The Fifth

Since Monday, I've had a clear example of what I was talking about in my previous post: what makes a journalist?
I am covering for Montreal Fashion Week, and, the "media" section is always so big that it puzzled me. A lot of girls, but this is a surprise for no-one, and a lot of young girls.




So I thought about that: what makes a young girl who loves fashion but hasn't studied journalism different from me, who also love fashion and who study journalism?
I guess this answer must be: fashion is a word within itself.

But why should a teenager get a seat almost "on" the catwalk, while students, freelance journalists, hard working people, have to stand at the back of the room? Oh yeah I forgot, it must be a question of network.

Almost all these girls have a fashion blog, write articles about fashion, get popular for that, but in the end, what makes a journalist from a famous newspaper different from a blogger who knows her stuff? I've realized that most of the time, bloggers know even more than journalists (at least when it comes to fashion), bloggers seem to want to know more, to be every where, to know everything, when journalists seem to be already bored, they go, take notes, go back home, write an article. Full stop. But will they dig more? Will they look for new designers? Will they try and introduce fashion from a different angle?then I'm not sure about the answer.

Of course there's the Boss, the Queen, the Almighty: Anna Wintour. She's what fashion is all about, knowing everything, more than what's in/what's out, more than who this model is, more than what colour should we wear next season....



But Anna Wintour is unique, an unique knows-it-all bitch for sure, but who knows what she's talking about.

But they're not all Anna Wintour. Bloggers influence the fashion industry way more than journalists do. Coline, a French blogger was asked to design shoes for a fashion brand...Now she can live well just with her blog and dropped her job at McDonald's...

But newspapers know it, THEY call these girls who, have not even pushed the door of a journalism school, to work as a journalist or almost "special guest".

What should we understand: journalism schools are about to die?....

The Fourth

When everyone is a blogger, everyone is in the newspapers...



Where is the fine line between a blogger-nerd-teenager with spots spending most of his time writing on his blog and a journalist who publishes his articles online?
Newspapers have had to evolve in order to remain up to date. Writing about current topics quickly became unsufficient to be trendy.
Newspapers look old, they're history even for their own writers, we get our fingers all black and spending money on a subscription is less and less a priority.

And then came blogs.

Blogs are easy to access, attractive and anyone can have one. It is free, we can read hundreds of articles a dayy without having a pile of newspapers sitting next to our bed.

The problem is the content.

As everyone is free to post anything, it becomes harder to to tell fact from fiction. We have all read doubtful stories and have yet thought it could be true.

Can internet kill the press? Has it? Will it?

Journalists have had to evolve to still be read. A lot of jobs were lost, people fired and less papers have been printed. Newspapers created their own websites, with news online, videos for some, pictures most of the time. But the problem of cost remained for some. Indeed, when a blog is free to access, a newspapers' website can ask its readers to pay to access its content.

The profession of journalist became less estimated as everyone got the idea that, they could do it too.

The third

I would like to talk about dreamweaver. Dreamweaver, the magician for someone like me, who, knows a lot about internet but feels a bit poorer when it comes to "creating what's ON internet".

We had to create a web page, and having worked as a blogger, I had a little knowledge of html codes. This little knowledge made me feel as if I knew so much more in reality. FALSE.
Before I started to create my web page, I was a bit anxious because of all the codes and vocabulary associated to HTML. I soon understood that nerds created this language to impress society; it worked.

Dreamweaver appeared to me as a solution to "show off with not much". Thanks to a few tips you gave us, I understood that I could "steal" someone's template and build my own page according to what I stole. I first tried and create my page on my own, with a desire to be independent. After a few attempts, I realized that what was in my head was a bit more complicated than what I was able to do with the skills I have. I turned to internet, but I'll come back to that in a few lines.
First, columns(and this is good because it's what we're going to talk about next class). I tried to get my text in the middle, right in the middle, and justified, not too much on the right or left side. It took me a while, eventhough I'm sure there's an easy way to do that.
I also wanted something a bit more personal, for example: this blog. I like the title of the blog, the way it's designed and the general layout.





It doesn't look like any random blog.

I think in the end dreaweaver really helped me get comfortable with creating web pages. It is easy and very often, intuitive. For example, to add a link, we only have to click on the "link" button on the right side. And as this works with different things, it becomes easier to create a page that looks like one.

