How tech is changing campaign coverage
January 31, 2004
“Campaign reporters, like war correspondents, are not necessarily gadget geeks. But the rapacious 24-hour news cycle has forced them onto the cutting edge to do their jobs better - or at least faster. The equipment is even altering the shape of the correspondent’s day, which now includes scrolling in the morning through The Note, an online political briefing from ABC News, and checking one another’s Web sites at night, trying all the while to get a jump on everyone else.
“The great leaps forward for print reporters in this campaign cycle are wireless laptops and digital tape recorders with software that allows them to download a candidate’s speech immediately onto the laptops as an audio file. For television reporters, it is the ubiquitous hand-held minicam, which blurs the line between home video and politically revealing moments.”
Great presidential candidate selectors
January 30, 2004
One of the best uses of the Internet so far in the presidential campaign coverage has been the various candidate selector quizzes news sites have created. These tools engage the users, help them to better understand the issues in an interactive way, and best of all, help readers figure out which candidates are right for them. CyberJournalist.net takes a look at some of the best ones online…
Read more »
Presidential Market 2004
January 29, 2004
PBS FRONTLINE has partnered with Minnesota Public Radio’s Marketplace and KCET to create a cool online game called Presidential Market 2004. Players build virtual “portfolios” by trading shares of “stock” in the major 2004 presidential candidates. The object of the game is to finish — on Election Day, Nov. 2, 2004 — with the highest value portfolio by executing savvy, calculated trades throughout the Democratic primaries and the general election campaign, by betting on the likelihood that a candidate’s “share price” will go up or down at any given time as a result of campaign developments or other events. In other words, Presidential Market 2004 is “a simulated futures market in which only the shrewdest political analysts, and the shrewdest traders, will come out ahead.”
“The broader aim of Presidential Market 2004 is to provide a thought-provoking and engaging way to stoke Americans’ interest in the presidential candidates, the issues, and the electoral process,” the site says. FRONTLINE’s editors will post links on the site to election news and analysis to help players make informed judgments on buying, selling, or shorting candidates’ stock.
The game will be open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. EST until Nov. 1, the night before the election. The two players who have accumulated the highest value portfolios will each win a trip to the presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C. in January 2005.
Talk about engaging your audience. What a great idea.
New York Times launches 1st blog
January 28, 2004
The New York Times launched its first Weblog today. “Times on the Trail” is a new “continuously updated report from the campaign trail reported and edited by the Washington bureau of The Times and produced by NYTimes.com.”
“On the Trail” includes an excellent collection of well-organzed links in the right column, including “a selective guide to today’s campaign coverage on the Web” — the first time we’ve seen The Times link so extensively to competitors’ sites.
And editor’s note on the first Political Points post says, “This is the first edition of a new web-exclusive feature by Carl Hulse and other Times reporters that will be added to and updated throughout the day. ”
The Times’ has been weighing using Weblogs for some time now, so this is not really a surprise. Regular readers of CyberJournalist.net know The Times has already been experimenting with the format in “Kristoff Responds,” a Webloggish forum in which Nicholas D. Kristof, Op-Ed columnist for The Times, answers reader e-mail and gives “the story behind the column.”
Campaign Chat ‘04
January 28, 2004
Public radio listeners in New Hampshire and elsewhere in the country got a chance to chat live online with analysts, journalists, campaign workers and other radio listeners Tuesday night as the results from the N.H. primary were tallied. Campaign Chat ‘04 was a co-production of WBUR, New Hampshire Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, WHYY, KQED, WHYY, WNYC, WFCR, and WRNI. Among those who joined in for the chats were David DiMartino, John Kerry’s Press Secretary; and Massachusetts Rep. Bill Straus on behalf of the Howard Dean Campaign; Brian Lehrer of WNYC’s political talk show, “The Brian Lehrer Show”; and Dean Spiliotis, of the N.H. Institute of Politics.” What a great idea.
NBC, thesmokinggun.com partner
January 28, 2004
The popular Web site thesmokinggun.com will provide material and exclusive reports for NBC News under a deal announced today. The Smoking Gun? and NBC will collaborate on news stories, using the documents, photos and other materials behind the story obtained by thesmokinggun.com. The website’s co-founders, William Bastone and Daniel Green, will appear periodically on Today and Dateline to discuss breaking news stories. “As we head into what will be a year of high-profile trials and a constantly evolving political landscape, to have the investigative resources of The Smoking Gun to bolster our own gives us an incomparable edge,” said NBC News President Neal Shapiro.
Election tips for online editors
January 28, 2004
Poynter Online posted screen shots from more than 65 newspaper-based and more than 30 broadcast-based sites about two hours after the polls closed.
Here are some of the best ideas Poynter points out:
• Vote results as a graphic element. Several sites — The Washington Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago’s WMAQ — put the candidates’ totals out front. One suggestion: make sure there’s a timestamp so readers can see how timely the data are.
• Watch those headlines. There are some headlines that clearly lag behind the unfolding nature of the story. With a poor headline, a site can look out of date, something that affects credibility.
• Visual change of pace, such as The Boston Globe’s boston.com box labeled “Update” under their main photo. The text, a summary of the very latest, kept changing as fast as the story. For the reader checking back during the night, it looked very fresh.
• Integrated visual elements. While a few print sites, such as The Star-Ledger’s nj.com, used a treatment that combined a photo and headline, Dallas television station WFAA took a page from MSNBC’s playbook to create a striking visual effect.
• Moving the story forward. Newsday had an eye-catching headline: “Who Wins Next Tuesday?”
• Get the readers involved. Boston’s NPR station, WBUR, offered an online chat with journalists, campaign workers, and listeners. The Washington Post put up one of its forums so readers could discuss the results.
Philips to mass-produce e-newspaper displays
January 28, 2004
Philips Electronics has partnered with E Ink and is preparing to mass-produce a slim, five-inch display panel upon which users can download newspapers and magazines. If connected to a mobile phone, it can also be used to download web pages, a book or e-mail.
Philips said it had created the displays using electronics circuits made of plastics, which power a monochrome display created with technology from E Ink, a privately-held U.S. company from Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“We can produce this in batches. It’s no longer a research project. We’re going to build a pilot line that should be ready in 2005 to make one million displays a year,” a spokesman at Philips Research told Reuters.
A Philips spokesman said the company could produce about 1 million displays by 2005.
Here’s a video demonstration Poynter’s Larry Larsen spotted.
Bad spelling can cost you $$$
January 28, 2004
Here’s why: In the world of eBay misspellers, items are bought on the cheap and resold with the right spelling and for the right price. As The Times’ Diana Jean Schemo observer, “Much as calculators did for arithmetic, spell checkers have made good spelling seem to quite a number of people like an obsolete virtue.”
Instant Analysis: New Hampshire Primary
January 27, 2004
washingtonpost.com strikes again with its Instant Analysis of the New Hampshire primary. Washington Post Associate Editor Robert G. Kaiser took reader questions for two hours as results came in for the New Hampshire primary.
Now that’s how to build community and get interactive with readers!