How it’s Presented
For the last few weeks I have been studying how the New York Times presents information on its web site as well as in the print edition. In particular I have been focusing on story’s relating to the I-pod/ I-Phone after apple dropped the I-Phone price by 200 dollars. However, you sometimes need to view other sources to get the full picture, and to see how they present the information.
Speaking that I was dealing primarily in newspapers, online and print, I thought that I would continue my search there first. I visited a couple of newspaper websites and found the Los Angeles Times to have a highly effective, well structured, and informative site. I was able to easily manage my way to articles on my subject found by just going to business link and then the technology link. Another thing that amazed me was that in this section alone they had articles dating back to august 30th, this was unlike other newspaper websites, like USA today, which did not go back nearly as far.
In regards to the I-phone/I-pod story, I found that articles matched the timeline in the New York Times. I immediately found an article from September 6th when the price cut was first announced. In regards to content I found that it gave you the same information as the New York Times article with difference lying in authors writing styles. However, the New York Times article included more photographs including a photograph of Steven Jobs, Apples chief executive. The Other thing I noticed Is that the Los Angeles Times did not include links in the way that the New York Times did. Any major name or item was highlighted as a link in the New York Times article and linked you to News about that name or item.
One area the Los Angeles Times disappointed me in was that it did not seem to follow up the story in the way the New York Times did. Instead of articles about costumer reactions and editorials expressing views of what will happen to Apple’s prime product they instead carried more breaking news related to the I-pod and Apple. I guess in some ways this was probably a positive thing. One article I found incredibly interesting talked about how Apple might try to buy into Airwaves and therefore have a means of carrying I-phone service on there own and not have to count on a wireless provider like AT&T. Such a move would be huge for Apple and allow them more control of there product.
Looking for a more Business oriented article I searched Businessweek.com for information about the I-Phone price drop and any articles about Apple products. I found exactly what I was looking for with little effort. The article includes the same information about the rebate as The LA Times and the NY Times but also takes a new and interesting business approach. It asks the question of how much is the I-phone rally worth? The Business week article contained a quote from Terrence Russell on Wired's blog, Epicenter. He said that “A drop of $200 after just 66 days means that the I-Phone decreased roughly $3.03 a day in retail value between launch and yesterday's announcement.” I don’t understand how such a “HOT” item could reduce in price that quickly. I understand that Apple is getting it’s feet wet in the phone world but does this mean they should abandon there Apple Business approach?
Opening myself up to other websites allowed me to see other points of view on the subject at hand. Although not every website I tried produced results those that did gave me a deeper understanding at how content is arranged, and how coming from different angles can give you a clearer idea of the whole story. I was not going to find out about the actual I-phone worth at the New York Times, but Business week was not going to give me a Editorial opinion on the whole ordeal, In the end each source will present a slightly different view.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
I Want an Apple for Christmas
I Want an Apple for Christmas
Over the last few weeks I have been following the development of apple’s holiday plans and how the New York Times presents these developments in both the print version and the online version. My interest was sparked when I noticed that after being released for a short period of time, apple decided to drop the price of there hot new item, the I-phone. Intrigued I decided to follow the story and see how the content played out in the different New York Times media, print and online.
With the primary article publish on September 6th, the layout remained similar in both the online in print editions. The major difference I found between the two articles was the placement of photographs and the fact that of courser anything not on the front page of the print edition will be in black and white which in my opinion is less stimulating to the eyes. Another thing I noticed is that for the print edition its placement on the page hurts it. Although it is front page center for the Business Day section underneath it there is a huge photo of an E-book that just automatically grabs your eye. And when you turn to the second half of the article on c9 it’s on the bottom half of the page. In the online version, the photographs are in color and grab your attention. Also one thing that I really enjoy is that in the article itself you have links to items mentioned in the article for example Starbucks.