I also used tutorials on internet to understand things such as adding an anchor link. I first had to understand what it was. I found useful websites explaining simple things, with non-nerd words.

In the end I know my page could be better, but I am proud of it for a first web page.
I promise the next one will be better!

The Second

For the final project I had several ideas. As we talked about having different categories; I thought of a general design for the page, inspired by a website called The London World.

I think the design is neat and easy. It would be good to take this example in order to expose the different categories. Indeed, under each picture could be a category (news, politics, world, sports, culture, miscellaneous)




I would imagine several articles under each category, and video for each category; like a "video of the day". (or at least for the sports, culture and miscellaneous categories.)

It would be interesting to have reporters moving around town to shoot live events without voice over. Having maybe 1 minute of an event with no words on it, to really provide only what happened and leave the reader/viewer free of understanding.

Instead of the weather forecasts at the bottom of the page



I would like to put a cultural agenda of coming events. It could be interactive (clicking on the date would bring the reader to the page of the event:being an artist/politician/university...)
The one the website Divan Orange has could be interesting.

We could use smaller pictures instead of using rectangles.

I would be interesting in trying and put into shapes the design of the website.


I also thought we could have a special category to make readers participate by contacting directly the author of the article as, I find that websites are usually too complicated when it comes to finding theway to contact a journalist.

We could also have a daily question(or weekly, depending on how we deal with the "answering section") as we can find it on the BFM TV website.






This could be a way to get people's opinion and we could even apply this question section to the content of our website and how people like it.

The miscellaneous category would deal with news that can't be put in any other category. It could be funny anecdotes on news; letters from readers; follow ups on stories written by us but for which the follow up would be made by a reader for example.


This seems to be a direction to follow. I found help getting these ideas by comparing websites and looking at weaknesses of some.

The First

Here are the two websites I've chosen:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/

http://www.charliehebdo.fr/


London Evening Standard



1. Organisation: 18/20
2. Ease of use: 19/20
3. Aesthetics: 13/20
4. Content richness: 17/20
5. Content style: 18/20
Global : 85/100

The website is nicely organized and makes sense: the theme is consistent as it provides news. The first focus is London(UK) but it also gives information about the rest of the world. The navigation theme is neither a plus nor a minus, it's basic; maybe a bit too basic for 2010 though.
The text is easy to read as the background is white and the text is black. The pages load quickly, the text as well as the images and the stories are long enough to provide news but not too long to be boring.
Although the content is good and properly organized, the appearance is not really pleasant to look at, it's neat but a bit too simple and too common. There are no special effects, it could have been good to use some to make the website look a bit more "trendy".
The writing is formal but efficient, it does what a newspaper should do: give the information. The images illustrate well the articles, there are not too many.
In a whole the website will be visited by people for its content but not necessarily for the visual aspect as it looks like any other website. I would have tried and use more colours, organize the content in less categories.


Charlie Hebdo



1. Organisation: 17/20
2. Ease of use: 19/20
3. Aesthetics: 19/20
4. Content richness: 10/20
5. Content style: 19/20
Global: 84/100

This website of a French weekly has a good content and makes sense, following the same line: providing the news with humour and derision. The navigation scheme is a bit hard to follow as we tend to have problems to know where to go to get a specific category.
However, the website is very easy to read with a white background a black text. The pages as well as the images load quickly, the website shows the images at the same moment as the concerned articles. The stories length is in the average, a few articles in the category "actualités" are a bit longer than the rest; but the images also reinforces that impression of length.
The look of the website is pleasant, there are no special effects but the colours bring some "energy" to the website and this could be a way of attracting new visitors (especially younger people). The colours are not distracting but attracting.
The content is interesting but might disturb some people because of the style of writing and the sarcasm of the articles. It is easy to read but still pertinent and the drawings add to the content of the articles.Although the content is interesting, it might be a bit old sometimes, especially in the categories "courrier des lecteurs" or "actualités" (what is a shame for a category labelled this way).
In a whole the website should be kept updated more frequently as the content and the visuals are interesting, it would be good to keep the news "news". This problem could prevent visitors to come back to this website and could make them think the newspaper is not professional.