The emergence of convergence
May 26, 2001
This web site from two Medill students focuses on the idea of convergence, and how it has affected different areas of the media industry.
Golfing News,The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle
May 23, 2001
Golfing News and Scores,The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle. Best Vertical Site, Circulation 75,000 to 250,000, Digital Edge Awards 2001. Judges said, “Even the most demanding golf fanatic will be amazed by the array of statistics, player biographies and hole-by-hole scoring for each PGA Tour tournament. CNN/Sports Illustrated is one of many media outlets that has purchased the core scoring content.”
Pearl Harbor Packages
May 23, 2001
Both ABCNEWS.com and MSNBC.com used the release of the much-anticipated movie “Pearl Harbor” as an excuse to produce impressive packages on the bombing. Check out the Flash reenactment of the bombing produced by MSNBC.com, in conjunction with Newsweek. ABCNEWS.com offered up eyewitness accounts, historical media clips, a quiz and a message board.
Elections Upgrade, CourierPost Online
May 23, 2001
CourierPost Online partnered with the editorial department of its print brethren, The Courier-Post of New Jersey, in its push for statewide online voting. They commissioned a private company to create a sample, secure, online ballot, which walks users through an interactive vote of presidential, congressional and local candidates. A clever, original use of the Web — and one of the few original online projects by a newspaper’s editorial section.
Distributing Misinformation
May 21, 2001
In a piece titled, “The Real Computer Virus” in the April 2001 issue of the American Journalism Review, Carl M. Cannon wrote that “the Internet is an invaluable information-gathering tool for journalists (but) it also has an unmatched capacity for distributing misinformation, which all too often winds up in the mainstream media.”
“I don’t trust the information on the Net very much anymore,” he added. “It turns out the same technology that gives reporters access to the intellectual richness of the ages also makes misinformation ubiquitous.? Here are a few of the foolish mistakes he cited:
— Newspaper columnist Ann Landers and Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby republished information from an e-mail circulating around the Internet that told how many of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence had been killed or had their lives destroyed by the Revolutionary War. Only trouble was the ?facts? in the e-mail were false.
— During the 2000 presidential campaign an e-mail circulated saying the 16th-century French monk Nostradamus had predicted the outcome of the election: “Come the millennium, month 12, in the home of the greatest power, the village idiot will come forth to be acclaimed the leader.” The Times of London, the Tampa Tribune and the Asheville Citizen-Times in North Carolina republished the prediction, and it ran in letters to the editor in a number of other publications, including the Ventura County Star in California and the Morning Star in Wilmington, N.C. The prediction, of course, was a fake.
— After circulating via e-mail, an obviously-fake warning that blacks’ “right to vote” will expire in 2007 was repeated on African American radio talk shows across the country and even made its way into USA Today in a guest column by Camille O. Cosby, Bill Cosby?s wife. Eventually, the Justice Department and the Congressional Black Caucus issued statements saying it wasn?t true.
Web Publishing With XML
May 17, 2001
What is XML? And what does it mean to the online publisher? Also see Part 2.
Developing Community
May 14, 2001
Mike Wendland offers some tips on how newspaper and broadcast journalists can use the Internet to built community around stories or projects.