On September 7th, I was delighted to find an article that dealt with consumers reactions to the I-phone price cut. As I though many were not thrilled especially those who purchased the I-phone for its original price. Again as far as content of the article is concerned we find the same content in both the print and online versions. There only seems to be one difference in the articles and that’s the placement of the accompanying photograph. In the print edition the save the photo for the second page of the article but the online version has the accompanying photo at the beginning grabbing the readers eye.
Moving to September 10th I also found the content to be exactly the same in the print and online editions. I happened to truly enjoy this article as the writer David Carr beautifully talks about what makes an I-pod a God send gadget and that without the content that we want to buy for example episodes of our favorite Television episode well than its like he says, “If the gated community loses a lot of cultural real estate, will I need to keep my address there?”
On September 13th we find that the trend continues that the content of the article does not change. Again differing in the placement of photographs and almost nothing else, I become fed up with these minute differences. It seems to me more than anything else online versus print comes down to a matter of preference.
Again repeating my previous point I wonder how much of a difference there truly is between the print version and online version in the content of articles. I have a hard time believing that a writer would make two separate articles one for print, one for online or be willing to see his work cut down in either media.
Over the last few weeks I have been following the development of apple’s holiday plans and how the New York Times presents these developments in both the print version and the online version. My interest was sparked when I noticed that after being released for a short period of time, apple decided to drop the price of there hot new item, the I-phone. Intrigued I decided to follow the story and see how the content played out in the different New York Times media, print and online.
With the primary article publish on September 6th, the layout remained similar in both the online in print editions. The major difference I found between the two articles was the placement of photographs and the fact that of courser anything not on the front page of the print edition will be in black and white which in my opinion is less stimulating to the eyes. Another thing I noticed is that for the print edition its placement on the page hurts it. Although it is front page center for the Business Day section underneath it there is a huge photo of an E-book that just automatically grabs your eye. And when you turn to the second half of the article on c9 it’s on the bottom half of the page. In the online version, the photographs are in color and grab your attention. Also one thing that I really enjoy is that in the article itself you have links to items mentioned in the article for example Starbucks.
On September 7th, I was delighted to find an article that dealt with consumers reactions to the I-phone price cut. As I though many were not thrilled especially those who purchased the I-phone for its original price. Again as far as content of the article is concerned we find the same content in both the print and online versions. There only seems to be one difference in the articles and that’s the placement of the accompanying photograph. In the print edition the save the photo for the second page of the article but the online version has the accompanying photo at the beginning grabbing the readers eye.
Moving to September 10th I also found the content to be exactly the same in the print and online editions. I happened to truly enjoy this article as the writer David Carr beautifully talks about what makes an I-pod a God send gadget and that without the content that we want to buy for example episodes of our favorite Television episode well than its like he says, “If the gated community loses a lot of cultural real estate, will I need to keep my address there?”
On September 13th we find that the trend continues that the content of the article does not change. Again differing in the placement of photographs and almost nothing else, I become fed up with these minute differences. It seems to me more than anything else online versus print comes down to a matter of preference.
Again repeating my previous point I wonder how much of a difference there truly is between the print version and online version in the content of articles. I have a hard time believing that a writer would make two separate articles one for print, one for online or be willing to see his work cut down in either media.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Laying out the Times
Laying out the Times
Not to be obvious, however, while looking at the two media’s for the New York Times, print edition and online one thing you notice is that the news changes more often with the online version. I think that one of the greatest advances of online news is that we receive stories faster. No longer do you to accept that this story made the paper today and anything else that happens will be shelved and have to wait till tomorrow’s paper. No longer will that be the case, and dare I say it, in the end the fact that emerging news can get to readers quicker will be the biggest thing that will hurt print papers the most.
As far as the layouts are concerned the New York Times Website and Printed Paper are formatted in similar ways. I believe that this is done to make people who grew up with the paper feel like they can navigate the site well. Things on the site are sorted by what area or field they fit in to, for example: Business or The Arts, just like in the Print edition of the Times.
