It’s a beautiful day in the cyber neighborhood? According to Dallas Morning News’ NeighborsGo.com network it is. As social networking becomes the norm on a day to day basis, sites like NeighborsGo.com are created as a means to expand past one’s white picket fence of their next door neighbors and see who else is involved in their community.

When entering NeighborsGo.com you automatically know from the opening page that this is strictly for those who have a affinity to social network as it conveniently has Twitter and Facebook links to follow as well as a start-up navigation to begin crafting your own personal blog space or deposit photos of community events or personal life snapshots. Personal blogs of varying subjects are displayed as well as a “marketplace” section that acts like an interactive classifieds to find jobs, businesses and the like.

From those factors on the main page, the site effectively integrates social media, by giving the reader the option to customize their spot and follow what other members of the site are doing. Personalization is the key to how social media outlets operate on. Everyone, in some way, likes to have themselves in the spotlight (they wouldn’t be on the Internet if they didn’t like socializing or interacting with others!), and social media websites make it easier for those to shine bright among their peers. As much as people like to share photos and stories on their blogs, people love to comment on existing media and share the opinions with others. NeighborsGo.com does have a comment feature where members can comment on blog posts. This is just another way for members of the website to extend out to others in a technological social matter.  Social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and sites like NeighborsGo.com are perfect for people who like to be social as well as share with others a slice of what’s going on in their lives. So won’t you be my neighbor?

For the first time, I think I actually was more involved in the voting process and what exactly was going on with the candidates where I could intelligently express my opinions and this happened do to me coasting the political blogs, political message boards, checking out debates and updates on YouTube, and even doing a little political editorial bits on my personal blog. It seems the Internet made it easier to truly get a well-rounded look at the election of 2008.  There of course were times where the Internet would skew your views due to the dirty dish rag gossip of candidates which were amplified louder and clearer on the World Wide Web. Still if you knew where to look for the most accurate and politically correct information about the election, then it wasn’t such a daunting task to find intelligent opinions.

Thankfully there are some legitimate news websites that monitor and inform their readers with the fair and honest information they seek.  The Wall Street Journal has a political section on their web page. It’s not that obvious to find but once you go under the U.S. navigation tab, it’s the first topic featured. The political section of the website is quite extensive and organized. There is a bulk of information, news and photos to be seen, which can be overwhelming, but more is better in some sense considering that this is news that is informative to many. The political page is broken up into sub-pages with subjects such as opinions, and one specifically for current news on the Health care Reform and the elections. Photos, videos and interactive maps are present, as is a Wall Street Journal reader community, where you can sound off about political matters with other like-minded people.

For the most part, The Wall Street Journal gives you enough coverage of anything and everything political, so upon viewing the site, you’re never steered off the beaten path.

The San Francisco Chronicle's newspaper's front page

The San Francisco Chronicle‘s website is partnered up with SFGate.com, which is the city’s main website for local news and features. The site is broken up into it’s two halves, as  there is a side-bar on the left side indicating the SFGate.com section, while the main block of the page looks reminiscent of the city’s newspaper.

Looking over at the left-hand side, under the subhead: News & Features, is where we can see in tiny type, the multimedia sections of the site: Audio Slide show, Video Reports and Photo Gallery. From first glance, these sections are almost hidden on the page, due to the tiny type and being not a prominent feature on the Chronicle’s main page. It gives the impression that the Chronicle doesn’t consider the multimedia a huge part of their forte, as you almost have to do some looking to find these sections.

Aside from that fact, what do these sections have to offer individually? Let’s take a look-see…

Photo Gallery

SF Chronicle’s photo gallery is quite extensive as it features photos spanning from classic photos (The 1906 earthquake photos)  to current event photos  (President Obama’s Inauguration photos). It’s not organized by year, or by category, which would be helpful as there is a bit of scrolling to be done. It’s organized in a simple way, with the featured photos at the top, and the rest below it. I had some trouble with viewing the older photo galleries as there was an “server error” but I was able to view the featured photo galleries. The galleries are laid out nicely and the pictures are in large high resolution with explanatory captions. There are also sound clips embedded on each picture that deliver more information about the pictures.

