fandomhigh | Journalism Homework - Due Midnight November 11

THIS IS NOT THE CLASS THREAD. HOMEWORK ONLY

You have till midnight next Friday to get these submitted. If you want to be certain of the requirements for each course, they can be found here.

For this week's homework, go to The New York Times website.

Login for journalism students is: jerusalem_s
Password is: fandomhigh

Remember this. We'll be using this site and others in the future.

Scan the site. Find something which interests you, be it column, news story, headline or use of photographs.

Journalism 101
100 words on what you found and why it captured your interest.

Journalism 201
150 words on the piece you chose and how you might have done it differently.

Journalism 301
200 words on why you did or didn't like the way the site is set up as far as it helped or didn't help you find what you were looking for.

Advanced Journalism
150 words on today's New York Times issue and your impression of the website as far as ease of use and/or impact of presentation - as compared to hard-copy newspaper.

Combat Journalism
100-150 words on internet news reporting and the use of weblogs and/or journals to report 'news' and the accountability or lack thereof of people who use their weblogs/journals to spread 'news' that they have picked up in other journals and not bothered to verify.

Photojournalism needs to give me 100 words on the use of photographs on the New York Times Website - positive or negative.

Please be sure to put which course your response is for in the subject line of your comment for easier grading. This post and all other homework posts will be added to the memories section of my journal so that you can find it again to post when your homework is complete. It will also be linked in the daily classes.

If you plan on using extra-credit for your homework, you will need to say so in the comments of this post, or credit will not be granted.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

U.S. Trade Deficit (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/10/business/10cnd-econ.html?hp&ex=1131685200&en=97cc8d28fe3e94e0&ei=5094&partner=homepage)

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While the New York Times website is extremely informative, the designer of the website was unable to organize it so that a great deal of information could be best fit into a comparatively small amount of web space. The website appears to be a bit scatterbrained. The articles are organized into groups, but most of them are hidden away beneath other links and advertisements. As a result, some articles are given multiple links, others are hidden under miles of red tape, and the end result is one of clutter. The organization of this website would no doubt work better on paper than on a computer screen.

I also have to say that there is absolutely no way to figure out where one is on the site through examination of the unwieldy links (like, for example, “http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/10/business/10cnd-econ.html?hp&ex=1131685200&en=97cc8d28fe3e94e0&ei=5094&partner=homepage”). It would probably make it somewhat inconvenient to find archived articles except by combing search results. Of course, in all fairness, it is not the only newspaper website to use this odd method of hyperlinking, so I suppose I shouldn’t be totally condemning.

In the New York Time website’s favor, however, I must say that it has an extremely complete collection of national news.