This past week has been all about websites this week; thinking about how to improve them and their content. Between my job interview with Wizard about the possibility of being brought on staff to help revamp the content and image of their website and Jane Ellen Stevens document critiqueing the Missourian, my mental process has been extremely web-centric of late. With that said, I think that many of Stevens criticisms aren’t only something that can be used at the Missourian (and I think many of them should start going into effect here, because there are some really great and progressive thoughts in this packet) but also shed some light on what I might suggest to Wizard in my follow-up job interview after they read the current pitch I have of how to revamp their site.
However, being a Missourian focused blog for the time-being, I would like to voice my opinion about how greatness of Steven’s second recommendation. The idea of a whole separate site/publication that is specifically directe at students and young people and covers music, bloggers, video games and the MU campus is genius. It isn’t just genius because most of Columbia’s similar sites (CoMoMusic.com, for example) aren’t very good sites, but because we have the single greatest asset in creating this type of site: competent students.
Not only could Columbia use a site like the one Stevens suggests, but we have more of an ear to the ground in this field than any Columbia publication could hope to have. Our reporters are entirely students who aren’t stuffy literary critics, jaded critiquers of music or video game reviewers with limitless budgets. We can review, report and discuss books, comics, video games, movies and music with a degree of authority but without completely alienating our audience. I love music, I love concerts, I love comics and I love video games. The New York Times may have some incredibly talented writers who I know are super-intelligent of the topics they write about, but when I read their reviews of concerts or articles about video games, I have to say they leave me lacking. They come across as the Academia view of things that people should just be able to describe as AWESOME (Yes, in all caps) and not with a string of adjectives that sound more condescending than relatable.
For a publication like this, we (college students) are truly our own audience. While we are young journalists learning to write about courthouses and school boards for the masses from ages 13 to 80, we are also the best candidates in this town with our journalistic training to be writing about Halo 3 and The Blue Note’s events. This is something we have to harness, because no other publication in town (or potentially in the country) can hope to compete with the fact that we would be writing articles for an audience we are part of; writing articles for ourselves.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Amazon.com's user modifications are THE FUTURE OF NEWSPAPERS!
The future of newspapers, the near future at least, has been sitting in front of me for years and I never noticed till yesterday. The future lies in the way in which Amazon.com is set up for its users.
In order to use Amazon, you must register as a user. This is step one. After registering at Amazon, you can shop for things from any category and based on what pages you look at and what you purchase, a list of other recommendations (based on similarity of items and what other users also check after checking the item you check) is made. This list can then be viewed and modified by the user (by rating items you have bought, or by informing the site that you already own a certain item) and then better recommendations are given. Not only that, but recently, Amazon has added a feature that gives percentages of what people buy when they look at a certain page (i.e. 57% bought the item on this page, 13% bought item B, 10% bought item C, and so on). Lastly, users can start forum discussions on certain topics that can even be viewed from the forums of related topics/products so that buyer input can be seen for an item on its page and on the pages of related items. Also, users can rate useless comments that do not further the discussion, which are viewable, but not exposed in the conversation.
This is the format for the newspaper of the future.
Readers will register (for free or for a cost depending on publication). They will then search for news, and initial recommendations of other stories will be made, like “Other readers read the story on Monkeys you read, and then read this story on Zoos.” The website would take the stories viewed by a reader, based with the reader’s recommendations for readings and place those on the front page of the site when this user signed in. The front page would basically be custom made with the news that this person was most likely to read. The reader could of course search for other stories and viewing those would further customize his/her recommendations. The reader could also look at a list of recommended stories and rate how much they enjoyed them to further customize their experience.
Forums would be available for all stories, but users would vote on which comments were contributing and which were pointless insults and the good posts would be left while the bad posts would be removed.
Also, much like Amazon’s homepage will feature recommended products for me, it also tells me about certain sales and newly released items. In this way, the personalized “front page” of the website could feature mostly recommended stories but also have links to breaking news that the person might want to know about even if the news did not fall specifically under their recommendations that reflect their preferences.
Now, if people were to go online and use the website until a list of recommendations was pretty fleshed out for them, they could then select the option for a print version of the newspaper based on their recommendations to be sent to their house. Who wouldn’t read a print paper when they were assured to have it chock-full of stories that they know they would read anyway.
Basically, Amazon takes their user input (what their customers view, rate and buy) to tailor their webpage so that what pops up is something the consumer is most likely to purchase. News outlets can take this user input (what stories search, read, comment on or rate) to tailor their front page (be it wed or print) so that what is there is what are the stories each particular reader is most likely to read.
This would of course lead to some horrible science fiction future where advertisements begin be tailored specifically to consumers (“Hey Jim, I hear you have athlete’s foot…” etc) but it also could be used to give people the news they want immediately without having to sift through different web pages and web searches or multiple paper sections.
In order to use Amazon, you must register as a user. This is step one. After registering at Amazon, you can shop for things from any category and based on what pages you look at and what you purchase, a list of other recommendations (based on similarity of items and what other users also check after checking the item you check) is made. This list can then be viewed and modified by the user (by rating items you have bought, or by informing the site that you already own a certain item) and then better recommendations are given. Not only that, but recently, Amazon has added a feature that gives percentages of what people buy when they look at a certain page (i.e. 57% bought the item on this page, 13% bought item B, 10% bought item C, and so on). Lastly, users can start forum discussions on certain topics that can even be viewed from the forums of related topics/products so that buyer input can be seen for an item on its page and on the pages of related items. Also, users can rate useless comments that do not further the discussion, which are viewable, but not exposed in the conversation.