One thing that a paper always wants to be careful with is how it places stories. Placement of a story can reflect what the editors think is most important and not necessarily what a reader thinks is most important. In regards to the Front Page/ Main Page the Times in print seems to give more of a taste of what will appear in each section of the paper. The Main Page on the Website dealt too much in one area, politics and the war. For example in September 10th’s paper, both main photographs deal with health related issues, but outside of that the page differs. Although dealing with politics and the war, the FrontPage times still includes many other aspects that the website does not give prevalence to on its main page.
When I left the main page one area I wanted to look closely at was the Business Day section since business relates with the new media realm. Again I will reference September 10th’s paper as example. In Monday’s business section there is a huge illustration with the article about how this lawyer named Kevin Morris helped the creators of South Park receive 50 percent stake in the cartoon’s success on the web and other emerging media. However, in the online business section the article is half way down the page where you have to scroll down to get to it. In addition instead of a large illustration to gain your interest featuring the characters of South Park there is a small picture with the lawyers face. And I am sorry but that is not something that is going to grab your attention right away, even if the article is more about his endeavors in the new media realm than South Park and its creators.
In reality the point I am trying to get across is this, both forms of the times have there benefits and disadvantages. Yeah it’s nice to sign in to newyorktimes.com and read the paper on your computer and see emerging stories, but sometimes its just best to open up the printed paper, do the crossword puzzle, and read.
Not to be obvious, however, while looking at the two media’s for the New York Times, print edition and online one thing you notice is that the news changes more often with the online version. I think that one of the greatest advances of online news is that we receive stories faster. No longer do you to accept that this story made the paper today and anything else that happens will be shelved and have to wait till tomorrow’s paper. No longer will that be the case, and dare I say it, in the end the fact that emerging news can get to readers quicker will be the biggest thing that will hurt print papers the most.
As far as the layouts are concerned the New York Times Website and Printed Paper are formatted in similar ways. I believe that this is done to make people who grew up with the paper feel like they can navigate the site well. Things on the site are sorted by what area or field they fit in to, for example: Business or The Arts, just like in the Print edition of the Times.
One thing that a paper always wants to be careful with is how it places stories. Placement of a story can reflect what the editors think is most important and not necessarily what a reader thinks is most important. In regards to the Front Page/ Main Page the Times in print seems to give more of a taste of what will appear in each section of the paper. The Main Page on the Website dealt too much in one area, politics and the war. For example in September 10th’s paper, both main photographs deal with health related issues, but outside of that the page differs. Although dealing with politics and the war, the FrontPage times still includes many other aspects that the website does not give prevalence to on its main page.
When I left the main page one area I wanted to look closely at was the Business Day section since business relates with the new media realm. Again I will reference September 10th’s paper as example. In Monday’s business section there is a huge illustration with the article about how this lawyer named Kevin Morris helped the creators of South Park receive 50 percent stake in the cartoon’s success on the web and other emerging media. However, in the online business section the article is half way down the page where you have to scroll down to get to it. In addition instead of a large illustration to gain your interest featuring the characters of South Park there is a small picture with the lawyers face. And I am sorry but that is not something that is going to grab your attention right away, even if the article is more about his endeavors in the new media realm than South Park and its creators.
In reality the point I am trying to get across is this, both forms of the times have there benefits and disadvantages. Yeah it’s nice to sign in to newyorktimes.com and read the paper on your computer and see emerging stories, but sometimes its just best to open up the printed paper, do the crossword puzzle, and read.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
New Media Glossary 9/4/07
Glossary
1 MEDIA: The term media refers to both a communications technology and thesocial, cultural, legal, economic, and political practices which growup around it. http://www.projectnml.org/node/132
2 citizen journalism or citizen media: When ordinary citizens — without journalism training — help in reporting, commenting on or disseminating the news, it’s known as citizen journalism. It includes people snapping photos on cameraphones at the scene of breaking news, as well as people who start their own blogs or podcasts. http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/01/glossary.html
3 RSS or web feeds: Technology that lets you subscribe to the content of a website or weblog, and then scan headlines or blurbs on new content for these sites using a news reader or aggregator. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, but previously stood for Rich Site Summary.
