The “power of internet” allows people to interact with news, to “make their own response (Simons 2007, p. 67).” The rise of Web 2.0 (Xin 2010, pp. 179) has resulted in mainstream journalism generating a deeper user-producer intertwined system–a sort of “do-it-yourself reporting (Allan 2006, pp. 123)”. It’s called citizen or participatory journalism, and this democratic news writing empowers ordinary people to give a new face to news (Simons 2007, p. 68).
News has become a commodity, and “non-corporate journalism (Allan 2006, pp. 123)” is what participatory journalism sites like Newsvine need to produce, to counter ‘traditional’ style content production by sites like Mail Online. However, the degree to which they are currently successful, is debatable.
Britain’s first daily newspaper, The Daily Mail begun publication in 1896 by brothers Alfred and Alfred Harmsworth. Mail Online is the internet platform on which The Daily Mail publishes its news. The online version by-and-large follows a shovelware system; the news articles written for The Daily Mail are put online, but what makes it different is the incorporation of user interaction, to “enhance public participation (Xin 2010, pp. 179).”
The Daily Mail, published by Associated Newspapers Ltd., follows the ideology of “promising quality journalism at affordable prices1”. It is a middle-market2 newspaper, i.e it mixes hard and soft news mix with some entertainment value. It particularly caters to female audiences3, and literary middle class (Manning 2001, pp. 83). The newspaper was set up “to set the social and technological agenda of the nation 4,” in accordance with the founding vision to “inform, entertain and persuade5;” and its coverage on the ongoing Libyan crisis does just that.
On the other hand, Newsvine.com is a MSNBC Interactive News (msnbc.com) owned social news platform that came about in 2006. It’s staff only manages Newsvine’s website, the content is produced by its users. Newsvine’s website states its sole purpose to “... build a perfectly different, perfectly efficient way to read, write, and interact with the news.6” Its coverage on the Libyan issue however doesn’t provide for perfect interaction for reasons listed further on.
Its target user groups are any individuals who want to report news from individualistic perspectives. Newsvine supports stories from established sources like Associated Press or citizen journalist. It’s thus more of a collaborative journalism website. Editorial decision-making is democratic, as long as Newsvine’s Code of Honor7 is followed; the essence of which being: “...a place for people to share and discuss topics relating to the news.”
The reportage of two similar stories on the ongoing civil crisis and political upheaval in Libya, is taken up for analysis.
Both the stories, ‘Cruise strike hits Gaddafi: “We will not stand by and let this dictator murder his own people8”’ by Mail Online, and ‘US, allies strike Libyan targets from air and sea9’ by Newsvine, incorporate online journalism's “three defining characteristics – hypertextuality, interactivity, multimediality (Tapas 2006, pp. 34)” in differing ways. The online news feature of adaptability has resulted in the links taking the readers to the same article, but with added texts and images, and different headlines.
Both Mail Online and Newsvine texts are not multilinear; they are read “in one direction only (Tapas 2006, pp. 38)”. And the text is not hyperlinked either. Hypertextuality provides “choices to the reader (Tapas 2006, pp. 36)” to go to a new text containing related information. However, Mail Online does provide evidence of hypertextuality as in-between text body, there are different colored hyperlinks to related commentary/articles under the ‘More’ tab, along with directions stating to scroll down to related videos after the first set of paragraphs. This feature makes it different from= Newsvine as the reader has a few indirect options to avoid linearity. Also by not providing hypertexts in the main body, the article keeps the attention of the reader, but allows options for further research. Mail Online also lists all relevant People, Places and Organisations for further referencing under the ‘Explore More’ tab at the bottom of page. Newsvine has this feature at the beginning, but it is less exhaustive. The “ability to link the main text with other websites and any number of supplementary texts10” is the use of hypertextuality. A feature therefore to improve hypertextuality in both sites would be to provide hyperlinks leading to journalist bios and other news sites.
