Puh? You will. He's a brown panda bear with more humor than the multimillion dollar disney version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qam9JBk5Oig

First Post

The journalism is the purveyor and the delivery system of knowledge that politicians quote their facts from. It is the source of sports commentary that blogs mercilessly steal from. It is the way in which celebrities are

We know what other people don't so they don't have to know it, or in the reverse, reaffirm what little people know and corroborate what the experts say. Journalists must keep their work stylish, fun, informative, and simple. This applies to the stuff I learned on the links too.

I like Mindy McAdams layouts page. I am going to go with the first one. It may not be the fancyist but its simple.

Think about the stuff on your page as solid boxes. The main text is one big box. A vertical stack of buttons is a small box. A simple page might look like this: