And so it ends...

As the semester comes to a close, I only feel that it's necessary to look back on my four months in CNJ442, Online Journalism. It's driven me absolutely insane, made me cry on a few occasions, and caused me more stress than I ever imagined. Yet, it's also opened up new doors for me and helped me discover what I want to do with the rest of my life.

Online Journalism has taught me that design could not only be a hobby, but a career. With skills in both journalism and design, I will be an asset to any news company, and I will have Online Journalism to thank for that. When I look back on college in ten years, I will remember that it was this class that helped me choose a career path and define my goals.

Online Journalism has also taught me the importance of communication and deadlines. If you don't communicate with people you are working with, your project is going to fail. Similarly, if you don't meet your deadlines, your partners can't meet theirs, and the project may also fail. We faced both of these problems this semester and I'm optimistic that these lessons I learned will help me in the future.

While I despised this class at times, and even thought about dropping it more than once, looking back, I'm extremely happy that I stuck it out. What I've gained from this class is worth the aggravation and the stress I went through. Since this is the only online journalism class offered at the University of Miami (as I've talked about before), I bid you adieu OJ, until we meet again...

Prisual Journalism

As I've mentioned before, I've been confused about my future lately. Really for the first time in my entire life. I just switched my major for the second time and while I've had a week to think about it, I'm still freaking out about the switch. I love writing, I want to be a journalist, what am I doing switching my major away from print journalism?

I think what I fear most is that potential employers will look at my resume, see "visual journalism" and assume I'm not a writer. Hopefully this won't happen. Hopefully they'll see that I can write and I can design. Hopefully this will put me ahead of my competition.

You could imagine my surprise on Thursday morning, in the midst of this dilemma, when I opened the Miami Hurricane and saw the article "Some students face mid-college crisis." I'm not alone! Of course I knew I wasn't, but it was still reassuring to read about other students going through the same thing I am. It makes me feel even better when I read about students switching from sciences to motion pictures - and I thought switching journalism fields was bad!

Despite my doubts, I know I made the right choice. And rather than taking biology and chemistry for no reason, I took news reporting and mass media law. One day, when I'm sitting at my desk at my dream job (that I know I'll get), I'll look back on college and the diverse education I've gotten here. I'm not graduating as a Visual Journalism major. I'm graduating as a Prisual Journalism and Political Science major, and that's pretty sweet.

From Broadcast to Print to Visual

So today I was rather spontaneous, which is unlike me. I officially changed my major from print journalism to visual journalism. I'll be honest, I'm a little apprehensive about the switch. It's not that I don't like journalism anymore, completely the opposite actually. I still want to be a journalist, but I feel that I already have writing skills. Visual journalism will allow me to gain skills in other areas that will be beneficial in the future.

At least three people I told about the switch asked me if it was because of online journalism, but they asked it in an "online journalism turned you off of journalism" kind of way. And yes, it was because of online journalism, but not because it scared me away from writing. Online journalism this semester has opened up doors for me. I love this new media stuff. It's what I want to do with my life. Ever since I began learning graphics, web design, and video production in high school, I've been interested in visual media, but it wasn't until this semester that I realized this is something I could spend my life doing.

Last time I changed my major (from broadcast to print), I thought about it for an entire summer. This has been in the back of my mind for a few weeks, but when I woke up Monday morning, I had no intention of doing this. I never thought I'd be a person confused about what I want to study, yet here I find myself, confused. It would be wonderful if I could do both visual and print, but I don't want to be here for five years. So visual it is. I hope.

I've hit a fork in the road... Or have I?

I remember a time, back in high school looking at colleges, when all of my friends had no idea what they wanted to study. They had trouble looking for a school because they didn't know what they were looking for. I knew what I wanted: communications, school spirit, and a mid-to-large-sized student body.

From the time I was ten years old, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a broadcaster for the New York Yankees. I entered UM as a broadcast journalism major certain that I wanted to broadcast baseball games. I looked around at my peers jumping from major to major and was grateful knowing that would never be me. Yeah, that lasted a semester and a half.

Last spring I took my first news writing course and a philosophy class that was one of those "show up to class, get an A" type of deals. I had no idea when I took that class that it would change my life. We had to give a debate, on what I have no clue, and I remember being so nervous to speak in front of the class that I sped through my entire speech. Meanwhile, other than the fact it was at 8 a.m., I loved news writing. It was after this debate that I decided to change my major from broadcast to print journalism.

