Blogged Down

After hearing Barack Obama give Sun-Times writer Lynn Sweet a shout-out at his first press conference, I decided to check out Lynn's blog. Presumably, these are all stories she wrote, right? The most recent update threw me off a bit, as it was posted not by Lynn Sweet but rather by "admin." Regardless, the blog doesn't appear to offer much original content. I haven't checked every story, but I'm guessing they're the same Sweet articles that are getting published in the paper that day. Further down the page, there's a video post of that Obama news conference and a transcript, but no comment on the president-elect asking Lynn about her injured arm. That's the kind of insight I would look for on such a blog.

Also: The Sun-Times' Oprah Blog is not a blog written by Oprah, but rather one entirely about her. Odd. I prefer blogs like Roger Ebert's and those at the Chicago Tribune, where staff offer original insights and take a slightly more personal slant on things. The news is everywhere. Worthwhile commentary is what interests me, as far as blogs are concerned.

Also, Sun-Times, I think it's time to put the R. Kelly blog out to pasture.

Congress All ATwitter

Once upon a time, in a less enlightened era, Congress was apparently unable to use Twitter. Thankfully, for people like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, an online campaign convinced Congress to modernize its rules and allow representatives to speak to their constituents on the popular social network.

You can check out a record of the movement, apparently a brainchild of Texas Republican John Culberson, at letourcongresstweet.org.

Of course, now that the presidential campaign is over, federal tweets are a bit more rare to come across. Though the rules preventing Twitter use were intended to prevent elected officials from using the platform to campaign, it appears as though that's all Twitter was being used for. Unsurprisingly, Obama has the most recent tweet, having thanked his supporters on Nov. 5, but most of the other accounts I've sampled has fallen out of use. Hillary: Oct. 30. Biden: Aug. 13. Dodd: Jan. 3.

Other congressional Twitters are listed here. For the record, 14 Democrats and 25 Republicans.

A Series of Tubes?

David Carr over at the New York Times has penned an interesting article on Barack Obama's use of social networks.

“Thomas Jefferson used newspapers to win the presidency, F.D.R. used radio to change the way he governed, J.F.K. was the first president to understand television, and Howard Dean saw the value of the Web for raising money,” said Ranjit Mathoda, a lawyer and money manager who blogs at Mathoda.com. “But Senator Barack Obama understood that you could use the Web to lower the cost of building a political brand, create a sense of connection and engagement, and dispense with the command and control method of governing to allow people to self-organize to do the work.”

Just as Jefferson, FDR and JFK used new information distribution methods to appeal to new and alienated voters, so too has Barack Obama. I do believe there is a distinction, though, as Obama may have done so much more effectively than any of his predecessors. Obama's online operation has, frankly, outpaced those of some of the world's preeminent media companies and, as the article points out, he now has a loyal (for the time being) and captive audience.

Will Obama's mastery of the Web give the first three estates an advantage over the fourth?

That’s the thing about pipes today: they run both ways.

November 5th's Best Frontpages

Online journalism may be the future, but apparently there is still a market for newspapers... as mementos. Thanks to the Internet, at least I can now browse through the frontpages of the nation's papers at will. The Sun-Times cover above is my favorite, probably not coincidentally because it is also my hometown paper of choice. Oprah liked it too. Here are my selections for the best/most interesting designs on such a momentous day:

Orlando Sentinel	Hartford Courant
Record Searchlight	The Bakersfield Californian
The Star Press	The Winchester Sun
The Times-Picayune	The Kansas City-Star
AM New York	Staten Island Advance
The Charlotte Observer	Statesman Journal
The Patriot-News	O Globo
Le Journal de Montréal	Winnipeg Sun
Winnipeg Free Press	El Periódico de Catalunya

Of interest:

1. Though I couldn't avoid selecting a few that did so, I hated any paper that ran "historic" or "history" in their headline. It's an empty statement; every presidential election has been historic and every one will be historic. Was this one particularly significant? Yeah, but I think you could have done better than the trite "historic."


2. The Times-Picayune and Staten Island Advance handled the "historic" aspect of the election very well, by illustrating exactly how Obama is different than our other 43 presidents. Kudos.


3. The only reason I selected the Statesman Journal is because of its headline - "epic win" is a catchphrase of sorts among people who spend entirely too much time on the Internet, and I can't help but think that some sly copy editor thought he was being especially clever when he suggested that one.


4. O Globo's political cartoon is particularly odd, especially seeing as how it includes Arnold Schwarzenegger.


5. The Winnipeg Sun: Apparently fans of cartoons.


6. The Winnipeg Free Press seems to give itself quite a bit of credit for Obama's win - and is their capitalization of "American Idol" some sort of dig at U.S. culture or what?


7. I suspect the El Periódico frontpage may actually be from the day preceding the results (nope, can't read Spanish), but it's interesting nonetheless.

