Tag Archives: cnn

Tracking history through CNN alerts

Posted on by
1

In my history classes growing up, teachers framed newspaper clips and hung them from the walls to document historic elections. I always knew I’d experience at least one truly historic election in my lifetime, and as a child, I always pictured myself framing the newspaper remnants beneath shiny glass on the wall.

Well, that election is here, and instead, all I have to show for it is a huge series of CNN alerts I’ve saved over the months: 

  

I’ve lived through one of the most revolutionary elections in history, marked by the use of technology and resulting in the first black president of the United States. But 50 years from now, will I have anything physical to show for it? Only memories.

CNN's Forum Beta project

Posted on by
2

CNN has a new interactive political community called the Forum, but it appears to be pretty buggy from what I can see.

A Google search for “Forum CNN” brings up no results about the feature, indicating that it’s relatively new, although the oldest comment I found was already 18 days old.

Located at theforum.cnn.com, the feature allows users to create a political “badge” that shows which candidate/issues the user supports. This is where it starts getting buggy for me. Each time I try to upload a photo and select my issues, I’m directed to a Symfony error page.

After building a badge, you can go to a “forum comparison” to see where other users stand on the issues. Currently, the most popular issue is the economy, with 62 percent of users ranking it as their No. 1 concern.

The data can also be grouped by age, gender, candidate choice or “voter leage.” There are five voter league options:

It’s an innovative move by CNN to appeal to that “community” feeling that Internet users so desperately long for.

Although there appear to be minor, arbitrary bugs, the system is surprisingly user friendly. In the section that asks where users stand on political issues, the wording is in everyday language.

Example of question wording:

One plan to reduce global warming would have the government set a limit on the amount of those emissions that companies could produce each year. Companies that exceed that limit would face fines or higher taxes, but they could avoid those penalties by paying money to other companies that produced fewer emissions than allowed. Would you favor or oppose this proposal?

As far as the “forum” aspect of it goes, there appears to be a lot of discussion taking place about the issues (economy, energy, health care, security, Iraq, social issues, social security). So far, the economy is in the lead with 1127 comments and social security is in last place with 237 comments.

I’m not sure how long the forum will survive because it’s not the type of community that’s continually updated. It feels as though you put in your information once, snoop around a little, then never return. It’s not the kind of thing you need to experience more than once.

UPDATE: Just found another bug, after submitting responses to where I stand on the issues, I got this message:

djdub63, based on your answers, here’s your political badge!

I definitely did not register as djdub63, but as laumichell. The badge doesn’t match my question responses. I cannot find an option to change my name or my league back to what I registered as. Instead I’m stuck with some random person’s political views on my account. Interesting.

In theory, it’s a great concept, but maybe they should have waited to launch it. I guess they call it “beta” for a reason.

Comparing 9/11 coverage online

Posted on by
Reply

Today marks the seventh anniversary of 9/11. Most major news sites featured something 9/11 related on their front pages. We’ll take a look at how coverage differs.

CNN.com

CNN was the only major news site to not feature something grandiose about 9/11 on the front page. To get to the coverage, you have to navigate to the U.S. section (and half an hour later, it’s not even the lead U.S. story anymore).

But, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s a prime example of how CNN is constantly updating their site and changing their front page story. It was also bold of CNN to put the patriotic day on the back burner to cover issues that are happening now (like, say, a little hurricane called Ike?).

BBC News

BBC News had coverage that seemed to closely mirror CNN. Their video felt more feature-like and less broadcasty than CNN’s. The slideshow was a little plain, but necessary. One thing I liked was how they tied in current events to 9/11 by getting views from people in the Middle East about security and militancy in their countries.

WashingtonPost.com

The Washington Post had the most going on in terms of 9/11 coverage. Three articles (each with a different focus), video, an interactive flash tour of the memorial, an “audio tour” (something new to me), a forum for community discussion, two photo galleries and a three videos. For information about the 9/11 anniversary, the Washington Post was definitely the place to be. They even had live travel updates with traffic information for people wanting to get to the memorial. One video also gives great insight into the planning process for the designers who built the memorial. The Washington Post definitely gets an A+.

The New York Times

When I visited the New York Times around 10 a.m. PST, there was a rotating slideshow of photos from the 9/11 tribute and an interactive feature on the center of the home page. The NYT was the only site of the five I looked at that featured interactive content embedded within the front page (as opposed to links to multimedia).

Los Angeles Times

The LA Times didn’t have the greatest 9/11 coverage, but that’s probably because they’re located at the wrong end of the country. The video was just a clip from KTLA, but they did have a bland little “interactive feature” (really it was just four photos of ground zero).  They did do a good job of bringing it home to California with a local story about how SoCal firefighters were honoring the event.

Google being unpatriotic?

And this is just for fun, but I noticed Google didn’t have a special 9/11 logo. Interesting that they would make a custom logo for the first hot air balloon flight or the 50th anniversary of the LEGO brick, but not to honor an American patriotic holiday.