Mail Online’s narrative follows newsworthiness and inverted-pyramid structure, is broken into chunks with easy scan-ability and is more user engaging, though more white space could improve readability, for writing in chunks and white space “helps web display” (Tapas 2006, pp. 41). Though the story doesn’t have a stand-first, it starts effectively with bold subheads in bullet form, and the language is clear. However, unlike Newsvine it is too long and cannot be read on mobile devices. Besides the story, the headline also needs to get shorter.
Newsvine narrative follows the tad-pole structure, it has its “meat in the head” (Dorner 2002, pp. 62), and has a stand-first in the traditional sense. Unlike Mail Online, the headline is shorter and snappier though there is only conventional narrative structure, primarily shovelware. The intent here is to just inform, like a traditional newspaper. It generates few comments and a minor debate; 9 comments via the public discussion interactivity feature, in contrast to 501 comments on the Mail Online article. The text also could be further broken down into chunks. In addition, like Mail Online, they should provide a hyperlink for comments at the start of the page, so that readers don’t have to wait until the end to respond.
Newsvine doesn’t offer much on multimediality or interactivity. Multimediality is the “coexistence of different media in a single package (Tapas 2006, pp. 47),” and Newsvine merely has a picture gallery that got updated from 77 initial photos to 247, but the latest are added at the end and the interface is lackluster. Most of the pictures take ages to load and are not even relevant to the context of the story. Though at the end there are hyperlinks to related coverage on both Newsvine and other websites, and a comments section in addition to recommending for Facebook tag, there is not much interactivity. Print journalism differs from online multimediality in “its lack of interactivity” (Tapas 2006, pp. 49). This forces one to think that how successful is Newsvine in qualifying as a participatory journalism website?
The Mail Online website and article are in stark contrast highly multimedial, with text, pictures, videos, both outside [Euro news] and video news from their own MailOnline TV. Also in the narrative, text and pictures alternate that keep the reader interested. Readers can set up a profile and add their favorite articles to ‘add to my stories’ widget. The photos and information keeps on getting removed for irrelevancy and updated for timeliness. There are maps to bring in context that are also interactive to a certain extent–one can enlarge the maps. Though it would be better to include animated info-graphics (McAdams 2008, pp. 6) to show movement of planes or before/after attack pictures.
Navigation is fluid, images are captioned and context driven, and interface is user-friendly. Further interactivity is evident through presence of ‘Share this article’ widgets, that allow the story to be linked or embedded to various social media like twitter, myspace among others, in addition to seeding the story into Newsvine itself. This interactive feature is great as the reader can post this story directly on Newsvine, and from Newsvine, start a completely different discussion forum or create related articles. This feature in-fact makes Mail Online more participatory than Newsvine. It also has a ‘Read later’ function that sends the article’s link to readers’ email.
In gist, both websites have registrational and selective interactivity11 through profile creation, and menus or votes, both lack immersive and adaptive interactivity through absence of games or virtual worlds, though Mail Online has great dialogic interactivity while Newsvine is of elementary standard only. Therefore, unlike Newsvine, Mail Online involves storytelling through “two or more media elements woven together into an integrated whole,” (Martin 2011, slide 20) thereby following its production context of informing and persuading.
But this shortcoming in Newsvine stems from the fact that it is a participatory journalism site, and is less accountable for credibility and accountability, as gate control is non-existant. Unlike Mail Online, its purpose is not to form public opinion, but to generate it. The comments on Mail Online are moderated, whereas people can customize news on Newsvine for it’s an open-community with no own editorial voice, and they have differing production contexts and target audiences. Both sites are good examples of web 2.0 as they depict interaction between ‘producers and user’ and reflect ‘co-creation of content’ (Martin 2011, slide 18). In addition, they are “timely and relevant”, written “lively and and tight”, and “headlines tell the story”(Briggs 2008).
Mail Online therefore provides for a better developed network of Web 2.0 features and online journalism’s three pillars, hypertextuality, interactivity, and multimediality. It however needs to make the interface less congested, and not just import shovelware from its print edition. A few hypermedia tools like animated info-graphics could be added to make it a well-rounded internet news provider. And Newsvine could be made more Web 2.0 suitable by including features like audio-video content, including application programming interfaces (API), (Martin 2011, slide 23) google alerts, RSS feeds, a thumbnail picture preview gallery that allows user to save time by going directly to related imagery, geo-tagged and embedded links to all key words.