A year later, I find myself stuck again. Online journalism has opened up new doors for me. Over the course of this semester, I've realized how much I love graphic design, videography, web design, etc. As I was putting together my multimedia package, it occurred to me that I enjoyed designing the banner and making the video more than I enjoyed reporting and writing the story. So now what?

I still love writing. Words seem to flow off of my fingertips and into my Word document effortlessly. But part of me wishes I could dive more deeply into the design side of journalism. I've been thinking about this conflict for the past month or so and it seems to me, that if this convergence thing is really true, this is probably the best position for me to be in. If I not only love to write, but I can design as well, then I should have a leg up on the competition. Everybody watch out.

Can we make the internet disappear for a while?

I hate the internet. Okay, that's a lie, I love it. But it's really annoying when I'm sitting here in the computer lab trying to write a term paper with the little Firefox icon staring at me out of the corner of my eye.

I established this a few blogs back; I have an addiction. Everyday: food, oxygen, sleep, internet. While it can be a good thing in so many ways, it's really reached the point where I find it difficult to focus without taking a five minute break here and there to check a few websites. Apparently I'm not the only one. As I glance around the computer lab, about half the people in here can be seen on some website rather than doing their work.

The easiest solution would be to just keep my internet browser closed or go somewhere with my computer and turn the wireless off. Yeah, that's great until I face an assignment in which I need the internet and, let's face it, that's most of my assignments. Example A? The one I'm working on right now.

Example B would be the term paper and I am trying to finish. While it's a paper that I write in Microsoft Word, I need to search LexisNexis for all of my resources. The trend seems to be every time I find a resource, I take a break to check my email, Facebook, etc. Well after finding 15 resources, this obviously adds up.

So how do I stop this? How do I limit my internet addiction while trying to complete work? The only solution for me seems to be waiting until the last minute. See, right now I know I have all night, but tomorrow at 1 p.m. I'll only have two hours. And that's when that tiny Firefox icon in the corner of my screen seems to disappear.

Thank you Tim Berners-Lee, wherever you are, for making my work take three times as long as it should.

The School of Communication

I've never really thought about the name of my school before. The School of Communication, or the "Comm School," as it is more commonly referred to, has just always a term I was used to. Back when I was looking at and applying to colleges, I was always looking for a university with a good communication school. But I never really thought about why all of these majors are put under the umbrella of communication.

Now that I actually am thinking about it, it does make sense. Journalists, both broadcast and print, are communicating the news to the people, advertisers are communicating a product to the public, film makers are communicating a story on a screen, and so on. So yes, communication is a fitting title for all of these areas of study. And while I believe my school has done well teaching its students to communicate through the different media, something has been lost along the way. Sure, using technology is great, but what about the core of communication, communicating to one another?

You can't communicate over the airwaves without having a basic understanding of how to communicate with the people standing next to you. Good communication can be the reason a project soars and miscommunication could be the reason a project fails. In our recent experiment with convergence of the print and visual journalism students, our experience has been the latter.

While I've enjoyed our project, it's been brought to my attention that it has not been smooth sailing for everybody. Each class was told different things about different projects which led to misunderstanding all around. This could have been avoided through better communication.

So although we're succeeding in learning to communicate through the media, I think all of us at the School of Communication could take a lesson in learning how to communicate with each other.

The Wonders of Video

It occurred to me yesterday what is so great about the internet. Finding any information at a click of a button, communicating with people instantaneously anywhere in the world, and my favorite element, video streaming.

Yes, I love Youtube. I'm ashamed to admit I have spent hours at a time on that site. I love watching videos put together by videographers on news websites. I love putting together my own videos. But what I really, really love is MLBTV.

Two years after coming to Miami, I still get homesick daily. I love New York and not by being there for months at a time, it feels like a huge part of me is missing. I see events happening in New York and get sad that I can't be there. I see pictures of my friends going to concerts up North and feel like I should be there with them. What I miss most though, is baseball, and the Yankees.

MLBTV allows me, for a fee, to watch every Yankee game from my computer. What an amazing invention! I don't know how I would survive here in Miami if I could not watch the first pitch of opening day and the last pitch of the final game of the season. Every time I watch a game on my computer, I am amazed by what technology does for me.

