Sunday, September 21, 2008

Compelling Journalism

I would have to say that CNN.com does do a good job of integrating news coverage from users into their traditional journalistic coverage. This allows users to be engaged in the news coverage. News organizations are always looking for ways to provide continuous traffic to their sites. CNN does a good job of making sure "Joe Blow's" voice is heard. I find one of the easiest topics to provide video is storm coverage. I always find it interesting and exciting that CNN will not waste time to incorporate home video of a hurricane or tornado in their coverage. They even provide links in their search database of people that track storms. I need to incorporate some interaction with my users on my own Web site.


The first thing that strikes me about the Oregonian newspaper piece is that it's about a woman preparing to die. This is a piece that must be taken seriously. This is the true meaning of a human interest story. If a person dies of course there is going to be reporting done, especially if the person is well-known or famous. I have not seen too many reports about a person knowing they are about to die. So this is a unique topic.

From the beginning of the first video they used a very simple approach and just performed interviews in her home. From there they just let her tell the story. This video is appealing to people that are going through the same situation or have a family going through this. So having a simple shooting concept was good when a user is focused on what the person in the video is saying. I can say from my own experience how rough times like these can be. My grandmother passed away this month from lung cancer.

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