And as Mark Briggs justly says, “(there is a need to) put the readers first and use technology to do better journalism—instead of copying the existing model and putting it online (Briggs 2009, pp. 6).”
Footnotes:
1 DMGT History, <http://www.dmgt.co.uk/about-dmgt/dmgt-history>, date accessed 27/03/2011
2 Cridland, J 2010, The mid-markets tabloid, Media UK, < http://www.mediauk.com/article/32719/the-mid-market-tabloids> date accessed
27/03/2011
3 Harris, P, DMGT History, < www.dmgt.co.uk/uploads/files/The-Story-of-the-Daily-Mail.pdf>, date accessed 27/03/11
4 ibid
5 ibid
6 About Newsvine, <http://www.newsvine.com/_nv/cms/info/companyInfo> date accessed 27/03/2011
7 ibid
8 Daily Mail reporters, last updated 21/03/2011, ‘RAF strikes against Gaddafi’s forces branded ‘a success’ as bombed out tanks and cars litter the
roads near Benghazi’, <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368028/Cruise-strike-hits-Gaddafi-We-stand-let-dictator-murderpeople.
html> date accessed 29/03/2011
9 Hadeel Al-Shalchi, Associated Press, ‘Qatar becomes 1st Arab country to fly over Libya’ <http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2011/03/19/6300383-
us-allies-strike-libyan-targets-from-air-and-sea> date accessed 29/03/2011
References:
Simons, M 2007, Experts from ‘The meteor and the ice age’, The Content Makers: understanding
the media in Australia, Camberwell, Victoria, Penguin, pp. 65-80.
Xin, X 2010, ‘Web 2.0, citizen journalism and social justice in China’, in News Online:
transformations and continuities, Graham Meikle and Guy Redden (eds), Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, pp. 178-194.
Allan, S 2006, ‘Participatory journalism: IndyMedia, OhmyNews and Wikinews’, Online News,
Open Universoty Press.
Manning, P 200l, News and news sources: a critical introduction, Sage Publications London
Tapas, R 2006, ‘Multimediality, Interactivity and Hypertextuality’, in Online Journalism, New
Delhi: Foundation Books, pp. 34-59.
Dorner, Jane 2002, ‘Good web writing’, Writing for the Internet, Oxford University Press, pp.
56-73.
McAdams, M 2008, ‘A new form of storytelling’ in Flash Journalism: How to create multimedia
news packages, Focal Press, Burlington MA, pp. 3-21.
Martin, F 2011, OJ2011_week2, slide 20.
Martin, F 2011, OJ2011_week1, slide 18
Briggs, M 2008, ‘How to report news for the Web’, Journalism 2.0: How to survive and thrive–a
digital literacy guide for the information age, Knight Citizens News Network,. pp. 63-67.
Briggs, M 2009, ‘Advanced blogging’, Journalism Next: a practical guide to digital reporting and
publishing, Washington DC: CQ Press.
Websites
DMGT History, <http://www.dmgt.co.uk/about-dmgt/dmgt-history>, date accessed 27/03/2011
2 Cridland, J 2010, The mid-markets tabloid, Media UK, < http://www.mediauk.com/article/32719/
the-mid-market-tabloids> date accessed 27/03/2011
3 Harris, P, DMGT History, < www.dmgt.co.uk/uploads/files/The-Story-of-the-Daily-Mail.pdf>, date
accessed 27/03/11
6 About Newsvine, <http://www.newsvine.com/_nv/cms/info/companyInfo> date accessed
27/03/2011
8 Daily Mail reporters, last updated 21/03/2011, ‘RAF strikes against Gaddafi’s forces branded ‘a
success’ as bombed out tanks and cars litter the roads near Benghazi’, <http://
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368028/Cruise-strike-hits-Gaddafi-We-stand-let-dictatormurder-
people.html> date accessed 29/03/2011
9 Hadeel Al-Shalchi, Associated Press, ‘Qatar becomes 1st Arab country to fly over Libya’ <http://
www.newsvine.com/_news/2011/03/19/6300383-us-allies-strike-libyan-targets-from-air-andsea>
date accessed 29/03/2011
Note: This article was first written in 2011.