4 USER GENERATED: any and all forms of media that is controlled by the Used. In some cases refers to the media that the user himself has made
5 Monetization Partners: Refers to all investors in a company that will help it pull a profit. For example in the case of Youtube.com, all who will be buying add space on the site.
6 Intellectual Property: original creative work manifested in a tangible form that can be legally protected, for example, by a patent, trademark, or copyright. Encarta Dictionary
7 Impression: a single instance of an online advertisement being displayed. http://www.lycos-europe.com/mediacenter/glossary.pdf
8 Permission marketing: marketing centered around getting customer's consent to receive information from a company. http://www.lycos-europe.com/mediacenter/glossary.pdf
9 AVI (Audio Video Interleaved) - A Microsoft format for digital audio and video playback from Windows 3.1. Somewhat cross-platform, but mostly a Windows format. Has been replaced by the ASF format, but still used by some multimedia developers. http://media.ucsc.edu/glossary.html
10 HTTP Streaming - A form of streaming (popularized by QuickTime) in which media files begin to play before they are downloaded entirely. This means that they can be sent via HTTP and don't require specialized server software such as RealMedia files do. (RealMedia files use a specialized protocol called RTSP and require content providers to have a special server application installed.) Also called Progressive Download.
http://media.ucsc.edu/glossary.html
1 MEDIA: The term media refers to both a communications technology and thesocial, cultural, legal, economic, and political practices which growup around it. http://www.projectnml.org/node/132
2 citizen journalism or citizen media: When ordinary citizens — without journalism training — help in reporting, commenting on or disseminating the news, it’s known as citizen journalism. It includes people snapping photos on cameraphones at the scene of breaking news, as well as people who start their own blogs or podcasts. http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/01/glossary.html
3 RSS or web feeds: Technology that lets you subscribe to the content of a website or weblog, and then scan headlines or blurbs on new content for these sites using a news reader or aggregator. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, but previously stood for Rich Site Summary.
4 USER GENERATED: any and all forms of media that is controlled by the Used. In some cases refers to the media that the user himself has made
5 Monetization Partners: Refers to all investors in a company that will help it pull a profit. For example in the case of Youtube.com, all who will be buying add space on the site.
6 Intellectual Property: original creative work manifested in a tangible form that can be legally protected, for example, by a patent, trademark, or copyright. Encarta Dictionary
7 Impression: a single instance of an online advertisement being displayed. http://www.lycos-europe.com/mediacenter/glossary.pdf
8 Permission marketing: marketing centered around getting customer's consent to receive information from a company. http://www.lycos-europe.com/mediacenter/glossary.pdf
9 AVI (Audio Video Interleaved) - A Microsoft format for digital audio and video playback from Windows 3.1. Somewhat cross-platform, but mostly a Windows format. Has been replaced by the ASF format, but still used by some multimedia developers. http://media.ucsc.edu/glossary.html
10 HTTP Streaming - A form of streaming (popularized by QuickTime) in which media files begin to play before they are downloaded entirely. This means that they can be sent via HTTP and don't require specialized server software such as RealMedia files do. (RealMedia files use a specialized protocol called RTSP and require content providers to have a special server application installed.) Also called Progressive Download.
http://media.ucsc.edu/glossary.html
Bob Stein We Could Be Better Ancestors Than This
Will Technology Truly create a World Culture?
In Bob Stein’s essay, “We Could Be Better Ancestors Than This”, The Reader is Confronted with Stein’s ideas on how New Media technologies are shaping the world. One very important point Stein raises is that although Globalization is happening through New Media Technologies, it’s not a real Global community. Instead of all cultures influencing the “melting pot” if you will and creating a truly blended global culture instead we are seeing the stronger capitalist cultures imposing upon cultures that are seen as weaker cultures there ideas and views.