If we can stream any video over the web, does this mean television will one day be obsolete? Probably not. The same way the internet will not completely kill the newspaper, it won't completely kill the TV either. I still enjoy the comfort of my print newspaper and I still enjoy lying in bed and watching baseball on my 30" TV. But for when I can't enjoy those luxuries, the internet will have to do.

Welcome to Online Journalism... Goodbye.

It's occurred to me recently how much I enjoy this thing called "online journalism." Sure I love the actual journalism aspect of it, reporting, researching, and writing, but even more so I love the videography and design of it as well. As I've been putting together my multimedia package, I've realized how much I've enjoyed making the video more so than writing my story. Unfortunately for me, I have one more package to put together before I return to written journalism for the rest of my college career.

If there's one thing we've learned in this class thus far, it's that online is the future of journalism. Right now, as CNJ442 is my only journalism class, my entire journalism world is online. I haven't even thought of doing work for a newspaper since last semester. It's strange to me right now that when I return to Miami in the fall, I will no longer be engulfed in this online journalism world.

CNJ442 is an introductory course. It may not be titled "Intro to," but it's an introduction to all the different elements of online media. No one without any previous video experience is going to walk out of this class with a mastery of video production. And that's exactly how it should be, you need to start somewhere. But why does my online journalism education stop at an introduction? If this is truly the future as everyone says it is and everyone else believes it is, why are there no advanced classes in online media for journalism students? It's nice that if people want to focus on newspaper writing, they can stay on the newspaper track, but does UM really believe that it's doing its best to prepare these students for the future by allowing them to learn how to write solely for print? And what about all of those students who will never even think of taking CNJ442? They will be entirely left out of this online world of the future.

It seems to me that the School of Communication needs to rethink its journalism program and perhaps bring it into the 21st century. We can't all write for the Hurricane for forever.

What's so great about being 'skilled' anyway?

In my international relations class this week, we've been learning about the international political economy and the growing income gap between the poor nations of the South and the rich nations of the North. A reason for this is that the small percentage of the population considered "skilled labor" makes a majority of the income, while the "unskilled labor" continues to experience decreasing wages. In article after article, I read how the demand for skilled labor is increasing due to improving technology, while the demand for unskilled labor continues to decrease.

If skilled labor is in such high demand, then why do I spend night after night worrying that I'm never going to be able to find a job?

I would think that after spending four years at a top university, I would be considered skilled labor. Actually, I think I reached this classification after the fourth grade. But I watch my friends graduate year after year without job offerings. People who have spent a pretty penny on their education so they could make a prettier penny after they graduate. What's going to happen to me?

Journalism isn't exactly a booming field as far as employment goes. Convergence means that more people can do more things, meaning fewer employees needed to perform the same functions. Sure it's great that when I graduate I'll not only be able to write, but I'll also have some skill in web design, video editing, and photography. But what happens when everybody learns these skills?

At the new media panel last month, the panelists spoke about how most news companies are hiring on a freelance basis and when they hire full-time employees, they consider their freelancers first. You mean to tell me I'm spending $100 grand on my education so I can freelance for five years after I graduate? Well that's great.

Those same articles also spoke about how the demand for more unskilled labor (people without college degrees) will begin to increase in the U.S. This makes sense when you think about it, since all those college graduate positions will eventually fill up and leave a demand for plumbers and mechanics. Considering I'm putting so much into my education and I still probably won't get a decent job after I graduate, maybe I should just drop out and become a garbage collector. I hear they make $90 grand a year.

I Think I've Seen That Somewhere Before...

I remember the days of writing papers back in middle school, when I would go anywhere online and find any information relevant to my subject. No footnotes, no bibliography, just me throwing in information I had read as if it were my own.

But wait, isn't that illegal?

Of course it is, but at 12 years old, I didn't know that nor did my teachers really care.

The thing about copyright infringement is that it really doesn't matter unless the work you're producing is going to be read or seen by the person who holds the copyright. Obviously, no one other than my teacher was going to be reading my paper back in middle school. Even now, no one other than my teacher is going to read my 15-page paper that I spent days on. The only difference now is that teachers actually care. As they should.

But who is reading my blog? My teacher. Maybe a few of my classmates. There are millions upon millions of blogs on the Internet, only a small percentage of which are actually read by a large number of people. What's to stop all of these bloggers from stealing someone's work when no one is ever going to know?