News has become a commodity, and “non-corporate journalism (Allan 2006, pp. 123)” is what participatory journalism sites like Newsvine need to produce, to counter ‘traditional’ style content production by sites like Mail Online. However, the degree to which they are currently successful, is debatable.
Britain’s first daily newspaper, The Daily Mail begun publication in 1896 by brothers Alfred and Alfred Harmsworth. Mail Online is the internet platform on which The Daily Mail publishes its news. The online version by-and-large follows a shovelware system; the news articles written for The Daily Mail are put online, but what makes it different is the incorporation of user interaction, to “enhance public participation (Xin 2010, pp. 179).”
The Daily Mail, published by Associated Newspapers Ltd., follows the ideology of “promising quality journalism at affordable prices1”. It is a middle-market2 newspaper, i.e it mixes hard and soft news mix with some entertainment value. It particularly caters to female audiences3, and literary middle class (Manning 2001, pp. 83). The newspaper was set up “to set the social and technological agenda of the nation 4,” in accordance with the founding vision to “inform, entertain and persuade5;” and its coverage on the ongoing Libyan crisis does just that.
On the other hand, Newsvine.com is a MSNBC Interactive News (msnbc.com) owned social news platform that came about in 2006. It’s staff only manages Newsvine’s website, the content is produced by its users. Newsvine’s website states its sole purpose to “... build a perfectly different, perfectly efficient way to read, write, and interact with the news.6” Its coverage on the Libyan issue however doesn’t provide for perfect interaction for reasons listed further on.
Its target user groups are any individuals who want to report news from individualistic perspectives. Newsvine supports stories from established sources like Associated Press or citizen journalist. It’s thus more of a collaborative journalism website. Editorial decision-making is democratic, as long as Newsvine’s Code of Honor7 is followed; the essence of which being: “...a place for people to share and discuss topics relating to the news.”
The reportage of two similar stories on the ongoing civil crisis and political upheaval in Libya, is taken up for analysis.
Both the stories, ‘Cruise strike hits Gaddafi: “We will not stand by and let this dictator murder his own people8”’ by Mail Online, and ‘US, allies strike Libyan targets from air and sea9’ by Newsvine, incorporate online journalism's “three defining characteristics – hypertextuality, interactivity, multimediality (Tapas 2006, pp. 34)” in differing ways. The online news feature of adaptability has resulted in the links taking the readers to the same article, but with added texts and images, and different headlines.
Both Mail Online and Newsvine texts are not multilinear; they are read “in one direction only (Tapas 2006, pp. 38)”. And the text is not hyperlinked either. Hypertextuality provides “choices to the reader (Tapas 2006, pp. 36)” to go to a new text containing related information. However, Mail Online does provide evidence of hypertextuality as in-between text body, there are different colored hyperlinks to related commentary/articles under the ‘More’ tab, along with directions stating to scroll down to related videos after the first set of paragraphs. This feature makes it different from= Newsvine as the reader has a few indirect options to avoid linearity. Also by not providing hypertexts in the main body, the article keeps the attention of the reader, but allows options for further research. Mail Online also lists all relevant People, Places and Organisations for further referencing under the ‘Explore More’ tab at the bottom of page. Newsvine has this feature at the beginning, but it is less exhaustive. The “ability to link the main text with other websites and any number of supplementary texts10” is the use of hypertextuality. A feature therefore to improve hypertextuality in both sites would be to provide hyperlinks leading to journalist bios and other news sites.
Mail Online’s narrative follows newsworthiness and inverted-pyramid structure, is broken into chunks with easy scan-ability and is more user engaging, though more white space could improve readability, for writing in chunks and white space “helps web display” (Tapas 2006, pp. 41). Though the story doesn’t have a stand-first, it starts effectively with bold subheads in bullet form, and the language is clear. However, unlike Newsvine it is too long and cannot be read on mobile devices. Besides the story, the headline also needs to get shorter.
