Wednesday, March 22, 2006

A Museum For Webpages

I love art museums because of the freedom of navigation and the lack of time restrictions. As James Stovall explains in his book Web Journalism, navigating a museum is very similar to navigating a webpage.

When you enter an art museum, you can walk from room to adjacent room, or you can skip a few rooms and find your favorite, you can even take the elevator to the second or third floor, stop by the café and get a snack, and if you want, you can stamp your hand and come back later. Similarly, when browsing a webpage, you can read the entire page, or you can link to another page, skim that page and link to an entirely new site, you can get up from your computer to grab a snack from the kitchen, then you can come back to the original page because you noticed a link there that you want to explore now.

It is the job of web editors to creatively organize the material on a webpage so that information is formatted logically and can be browsed and accessed with ease. Just like museums have their resources (maps, pamphlets, curators, staff) so too should webpages in the form of site maps and links to related stories and auxiliary pages. With no resources, it would be easy to get lost in an art museum, just like it would be easy to get lost browsing the internet if web editors did not organize their sites effectively.

The fundamental difference between a curator of a museum and the editor of say, a news webpage, is immediacy. Often, art work is tens, hundreds and even thousands of years old. Historical information does not change, and therefore, there is no need for constantly updated the information of famous pieces of art. Conversely, with news webpages, the opposite is true. With a breaking news story, an editor must not only provide information relevant to the news break but also background information so readers can learn of related events in the past. A web editor’s job is never complete and changes at the speed of the world.

Soon, what am I saying soon...I am sure there exists a plethora of webpages about museums; perhaps someday there will be a museum of famous webpages.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Where Is The Line Anymore???

If you are anything like I was 2 months ago, you would routinely surf the next without recognizing the fact that some websites were websites and some websites were blogs.

Nowadays, many websites are begining to resemble blogs, and many blogs appear like websites. I learned to distinguish the two right in time for them to mold into one...at least this is the sentament expressed byTecnorati founder, David L. Sifry in this article.

This fushion is caused by mainstream sites adding blogs to reach out to viewers, and blogs are simultaneously seeking to become reliable news sources.

As a student, I have come across hundreds of illegitimate websites while conducting research. Teachers rarely recognize websites as legitimate sources for research. The difference I find in blogs is that blogs almost always claim to be the opinions expressed by the writer, while websites often claim to express the truth despite often being inaccurate. Therefore, I feel that blogs can be used at least minimally as sources of opinion, while websites normally can't be used at all (aside from official news websites like cnn.com).

Blogging For Good!

I have recently come across blog-related news that may have a potentially endearing effect on humanity. Could blogs save an innocent man's life from the death penalty?

Radley Balko has initiated a national blogging effort to propel the story of a damned yet innocent man into the mainstream media. The man, Cory Maye of Mississippi, was convicted of killing a cop who had mistakenly barged into Maye's home on a drug raid intended for Maye's neighbor. Maye shot and killed the cop, Ron Jones in a clear-cut case of self-defense.

I am sure most people with a one-year-old daughter, like Maye has, would have responded in a similar fashion to the threat of an intruder crashing through the window in the middle of the night.

It is likely that RACE played a significant factor in the trial as Maye is black and Jones is white (as well as the son of the town's police chief).

Balko has the opportunity to be a pioneer in the blogosphere: If his blogging campaign raises enough public awareness, then it is likely that a competent organization like the ACLU may step forward and investigate the case. Currently, Maye's lawyers have acted with incompetence, and it will be a true shame on the state of Mississippi if Maye goes down for this.
Perhaps, as you read and I type, Balko is turning his blog into a life preserver and stringing it over Maye's neck, which, as far as I know, will be the first time that this great medium will save the life of an innocent man.