This is the format for the newspaper of the future.
Readers will register (for free or for a cost depending on publication). They will then search for news, and initial recommendations of other stories will be made, like “Other readers read the story on Monkeys you read, and then read this story on Zoos.” The website would take the stories viewed by a reader, based with the reader’s recommendations for readings and place those on the front page of the site when this user signed in. The front page would basically be custom made with the news that this person was most likely to read. The reader could of course search for other stories and viewing those would further customize his/her recommendations. The reader could also look at a list of recommended stories and rate how much they enjoyed them to further customize their experience.
Forums would be available for all stories, but users would vote on which comments were contributing and which were pointless insults and the good posts would be left while the bad posts would be removed.
Also, much like Amazon’s homepage will feature recommended products for me, it also tells me about certain sales and newly released items. In this way, the personalized “front page” of the website could feature mostly recommended stories but also have links to breaking news that the person might want to know about even if the news did not fall specifically under their recommendations that reflect their preferences.
Now, if people were to go online and use the website until a list of recommendations was pretty fleshed out for them, they could then select the option for a print version of the newspaper based on their recommendations to be sent to their house. Who wouldn’t read a print paper when they were assured to have it chock-full of stories that they know they would read anyway.
Basically, Amazon takes their user input (what their customers view, rate and buy) to tailor their webpage so that what pops up is something the consumer is most likely to purchase. News outlets can take this user input (what stories search, read, comment on or rate) to tailor their front page (be it wed or print) so that what is there is what are the stories each particular reader is most likely to read.
This would of course lead to some horrible science fiction future where advertisements begin be tailored specifically to consumers (“Hey Jim, I hear you have athlete’s foot…” etc) but it also could be used to give people the news they want immediately without having to sift through different web pages and web searches or multiple paper sections.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Dirty Jobs: The Discovery Channel's gain is ours as well!
I must admit, when I saw Monday’s front page I was near outrage. I saw the big Dirty Jobs label on the first story and was furious that the Missourian would so shamelessly rip off a brilliant idea by the Discovery Channel.
Then, I saw in the first sentence that the article immediately expressed that the week’s series was being completely “inspired”… er, *cough * ripped off…by the show, and all of a sudden I was completely pleased. All it took was a simple admittance of idea robbery (which, is of course, completely legal in this sense) and I was on board. I love Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel and I can’t believe just taking such a simple premise (I mean, the show was there for goodness sake) and putting it in the paper hadn’t dawned on me before.
In essence, this type of story has been written millions of times before. It’s a profile of someone who has an interesting job, but through that dirty twist on it, latch it onto a popular show and make it local and suddenly you are looking at the makings of a fantastic story. I have to give mad props and extreme kudos to the minds behind this idea. So simple, yet so effective. When I saw that Tuesday’s article would be about a Livestock Semen Inspector…well, I don’t think I have ever laughed so hard or looked forward to Tuesday’s paper so much…EVER!
So, what’s next…Mythbusters? I’ll take it on. Myth 1…how many MU students who kiss on the bridge in Peace Park actually get married? I broke up with my ex-girlfriend who I kissed on it, so Myth busted on my vote. How about, will the Tiger Mosaic ever be finished? Will Mizzou ever have a period where half the campus isn’t under construction? The possibilities are endless!
Missourian Deadliest Catch? The squirrels are game this season!
Mizzou How It’s Made. Focus on the history of the columns construction and the making of the bronzes on campus (Thom Jeff, Beetle Bailey, etc).
Like I said, the possibilities are endless and I haven’t even started working Animal Planet and History Channel shows into the equation yet.
Then, I saw in the first sentence that the article immediately expressed that the week’s series was being completely “inspired”… er, *cough * ripped off…by the show, and all of a sudden I was completely pleased. All it took was a simple admittance of idea robbery (which, is of course, completely legal in this sense) and I was on board. I love Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel and I can’t believe just taking such a simple premise (I mean, the show was there for goodness sake) and putting it in the paper hadn’t dawned on me before.
In essence, this type of story has been written millions of times before. It’s a profile of someone who has an interesting job, but through that dirty twist on it, latch it onto a popular show and make it local and suddenly you are looking at the makings of a fantastic story. I have to give mad props and extreme kudos to the minds behind this idea. So simple, yet so effective. When I saw that Tuesday’s article would be about a Livestock Semen Inspector…well, I don’t think I have ever laughed so hard or looked forward to Tuesday’s paper so much…EVER!
So, what’s next…Mythbusters? I’ll take it on. Myth 1…how many MU students who kiss on the bridge in Peace Park actually get married? I broke up with my ex-girlfriend who I kissed on it, so Myth busted on my vote. How about, will the Tiger Mosaic ever be finished? Will Mizzou ever have a period where half the campus isn’t under construction? The possibilities are endless!
Missourian Deadliest Catch? The squirrels are game this season!
Mizzou How It’s Made. Focus on the history of the columns construction and the making of the bronzes on campus (Thom Jeff, Beetle Bailey, etc).
Like I said, the possibilities are endless and I haven’t even started working Animal Planet and History Channel shows into the equation yet.
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