Newsvine narrative follows the tad-pole structure, it has its “meat in the head” (Dorner 2002, pp. 62), and has a stand-first in the traditional sense. Unlike Mail Online, the headline is shorter and snappier though there is only conventional narrative structure, primarily shovelware. The intent here is to just inform, like a traditional newspaper. It generates few comments and a minor debate; 9 comments via the public discussion interactivity feature, in contrast to 501 comments on the Mail Online article. The text also could be further broken down into chunks. In addition, like Mail Online, they should provide a hyperlink for comments at the start of the page, so that readers don’t have to wait until the end to respond.
Newsvine doesn’t offer much on multimediality or interactivity. Multimediality is the “coexistence of different media in a single package (Tapas 2006, pp. 47),” and Newsvine merely has a picture gallery that got updated from 77 initial photos to 247, but the latest are added at the end and the interface is lackluster. Most of the pictures take ages to load and are not even relevant to the context of the story. Though at the end there are hyperlinks to related coverage on both Newsvine and other websites, and a comments section in addition to recommending for Facebook tag, there is not much interactivity. Print journalism differs from online multimediality in “its lack of interactivity” (Tapas 2006, pp. 49). This forces one to think that how successful is Newsvine in qualifying as a participatory journalism website?
The Mail Online website and article are in stark contrast highly multimedial, with text, pictures, videos, both outside [Euro news] and video news from their own MailOnline TV. Also in the narrative, text and pictures alternate that keep the reader interested. Readers can set up a profile and add their favorite articles to ‘add to my stories’ widget. The photos and information keeps on getting removed for irrelevancy and updated for timeliness. There are maps to bring in context that are also interactive to a certain extent–one can enlarge the maps. Though it would be better to include animated info-graphics (McAdams 2008, pp. 6) to show movement of planes or before/after attack pictures.
Navigation is fluid, images are captioned and context driven, and interface is user-friendly. Further interactivity is evident through presence of ‘Share this article’ widgets, that allow the story to be linked or embedded to various social media like twitter, myspace among others, in addition to seeding the story into Newsvine itself. This interactive feature is great as the reader can post this story directly on Newsvine, and from Newsvine, start a completely different discussion forum or create related articles. This feature in-fact makes Mail Online more participatory than Newsvine. It also has a ‘Read later’ function that sends the article’s link to readers’ email.
In gist, both websites have registrational and selective interactivity11 through profile creation, and menus or votes, both lack immersive and adaptive interactivity through absence of games or virtual worlds, though Mail Online has great dialogic interactivity while Newsvine is of elementary standard only. Therefore, unlike Newsvine, Mail Online involves storytelling through “two or more media elements woven together into an integrated whole,” (Martin 2011, slide 20) thereby following its production context of informing and persuading.
But this shortcoming in Newsvine stems from the fact that it is a participatory journalism site, and is less accountable for credibility and accountability, as gate control is non-existant. Unlike Mail Online, its purpose is not to form public opinion, but to generate it. The comments on Mail Online are moderated, whereas people can customize news on Newsvine for it’s an open-community with no own editorial voice, and they have differing production contexts and target audiences. Both sites are good examples of web 2.0 as they depict interaction between ‘producers and user’ and reflect ‘co-creation of content’ (Martin 2011, slide 18). In addition, they are “timely and relevant”, written “lively and and tight”, and “headlines tell the story”(Briggs 2008).
Mail Online therefore provides for a better developed network of Web 2.0 features and online journalism’s three pillars, hypertextuality, interactivity, and multimediality. It however needs to make the interface less congested, and not just import shovelware from its print edition. A few hypermedia tools like animated info-graphics could be added to make it a well-rounded internet news provider. And Newsvine could be made more Web 2.0 suitable by including features like audio-video content, including application programming interfaces (API), (Martin 2011, slide 23) google alerts, RSS feeds, a thumbnail picture preview gallery that allows user to save time by going directly to related imagery, geo-tagged and embedded links to all key words.