This is the problem copyright owners face in the age of the Internet. If their work appears on a popular site, such as Yahoo or AOL, obviously they will find out. But if I go onto Google Images, find a sample of someone's photography and use it without credit, there's really nothing to stop me. Well, other than integrity.

Apparently I Have a Mental Illness, Do You?

Do you text message multiple times throughout the day?
Do you feel uneasy when you haven't checked your email in a few hours?
Do you spend your free time playing video games online?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you too may suffer from a possible new mental illness called Internet Addiction.


This morning I read an article from Switched.com called "Internet Addiction Could Be Classified As Mental Illness." Basically, to sum it up, "this month's issue of American Journal of Psychiatry says Internet addiction -- which includes 'excessive gaming, sexual pre-occupations and e-mail/text messaging' -- is a common compulsive-impulsive disorder."

Well why didn't they say that before I got addicted to the Internet? Thanks a lot, psychiatrists.

I'm one of those people that never turns off their computer. You know, the kind whose away message on AIM at 4AM reads "sleeping." I go online as soon as I wake up, right before I go to bed, and all that time in between. I bring my laptop to three out of my five classes and surf the web while I work for three hours four days a week. Clearly, I have an addiction.

But really, who in my generation doesn't? We've become accustomed to going online for everything from news to recipes to movie times. We know best that any information we could ever want can be found on the Internet. And what's wrong with that?

Like I've said before, I keep hearing about how great online journalism is and how much potential there will be in the future for these new media. Not only do I agree 100%, but I also enjoy this new media far more than I've ever enjoyed traditional media, both as a receiver and a communicator. But here we have this group of psychiatrists telling us that too much Internet could be a bad thing. And one could easily argue that online journalists should receive the most blame for this "Internet addiction."

If those who suffer will require hospitalization, as the article suggests, it looks like all of us will be spending some time in the ol' psychiatric ward. If that doesn't sound like something you're interested in, you should probably get off my blog and go read a book.

Always Up or Down, Never Down and Out

When I began studying journalism, all I heard was how the journalism profession was on the way down and out. There wasn't going to be a journalism market when I graduated college. Even still, every time I see my dad, he repetitively tells me how I shouldn't be studying journalism. My aunt and uncle are journalists in Germany and apparently their careers are less than glamourous (although they seem happy to me).

A year and half into my college career I'm finally hearing about how much the journalism field is changing and growing. Professors and professionals are telling us how much opportunity is out there for people who can master this "new"media. I can finally go home and when my dad tells me how journalism is dying, I can prove him wrong. "Journalism" how my dad thinks of it, is dying. But journalism, what is actually is now, is continuously explanding. I'm excited.



To my readers: I'll be taking the next week off for Spring Break. Check back on the 18th.

Our Old Friend, the Newspaper

I'll admit, the only print newspaper I ever read while I'm at school in Miami is the school newspaper, the Hurricane. I pick it up every Monday and Thursday morning in the dining hall and read it while I'm eating breakfast and on my walk to work. To catch up on real news, I browse the New York Times online and sometimes my local newspaper, The Staten Island Advance. So why if I can read my other news online do I rush to finish the Hurricane in its print edition before I go to work?

What's great about the Hurricane is that it's small and relatively easy to fold, although I still often have trouble doing so while I'm walking through the wind. Yesterday, as I flipped the page, a loose Geico ad fell out of the paper. You could imagine how annoyed I was when it fell to the ground and I had to pick it up and find a trash can to dispose of it in. At that moment, I thought to myself, why do I bother with this? Why don't I just read the online version during my free time at work or throughout the day?

I really have no idea. Something about picking up the paper two mornings a week just appeals to me. I don't feel like I'm getting the full paper when I read it online. Even reading my home newspapers online doesn't quite satisfy me as much as reading the actual paper when I'm home. I'm not alone in this. Millions of Americans, young and old (although more the latter), still pick up the morning paper. Online journalism enthusiasts insist newspapers are on the way out, but there must be something there that keeps us reading them. Whatever that something is, newspaper companies and print journalists hopes it lasts; their business depends on it.

Correction

It has been brought to my attention that the Lemonade Kid video I discussed yesterday was not done by Ricardo Lopez, but rather was a video he found on a multimedia blog.

In addition, the video I referred to as "Chicken Chasers" is actually called "Chicken Busters" and can be found here.