Huffington Handles Drudge, Handily

The last few posts have been an examination and critique of how The Huffington Post handles elements of online news delivery that are often points of contention or are otherwise notable. As part of my ongoing comparison of The Post and The Drudge Report, I will now examine how The Drudge Report handles these elements.

Video: The Drudge Report offers no video content on site, as it only links to other Web sites.
Slideshows: See above.
Linking: The Drudge Report is extremely experienced with linking, seeing as how that's all it does.

Okay, so it's not really a fair comparison. I'm being somewhat facetious. Let's talk about a real issue: the frontpage.

My last blog complained about the disjointed, inconsistently arranged frontpage of The Huffington Post. Still, at least The Post has color, photos and I know that when I click a link I'll be reading something on The Post. That way I can then interpret and filter said story as necessary based on my own conclusions about the authors. Drudge, meanwhile, offers blocks of BLACK TEXT IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS THAT MAY LEAD TO SOME SITE OF DUBIOUS ORIGIN. This is neither easily navigable or soothing to the eyes. Simple and basic and consistent, undoubtedly, but I have no desire to scan these same indistinguishable blocks of text every time I want to check the news.

One way I judge a site's layout is how closely the columns align at the bottom of the page. This isn't a practical concern but it does indicate, I think, how much effort goes into the design and how sound the fundamental concept is. Despite Drudge having nothing more to account for then blocks of text, the columns are entirely different lengths on his page. Ugly. And why, praytell, is the first link of the blogrollish area of his middle column a link to the very site I'm already on?

Huffington Handles: The Frontpage

The Huffington Post's frontpage is one area in which they could improve. I do enjoy the real estate that their primary story receives on the top of the page, but after that I find it hard to differentiate between stories of importance and ones I'm not interested in. Following a photo or other media element, The Post often just displays a bunch of center-aligned text that could link to one or many stories. How do I decide what's of value, especially when the headlines are so generic?

Problems persist further down the page. There is some aesthetic dissonance when, because of the three column layout, the page is disjointed horizontally. Stories, pictures and ads become poorly aligned and are frequently side-by-side despite being unrelated. This is one reason I really enjoy the layout of the new Miami Herald Web site, with its horizontal compartments.

Furthermore, the personal blogs running down the left side of the site are usually uninteresting to me; I've talked before about the unnecessary noise on the Internet and my lack of interest in it. Occasionally, though, a blog is presented as a story elsewhere on the site, which, while it sometimes (accidentally) brings my attention to something worthwhile, usually just misleads me.

Other complaints: The colored labels on many stories seem amateurish, many stylistic elements are inconsistent, new stories are sometimes buried beneath news I've already read, many photos and graphics are entirely unnecessary on the frontpage.

The Post's frontpage is still a bit more informative than The Drudge Report's, but it isn't nearly as clean as it could be.

Huffington Handles: Linking, Etc.

As you might've guessed, The Huffington Post links like most blogs do. On any given story, external links are simply part of the copy. It does sometimes vary as to whether an article will highlight an appropriate phrase within a sentence or more pointedly distinguish a link like this:

This story would be an example.

Point is, The Post does a capable job of clearly defining links and establishing what they are so I'm not blindly surfing, which is helpful. I prefer this kind of linking, though I think there may be some better way to do things that has not yet been developed. Putting a table of links at the top of a story is counterintuitive because it both takes users off the site and exposes readers to sites without any context or understanding as to why they should be looking at it. Placing them at the bottom of a story is better, but if I want to immediately see for myself what the writer is talking about, I don't want to have to skip ahead through half the story and then find my way back. If I had my way, there might be some sort of link table on the side that follows the user as they scroll. Either way, though, so long as I can middle-click a link and open it in a new tab without leaving the original page, I'm satisfied.

This is just one of numerous ways The Post mirrors typical blogs, from the prominently displayed comments section on every story to the related articles section and the buttons to share on every social bookmarking site in existence. Most of these are features I won't use, but they're generally kept out of the copy so I can't bedgrudge The Post too much for having them, as they clearly have some fans.

Huffington Handles: Slideshows

Just today, The Huffington Post appears to have slightly changed the way it delivers photo slideshows - at least for the time being. Slideshows on The Post are mostly included in the body of articles and are usually preceded by some brief introductory text. Occasionally, The Post will run a slideshow at the very top of their frontpage, as is the case right now. Formerly, the slideshow element included one large main photo, room for a cutline and a series of grey dots that represented the other photos in the set. By clicking a dot or one of the arrows on the side, a new photo was loaded.

The change seems to have added thumbnails to this system, as the grey dots have been replaced by small previews of the available pictures.

Thankfully, this photo player works well; the pictures load quickly and, because the element is not a bulky Flash object, users can even right-click and manipulate the photo at will. Perhaps most importantly, I'm not forced to reload the entire page when I want to see a new photo. The addition of thumbnails is a welcome change for me. Chances are I'm going to look at every photo in the series anyway, but were I to come back to the slideshow to try and find a specific shot, I no longer have to scan through every photo a second time. It's just a little more user friendly, and being friendlier to users is never bad business.

