This week is all about the fight between news ezines and news blogs to see which form of mass media comes out on top.
The news ezine I decided to use is the online version of Time magazine, which can be found at http://www.time.com/time/. The website featured different news topics at the top of the page such as "world" and "business & tech" and even featured a new topic "global business." These links can be clicked which will bring you to news articles in the related fields. Also featured on the website is a "quote of the day" and on the home page all the latest headlines.
The news blog I decided to use is named Topix, which can be found at http://www.topix.com/. This website features the most popular stories that are ranked by how many comments they have. It also includes news topics at the top of the home page but theirs are a little different with links that include "2008 election" and "forums and polls." The breaking news is on the home page as well as local news.
Some similarities between the two sources are that they both had the same breaking news headlines. They both have links at the top of the page to navigate the reader to articles of interests and they both have essentially the same layout with the newest stories at the top of the page.
There were many differences between the two sources, though. Time was much more professional looking and did not rank the most important breaking stories by how many people had commented on them as Topix did. It ranked the most important breaking stories by date. Topix pulls their news stories from many different news sources and Time pulls their information from their affiliates CNN. Both websites included blog from readers but Topix is blog based while Time is not.
I feel that Time was more effective. It was much easier to find on the Internet then Topix was. I feel it is a more creditable source because it pulls it's information from CNN which just from experience is known to be a trustworthy source. Time was easier to navigate and to read as it was better organized. Topix did cover some of the same current events but did not cover all the up to date information that Time included.
All in all I felt that I could trust time more for my information than I could Topix just because I trust information coming from a well known magazine than a blog I have never heard of before.
Although I felt I could put more trust into Time magazine's website I still feel that blogs have significantly effected print journalism because of what I saw on Time's home page. On their home page they had a section devoted to blogging. They obviously feel that their readers response are important enough to have this section on the front page right below the breaking stories. If they felt blogging did not effect what stories they put on their pages they would not even have a blogging section.
I still stick with my original thesis.
Have a good week!
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3 comments:
Yeah, virtually every major newspaper or magazine that's online now has some sort of blogging component! They're everywhere, and I think they are here to stay.
I agree with what you said about credibility and the news. I also think blogging has effected the media.
That's interesting. For this particular module I found the opposite to be true and went against my original thesis. I think there's such a vast variety of blogs (from not credible to very credible, and from little opinion/all fact to all opinion and no fact. It's hard to categorize blogs when they're so inconsistent...
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