Good News and Bad News – Interactively

After completing the Multimedia storytelling tutorial, I was charged with the task of evaluating individual multimedia news stories and highlighting the good and the bad.  Below are my lists:

The Good:

The New York Times – Damage from Japanese Earthquake – while this story did not offer lots of video and audio (we’ve seen a lot of that), it did offer some very interactive tools to learning more about the damage, including interactive maps highlighting epicenters, damage, deaths, and radiation levels.  Of course, they could have dumped additional video footage and sound in here, too, but there’s already SO MUCH information, I’m sure they didn’t feel the need. 

Three Persuasive sites

My favorite persuasive writing starts at The New York Times… take a look at a great example (in my opinion) of persuasive writing regarding the Dream Act.

Sweet persuasion #2 comes from the editorial staff at the Chicago Sun Times.  Here’s one of their latest on Wikileaks’ latest shenanigans.

Finally, I have a soft spot for sports… I love the folks at Fox Sports.  Here’s the latest from Jason Whitlock on the Vince Young troubles in Tennessee.  I’m convinced.

The Power and Responsibility of the Written Word

This week’s readings covered a couple of interesting topics, the conflict of the weblog vs. the mass media (veracity of content vs. the integrity of an individual’s use) AND the basics of copyright law.  For folks who regularly provide their own content, including art, photography, etc., this may not be the the height of concern, however, both topics provide a broad background with a clear description of the boundaries that apply to all of us on this new and ever-expanding frontier.