I apologize for my errors.

Get your lemonade! 25 cents!

Two weeks ago, I talked about how video is not a new medium, but rather an old one that has evolved with the coming of the internet and online journalism. While we typically associate video with television and film, it seems that the internet is the medium that video was waiting for.

When it comes to journalism, news broadcasts are great for getting our news fast while we're busy doing other things around the house. But on the internet, you don't only find news broadcasts, but also featured videos, mainly on newspaper sites. Yesterday, Ricardo Lopez, videographer from the Miami Herald, showed us two videos he has done. One feautured a comical 6-year-old boy selling lemonade, and the other featured a high school student who competed in rodeo. Perhaps the most famous video put out by the Herald is "Chicken Chasers," a video about men who go around Miami-Dade catching chickens. All of these stories could not have been told without the internet simply because no other medium provides the space for such supplemental work. Supplemental not because it is less important, but because video is used to add on to a print story or as part of a larger interactive feature. Before the internet, there was no medium for such creative work to exist.

So while a topic such as a little boy selling lemonade made seem trivial to traditional journalists, those of us in the 21st century see these stories as opportunities for videographic genius.

The Wonders of Wireless...

Today, at about 1:10 p.m., I was about to get in the elevator to go up to my seventh floor dorm when the power went out. I walked up to my room, ate some lunch, and headed out to go to class. When I got downstairs, I found out that the power was out everywhere and turned right around. With cell phone service down and the TV obviously not working, where did I turn to find out what was going on? The Internet, of course.

Similar to the September 12th example I gave in a previous blog, today's power outage will already be yesterday's news by the time the Miami Herald reaches your doorstep. Without online news sources, and a powered up laptop computer, I would have had no idea what the extent of the outage was or how long it was going to last (admittedly, I had some flashbacks to the 2003 blackout in the Northeast that lasted over a day). But on the other hand, what about all of those people who don't have a laptop, or even a computer at all? What if the news providers' backup generators failed to provide enough power to deliver the news? The truth is, while online news came in handy for me today, for a lot of people it probably didn't. So while online journalism is innovative and, in the eyes of most, better than any other medium, it is important to note that it is not always an effective source of delivering the news. And if it isn't, what is?

Political Satire

Yesterday I attended a presentation by Craig Minassian on the intersection of politics and comedy in the media. Craig is the former assistant press secretary for President Clinton and now is a consultant for political satire programs The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report on Comedy Central.

One point he kept making throughout the presentation was that the hosts of both shows, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, are both aware that their shows are jokes, not real news. However, he also pointed out that The Daily Show averages one million viewers a night. That's one million people who are receiving some sort of news from Jon Stewart. Certainly many of these people watch other nightly news programs or read some sort of news online or in the newspaper, but it has been proven that many young people rely on these satirical shows as their main source of news.

What does this mean for the future of news and the future of the audience? Only recently has political satire earned the popularity it receives today. If this popularity continues to grow, could it prove to be another distraction from hard news? Will journalists begin to be replaced by comedians? For the benefit of journalists, and of our nation, I would certainly hope not. But hey, I love The Daily Show too.

Newspapers: Outdated and Overrated

An important thing we must ask ourselves as journalists in today's era is, "How can we keep readers reading yesterday's news in print when they could have already seen it on the web the day before?" I'd like to think this isn't something for me, as a web person, to figure out; leave it to the old school print journalists. But hey, people buy the print newspaper, and as web people, we need money to stay in business too.

The first time I noticed this problem was on September 12, 2001. The newspapers (the Staten Island Advance and the New York Daily News) arrived at our house with huge headlines and photos from the events of the day before (no need to go into detail). I remember thinking at 12 years old, "What's the point of this being in the newspaper? Hasn't everyone already heard about it?" 6 1/2 years later, I'm still not sure of the answer to this question. Did anyone read those stories? I'm sure somebody did, but after everyone had already seen the images on television (a thousand times), was it really worth all the effort to write a long, detailed story? Probably not. Then again, if the newspapers hadn't covered the biggest news of not only the day, but possibly the decade, they would have been ripped apart for not doing so. Looks to me that this is a lose-lose situation for newspapers; either don't bother with a big story, or waste money and time putting together a story that every person in the industrialized world has already heard about. Either way, the newspapers come out behind.