And as Mark Briggs justly says, “(there is a need to) put the readers first and use technology to do better journalism—instead of copying the existing model and putting it online (Briggs 2009, pp. 6).”
Footnotes:
1 DMGT History, <http://www.dmgt.co.uk/about-dmgt/dmgt-history>, date accessed 27/03/2011
2 Cridland, J 2010, The mid-markets tabloid, Media UK, < http://www.mediauk.com/article/32719/the-mid-market-tabloids> date accessed
27/03/2011
3 Harris, P, DMGT History, < www.dmgt.co.uk/uploads/files/The-Story-of-the-Daily-Mail.pdf>, date accessed 27/03/11
4 ibid
5 ibid
6 About Newsvine, <http://www.newsvine.com/_nv/cms/info/companyInfo> date accessed 27/03/2011
7 ibid
8 Daily Mail reporters, last updated 21/03/2011, ‘RAF strikes against Gaddafi’s forces branded ‘a success’ as bombed out tanks and cars litter the
roads near Benghazi’, <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368028/Cruise-strike-hits-Gaddafi-We-stand-let-dictator-murderpeople.
html> date accessed 29/03/2011
9 Hadeel Al-Shalchi, Associated Press, ‘Qatar becomes 1st Arab country to fly over Libya’ <http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2011/03/19/6300383-
us-allies-strike-libyan-targets-from-air-and-sea> date accessed 29/03/2011
References:
Simons, M 2007, Experts from ‘The meteor and the ice age’, The Content Makers: understanding
the media in Australia, Camberwell, Victoria, Penguin, pp. 65-80.
Xin, X 2010, ‘Web 2.0, citizen journalism and social justice in China’, in News Online:
transformations and continuities, Graham Meikle and Guy Redden (eds), Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, pp. 178-194.
Allan, S 2006, ‘Participatory journalism: IndyMedia, OhmyNews and Wikinews’, Online News,
Open Universoty Press.
Manning, P 200l, News and news sources: a critical introduction, Sage Publications London
Tapas, R 2006, ‘Multimediality, Interactivity and Hypertextuality’, in Online Journalism, New
Delhi: Foundation Books, pp. 34-59.
Dorner, Jane 2002, ‘Good web writing’, Writing for the Internet, Oxford University Press, pp.
56-73.
McAdams, M 2008, ‘A new form of storytelling’ in Flash Journalism: How to create multimedia
news packages, Focal Press, Burlington MA, pp. 3-21.
Martin, F 2011, OJ2011_week2, slide 20.
Martin, F 2011, OJ2011_week1, slide 18
Briggs, M 2008, ‘How to report news for the Web’, Journalism 2.0: How to survive and thrive–a
digital literacy guide for the information age, Knight Citizens News Network,. pp. 63-67.
Briggs, M 2009, ‘Advanced blogging’, Journalism Next: a practical guide to digital reporting and
publishing, Washington DC: CQ Press.
Websites
DMGT History, <http://www.dmgt.co.uk/about-dmgt/dmgt-history>, date accessed 27/03/2011
2 Cridland, J 2010, The mid-markets tabloid, Media UK, < http://www.mediauk.com/article/32719/
the-mid-market-tabloids> date accessed 27/03/2011
3 Harris, P, DMGT History, < www.dmgt.co.uk/uploads/files/The-Story-of-the-Daily-Mail.pdf>, date
accessed 27/03/11
6 About Newsvine, <http://www.newsvine.com/_nv/cms/info/companyInfo> date accessed
27/03/2011
8 Daily Mail reporters, last updated 21/03/2011, ‘RAF strikes against Gaddafi’s forces branded ‘a
success’ as bombed out tanks and cars litter the roads near Benghazi’, <http://
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368028/Cruise-strike-hits-Gaddafi-We-stand-let-dictatormurder-
people.html> date accessed 29/03/2011
9 Hadeel Al-Shalchi, Associated Press, ‘Qatar becomes 1st Arab country to fly over Libya’ <http://
www.newsvine.com/_news/2011/03/19/6300383-us-allies-strike-libyan-targets-from-air-andsea>
date accessed 29/03/2011
Note: This article was first written in 2011.