Like Stein says if you look at the internet today the top sites are “Time magazine, ESPN, and so on. The content does not look very different then the New York Times top ten list of anything: movies, TV, even books” ( Stein 202). But this is not just with the internet today this has been the trend for years. Not that it is anywhere near the beginning but one example in my mind would be MTV, MTV allowed American music to be seen around the world and slowly influence the music in other parts of the world. But it has happened at least to the point where American music is popular the whole world over. However, you don’t see much music (outside of maybe Reggaeton) that influences American culture. You don’t hear African music or German Waltz’s being played on Top Forty Radio Stations. The same can be said for movies and TV it is very hard for a foreign movie or TV show to make it here in the States.
I don’t think Americans see this globalization happens because we are the ones globalizing. In a way manifest destiny still is not dead. The Idea of Spreading American influence lives on.
Another form of New Technology that needs to be carefully watched is these new means of User generated communication. Communication through these new technologies has become less formal and less real. Instead of in the past when people wrote heart felt letters, instead today people receive instant messages and text messages that say “whr u @”, it is highly impersonal. As an example I get my mail forwarded to campus by my parents and most times my mom will write a little not to the effect of miss you love you mom. Nothing special but just seeing her handwriting on that paper can brighten my day in a way a text message never could. Maybe we need to think about ways that communication can go back to being personal notes on highly commercialized websites like Myspace or Facebook, maybe from time to time a letter is better.
We need to be more conscious about the way we handle or new technology. Like Stein says, technology is not revolutionary people are. Let’s make sure that technology serves us in the right way towards a real world culture and towards a form of communication that is advanced but still heart felt.
In Bob Stein’s essay, “We Could Be Better Ancestors Than This”, The Reader is Confronted with Stein’s ideas on how New Media technologies are shaping the world. One very important point Stein raises is that although Globalization is happening through New Media Technologies, it’s not a real Global community. Instead of all cultures influencing the “melting pot” if you will and creating a truly blended global culture instead we are seeing the stronger capitalist cultures imposing upon cultures that are seen as weaker cultures there ideas and views.
Like Stein says if you look at the internet today the top sites are “Time magazine, ESPN, and so on. The content does not look very different then the New York Times top ten list of anything: movies, TV, even books” ( Stein 202). But this is not just with the internet today this has been the trend for years. Not that it is anywhere near the beginning but one example in my mind would be MTV, MTV allowed American music to be seen around the world and slowly influence the music in other parts of the world. But it has happened at least to the point where American music is popular the whole world over. However, you don’t see much music (outside of maybe Reggaeton) that influences American culture. You don’t hear African music or German Waltz’s being played on Top Forty Radio Stations. The same can be said for movies and TV it is very hard for a foreign movie or TV show to make it here in the States.
I don’t think Americans see this globalization happens because we are the ones globalizing. In a way manifest destiny still is not dead. The Idea of Spreading American influence lives on.
Another form of New Technology that needs to be carefully watched is these new means of User generated communication. Communication through these new technologies has become less formal and less real. Instead of in the past when people wrote heart felt letters, instead today people receive instant messages and text messages that say “whr u @”, it is highly impersonal. As an example I get my mail forwarded to campus by my parents and most times my mom will write a little not to the effect of miss you love you mom. Nothing special but just seeing her handwriting on that paper can brighten my day in a way a text message never could. Maybe we need to think about ways that communication can go back to being personal notes on highly commercialized websites like Myspace or Facebook, maybe from time to time a letter is better.
We need to be more conscious about the way we handle or new technology. Like Stein says, technology is not revolutionary people are. Let’s make sure that technology serves us in the right way towards a real world culture and towards a form of communication that is advanced but still heart felt.
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