Perhaps that day was a foreshadowing of what's to come. It was really the first time, at least that I can think of, in which the newspaper was out of date before it hit the press. How will newspapers continue to report the most up to date news and keep readers reading once the Baby Boomers fade out? I wish I had the answer for this. All I can say is that it's not looking good for our old friend the newspaper.

Everything Old is New Again...

Yesterday, I attended a panel discussion on new media, which includes video, audio, photography, text; pretty much anything. I must admit, I'm a little bothered by this term "new media." What's so new about them? Photography has been around since the 19th century, moving pictures and radio since the early 20th century, and text since the invention of the printing press in 1436.

Yes, the videos you can find today on the internet are vastly different from the ones you could watch on TV throughout the second half of the 20th century. Yes, journalists use new audio techniques and combine audio and photographs into slideshows. Yes, digital photography allows for better images than ever before. These media have evolved, but they are not new. What's new is the medium in which they are delivered.

What the internet allows is for journalists to combine these media and use them in ways other mediums could not. In the past, the audience could watch the evening news then read the printed stories in the morning paper. Today, they can watch, read, view, and interact all at once. So while the method of delivering the news is new, the media which we are delivering can hardly be considered new at all. In other words, what we should be referencing is news convergence, not new media.

Blogs In, News Out

Every morning, when I first sign onto the Internet, I follow the same routine. Check my Gmail account, catch up on my message boards, and check my AOL Mail account. But before I can reach my AOL mail, I must pass through the homepage where I check on the day's news and features. Now I'll be the first to admit that AOL probably isn't the best place to get my daily news, but they present the day's headlines in an easy-to-read manner, accompanied by feature stories that usually catch my interest. Generally, I spend about half an hour on AOL.com, and its partner sites, a day.

What I've noticed lately is the increasing presence of blogs on AOL's homepage. With the election season now in full swing, there is typically something new going on in politics everyday. Sometimes, usually on days of primaries, the day's main political headline gets the front spot on the page. However, other times a different news story gets the top spot and is accompanied by a small link at the bottom of the same frame. This link is related to the election, but isn't a link to a news story. Rather, AOL features a different blog on the first frame each day and that blog is usually accompanied by a poll. For instance, today's featured blog is by Mark Halperin of Time magazine and is about Barack Obama's increasing momentum. It then asks readers to answer a poll about the main reason for Obama's success in February.

In 2008, are political blogs replacing political news stories of past elections? How will this affect voters who are now reading other people's opinions daily rather than "unbiased" news stories? I guess we'll have to wait until November to find out.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Text, graphics, animation, colors, videos, pictures, word art. There are many elements on the internet to visually catch our attention; the list goes on and on. So with our eyes permanently focused on increasingly better visuals, what role could pure audio play on the internet?

Audio went out when video came in. In the 1950s, old radios were replaced with new television sets. People no longer relied solely on their ears for news and entertainment (and with the coming of MTV, music, but that's a whole different issue) when they could actually see what was happening right in their own living rooms. But is it possible that 50 years later, the internet is bringing back the audio our grandparents and great grandparents listened to when they were young?

Not exactly. For one, audio is far improved from the days of FDR's fireside chats. New recording equipment, such as the Edirol machine popular amongst journalists, records clear sounds, and digital technology allows for an infinite amount of copies to be produced that sound just like the original. Secondly, as I said before, we are a visual society. If you expect to keep a web surfer on your site, you can't expect them to listen to minutes and minutes of pure audio. That's where photography comes in. Another [seemingly] ancient art form that the internet is bringing back. Combining audio and photography into a short slideshow can be an effective method of expressing emotion and conflict, and it's just one more way for us journalists to get our message out there into cyberspace.

Hooked On... New Jersey?

On Thursday, Suzanne Levinson said that most people arrive at the Miami Herald's website through a search engine such as Google or Yahoo. Because of this, online journalists put related links directly on the page with the news story in order to keep web browsers on their site. So I decided to do a Google News search for the New York Giants and take a look at the first page that came up. The article I found was from Newsday (based in Long Island, New York), entitled "Giants return to heroes' welcome in NY, NJ" (http://www.newsday.com).

The article covered the Giants' return home after their Super Bowl victory on Sunday night in Arizona. Writer David Porter included quotes from several players to show emotion and mentioed that two million people were estimated to watch the ticker tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes in lower Manhattan this morning. The parade was the first half of the two-state celebration today, with a rally following across the river at Giants Stadium in the afternoon.