See the new slideshow format here, and the old one here.

Huffington Handles: Video

Because The Huffington Post does more aggregation of news than generation of it, their layout, design and delivery methods very much resemble those of a blog. While the articles and frontpage may look like any other news site at first glance, a quick look at the bottom of each page reveals that the site is indeed powered by MovableType, a blogging platform.

Because of this, The Post is able to change things up very easily and is not stuck into a rigid content delivery system. As such, when The Post looks to include something like video, they can do so in whatever format the video was originally offered. This is beneficial to both The Post, as they can feature as much media as desired, and readers, because they can view video regardless of its source. More often than not, this means users access the video through a system they're familiar with, like YouTube.

For example, this article on students voting at Penn State simply has a YouTube video embedded. Unlike some news sites, which would only be able to show their own, original video in a proprietary player, The Post keeps viewers on their site instead of sending them elsewhere. Other video players are utilized on other pages, such as in this article and this article.

Of course, YouTube doesn't offer the high video quality that some desire, and The Post certainly loses some stylistic consistency by relying on off-site content. Then again, The Post didn't create the video to begin with; beggars can't be choosers. So long as I can quickly and effortlessly access their multimedia, I'm satisfied, and currently that is the case.

It's Election Day!

CNN, by way of Twitter, just so kindly informed me that voting has begun in two tiny New Hampshire towns. Election Day is upon us! I'm not sure there is any more exciting day.

As Tom Edsall has stated over on The Huffington Post, access to the Internet is a critical resource today. I'll certainly be checking out Huffington's Election Results page all day, as it conveniently consolidates a number of "widgets" provided by the major media companies. Once again, the Internet will provide me with the news a few minutes earlier than otherwise possible, allowing me to devote even more time to stressing out over it.

By the way, Drudge has no such page. Were I to rely on him for my updates, I guess I'd only get the results he wanted me to.

Is Drudge unknowingly fighting Democratic complacency?

An interesting article over at Business Pundit suggests that the tendency of news outlets like The Drudge Report and Fox News to present polls as being closer than they actually are - whether in pursuit of ratings or for other reasons - may actually be helping Barack Obama, whose campaign's number one concern right now is voter complacency.

You won’t see Matt Drudge or Fox News Channel reporting about this kind of media bias, precisely because they are equally culpable as others in the MSM. But let’s look at one of the unintended consequences of this media bias in favor of ratings: the tendency to overplay close polls and delegitimize polls that portray this election as a done deal.

Think about it: the biggest single worry of the Obama campaign has been organizer let-down and voters who get lazy and complacent with such massive leads in the polling data. The Drudge Report, who is influential in driving the news cycle, skews heavily in favor of outlier polls that suggest a down-to-the-wire race. Fox News picks up on this and starts shouting it from the rooftops. It’s totally understandable. It keeps people excited and engaged…

… and it gets people to the polls. McCain and Obama supporters. Republicans and Democrats. And this is a strategic advantage for Obama and the Democrats. There are more Democrats than Republicans. It is in the Republican’s interest to see a lower turnout, because in a lower turnout, die-hard voters tend to lean Republican. But the perception of a close race just may be the thing that gives the Democrats the edge in this election. And for that, we can only blame Drudge and Fox News … because a scientific analysis of the polls suggests an Obama blowout.

Of course, there are also plenty of people that would convincingly argue that people won't vote for someone they expect to lose, so (should Drudge and Fox indeed have ulterior motives) they still may be doing more good than harm by purporting the race as being tighter than it is in reality.

'Living' their mission

Sitting at the head of a table lined on both sides by community leaders, Patrick Keen, pastor of Bethlehem Lutheran Church, New Orleans, makes an impassioned plea for the involvement of lawmakers, clergy and citizens. Involuntarily, it seems, he stands up to address those gathered in the fellowship hall of Bethlehem. A man had been killed by gunfire across the street from the 6th District Police Station that day; five others in the area had been killed in the four days prior.

A cameraman from the local Fox affiliate records the proceedings as a litany of pressing community concerns are listed.

Read the full story at TheLutheran.org

A subscription to The Lutheran is required to access the full article.

The dance to end hunger

In 10 years, Erwin C. Roux has taught hundreds of people to dance and raised more than $35,000 for the ELCA World Hunger Appeal.

But he hasn’t quit his day job—he’s also a pastor.

With his wife, Beth, Roux runs Parish House Dance, an instructional dance program that meets on selected Friday nights in the basement of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, Turbotville, Pa. Roux pays for the operating expenses out of his own pocket and all proceeds (participants pay $5 per night) go directly to world hunger.

Read the full story at TheLutheran.org

A subscription to The Lutheran is required to access the full article.