I hope you all took a few things away from our visit by Bob Rose. As a means of learning what you took from the evening and providing feedback to Bob, I ask that you ask the following three questions in your reply.
1. What are three things that you learned from the information that Bob Rose presented?
2. What three pieces of advice do you have for folks working with on-line and print newspapers to better cater to your demographic?
3. Generalize the information that you took from the presenter and discuss how it speaks to the big ideas of our class.
3 things I learned:
ReplyDeleteI didn't realize how much off-site digital stuff the newsroom was using to keep on track of things (Google, Delicious, etc.)
I also didn't realize there was such a small online staff at the P-D.
It was interesting to find out what the most popular parts of the paper were; I would have predicted the sports section being most popular if I'd thought about it, but I hadn't analyzed it myself.
3 pieces of advice:
Newspapers (printed and online) are most useful for deeper analysis of news events-- live media are better for instant response. At the same time, to catch the attention of people my age, you have do work quickly. I think the way to handle it is to present in-depth analysis, but break it down into small parts, each with a collaborative feature like blogs and chats.
People like me like to be able to customize things and arrange them so that the information we're most interested in is what we see first; iGoogle and other customizable portal pages work that way. If the homepage of the P-D could be customizable by users, you'd have more people visiting and also more data about what people want to read and where you might need to add/edit content.
Personally, I find all the search functions nearly useless on the P-D website. If I'm looking for something I know was in the news, I might start on the homepage, but if I can't find it in two clicks, I'm on to Google.
For the third question I'll have to come back and post again!
Isaac Arten
I learned that there is alot of work put into making the online newspaper. I figured it would be easier to do that than making hard copies. He seemed to really care if the news that is published is accurate, which I thought was cool.I also learned that this newspaper has a blog for those who want to comment, it makes the reader feel they are apart of the paper because everyone can view their opinions. That couldn't happen as often if it was print. It was interesting how they helped narrow the search down if you were to look for a topic, they did this by using the same few words in the title like, St.Louis Cardinals. I think this makes it easier for readers to find what they're looking for instead of having to go through page after page of related topics. I am not sure if they have like a comic section but that would be cool, he did mention a cross word section. It would be neat if there was random videos about the St.Louis Cardinals or any topic you read about. I see this relating to class as we discussed how other news paper corporation are going out of buisness. As the media is moved more so to computer and television it seems sensible to have an online newspaper.
ReplyDeleteThings I learned:
ReplyDeleteI liked that he showed us some of the sites he uses for work (Delicious and Google Doc). I appreciated him giving us some useful tools online that we could end up using in our careers. I also didn't know that many of the PD writers have blogs on the site. I've explored a few of them and think they're a great way to get away from some of the duller news. Finally, I didn't know readers could create/add to the interactive maps he was showing us (Sledding hills, homicides). That's something I could actually see utilizing at some point (not the one about homicides, obviously), and appreciated the tour around some of the harder-to-find areas of the website.
Advice for catering to my demographic:
I agree with Isaac in that I would visit the site more if it let me customize the format so that I can bypass things I'm not interested in and get the news I am interested in a lot faster. Even if I can't choose for certain stories to appear or not appear, I would like it if I could move certain sections of the front page to the top and the sections I'm not interested in to the bottom. If I can get my news faster from the start, I'm more inclined to stay on the site a little longer and jump around to stories that might not be included in my custom view. Another piece of advice that goes along with customization would be to make some of the tabs collapse so that the headlines don't appear so cluttered. I haven't spent much time on the site in the past because it can be time consuming to find what I'm looking for amongst all of the tabs and sections full of headlines.
Big Ideas:
Bob's presentation really added to our discussion about the transformations in the media. We've discussed possible solutions to the decline in newspaper sales but being able to put it into context and hearing his views on where the papers need to be headed was interesting. I liked his idea that they should stick with the online news and cut down the print paper to their very best writers and stories. I might actually read the paper if it weren't so watered down and accessible every day.
things I learned:
ReplyDeletethat the online news crew is a small piece of the actual operation at the Post. That on a whole people go to many places for news but stay with local news primarily for the sports. Lots of other websites and technology tools are used to complement the working environment (google docs. delicious etc)
for my demographic:
Being in the generation that grew up with computers I have a short attention span and want everything customized to meet my needs. As previously mentioned and customizable news site would be ideal coupled with short stories and informative headlines that were easily accessible to more information on the topic with use of links tabs etc. Micro-organizing the page would allow for access to be simpler and more easily accessible.
Big ideas:
Bob Rose added to the topic of changing media. We are currently in a society where people flock to their computers for news not to their front stoops and that is having a major impact on the news industry. That coupled with the economic crisis has lead to the deterioration of the newspapers as we know them. It was exciting to hear from someone in the up and coming field of internet based news and helped us to understand how St. Louis is not going to fall off the map in the big switch out of local news.