The article was published online at 11:27 this morning, suggesting that it did not appear in today's newspaper and because it does not cover the events, only previews them, it will most likely not be featured in tomorrow's news. Therefore the article was written for the web. But unlike the observation of Ms. Levinson, there is not a lot of additional information regarding the Giants on the page with the article. On the right hand side, there is a list of other news from the day and below that, there is a video of people riding the Long Island Railroad into New York City for the parade. Other than that, there is merely a link to other articles, which does not bring you to more articles on the Giants, or even in sports, but rather more articles about New Jersey. It is unlikely that a person searching for "New Jersey" would find that article, so why does the article lead the reader to other stories about the Garden State? The subject of the article is not New Jersey, but the New York Giants. It is much more likely that someone searching for the Giants, as I was, would find the article. So unlike Levinson's suggestions, Newsday does not do much to keep Giants fans hooked on their website.

We are the Future.

As this new millennium progresses, more and more people are relying on the Internet to get their news.  They want reliable information as soon as a story breaks.  They want to be able to give their opinion on news stories and see more media than just a printed news story.  They want to be able to control what they see and what they don't see.  And they want it all for free.

So if everybody can get their news online 24/7 why do news companies continue to print newspapers every morning?  The answer is simple: demographics.  The demographic of people who are reading the printed newspaper is getting older and older while more young people get their news online.  But more importantly, those who read the printed version of a newspaper tend to be local, while the majority of the online audience comes from outside the city of the newspaper.  According to Suzanne Levinson, Director of Site Operations at the Miami Herald, the Herald sells about 400,000 copies of its printed paper to residents of South Florida, but 80% of its online audience is reading from outside the region.  What does this mean for online journalism?  Online news stories need to target a different demographic than their printed counterparts.  The most popular sections of the Miami Herald's website (www.miamiherald.com) are sports (especially coverage of the Miami Dolphins), Latin American coverage, and blogs written by Dave Barry.  All of these sections are unique to the Miami Herald, so readers all over the country turn to the Internet to get this information.  While people come to read these sections specifically, the most popular part of the Miami Herald's website is the comments.  Commenting is unique to online journalism.  Sure, with traditional journalism readers can write letters to the editor and maybe ten get printed in the next day's newspaper, but online journalism allows an infinite amount of readers to give their opinions on any given story.  Readers feel like they're part of the journalism process and their feedback is read not only by the editors at the newspaper, but by online readers all over the world.  What does that say about the future of online journalism?  Reader comment, reader feedback, and readers in control.

The First Entry

In preparing for this blog, I've been looking around at some of the other blogs out there on the Internet.  The one thing I've noticed most in my reading is that typically, the comments are more interesting than the blogs themselves.  Perhaps this is because I've been reading mainly political blogs, and we all know that politics is one of the most controversial issues in the news.  Thus, those who respond are going to be passionate in their comments and even attack the person who wrote the blog if they hold opposing views on the subject.

One blog I read that particularly caught my interest was posted by Ken Layne on the AOL Political Machine yesterday morning.  It was written in response to President Bush's last State of the Union address, but before he actually delivered the speech.  In short, Layne described the difference between now and seven years ago (when Bush gave his first State of the Union), not in political terms, but using everyday examples.  The most prevalent example refers to "that new iPod you got for Christmas in 2000" that never even existed because iPods didn't come out until October of 2001.  Of the ten comments on the blog, five criticized Layne for his "liberal ranting," while the remaining five praised him for his negative opinions of our president.

In reading blogs, it is important for the reader to be conscious that the person writing the blog may be ill-informed.  A few weeks ago, after the New Hampshire debates, I was reading a blog posted on AOL.com.  In the blog, the author even mentioned that he had only watched 15 minutes of the debate.  Therefore his brutal opinions attacking the candidates were not exactly credible.  However, what about those people browsing the AOL News section who were not aware that this was the opinion of a blogger and not an actual news story?  They may have taken the blog as a news story written by someone who was covering the debates (after all, the political blogs are found under the news section), rather than the opinion of one person who only watched it for a mere 15 minutes.  In short, bloggers should just not write on topics on which they are ill-informed, especially when their blogs are being posted on major news sites, such as AOL.