Video Reports

The video section of the Chronicle’s site is also a simple and organized page. There is a main video where on the right side are the featured videos for different sub-topics. There are some nice navigational tabs, that display different subjects such as news, food and entertainment, and once clicked, you can see videos for those topics. The videos are of good quality and the sound in them is audible. The videos are filmed like documentaries, some without commentary. The video I viewed was about the opening of the Bay Bridge. It was somewhat boring as there wasn’t any commentary and it just showed bird’s eye views of the bridge and also took us into the car of a possible reporter as they made their way onto the bridge. The film was professionally done, but there was a “so what?” quality to the point of the video’s existence. The video about San Francisco’s hospice was better executed as there was commentary that wrapped around a better story. The video section does do the site justice, though it seems a little too simple to be the site’s main attraction.

Audio Slideshow

The audio slideshow’s seems like a new feature for the site as there are only two featured, and once again, I had difficulty viewing them as there was another “server error”. Hmm…  So I couldn’t actually view these slideshows due to this error, which is a little disappointing.

Aside from some “service errors”, The San Francisco Chronicle’s website does in fact have a well put together multimedia package. Yet, from the first look, the package is probably just in the warming-up stages, as there isn’t a lot of videos, photos and audio slideshows to view and the layouts of all three are simple and a little boring. Yet, the simplicity is welcomed with this package, as they give a break from the usual news website multimedia packages, which can sometimes be bogged down with too much visual eye candy that can rot your patience.

For newspapers, it has become the way to extend readers interest beyond the paper pages and into interactivity. When newspapers decided to put their paper pages online, their purpose was to keep the journalistic quality intact but give their readers another outpost to go deeper into their news as well as produce the news as quickly as it is happening. This is where forums/message boards come into play as another form of multimedia that adds to a webpage, giving it interactivity between readers of the paper/site. Interactivity is the core value of what multimedia storytelling is, as it takes the concept of kindergarten class “Show n’ Tell” and gives it a sleeker “adult” edge. YouTube, blogs, podcasts and the like are  really just a technological show n’ tells, where information is shared to a wide-eyed and eager audience.

From personal experience on my own blog, I have found adding multimedia to it has improved the look and feel of the site. As I run a music blog, streaming audio and video are sort of essential to the blog, because you can’t really feel the music unless you hear it or even see it. In my short blogging span, I’ve noticed that the sites that failed, were the ones that were too wordy, without a picture or a video in sight. Adding multimedia such as video and audio, have given each post that is crafted a whole new feel than just reading a stream of text. It also has helped break up blocks of text into chunks, which proves to be easier for my readers to soak in, especially if they just want to read one segment of the post and not the full length of it. Not to mention, audio, photos and video makes your site/blog look less boring and gives it its own personality which will drive readers to its URL.

Read: Soulcial Media

Still confused at what Crowdsourcing is? Let the founder of the term, journalist,  Jeff Howe explain it further below.

Okay, so how can we apply this to an every day news story? Take this story for an example...

Earlier this week,  a man climbed into the grizzly bear grotto at the San Francisco Zoo causing a stir among onlookers and zoo keepers. The man was eventually arrested for trespassing and it was found out later that earlier in the day he had threatened family members with a knife. The San Francisco Chronicle, who initially reported on the incident, have also alluded that the man is to be put under psychiatric care.

What sources could I use for this story to make it a crowdsourcing story?

• Workers at the zoo
• Bystanders who saw the event occur
• Police officers
• Family members of the suspect (esp. the family members who were threaten by the suspect prior)
• Medical doctors who preferably have a background in mental illness studies

So what’s the problem with crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing seems to dim the spotlight of the journalist who gathered the information in the first place. This article, even though its not the best example of crowdsourcing, could posses moments of mis-information, especially concerning the suspects medical state. Proper terms and sensitive language must be considered, because if you end up with misinformation about an individual, their reputation and their family’s reputation could be tarnished. Crowdsourcing gets tricky when you are involving an abundant amount of sources, because sometimes not all of the sources are factual.

Final verdict on crowdsourcing

From what has been gathered and what I can sorta of tell, crowdsourcing seems to strip the art of writing and turn it into being “just business” where getting a source and not checking for its creditability are the pitfalls. For someone who sees writing as an artform, and not as just black words on a page, it’s a little disheartening that there are people out there who are only concerned about an article or a story in this fashion, and not with considering the work of the journalist and how they write an article. It almost sounds like the people are more concerned about making a profit or getting their 15 mintues of fame  than about the words they are handling. The journalist seems almost obsolete in crafting the story in a way, and that’s not what’s supposed to be occurring.

Teens are so excited about the Internet...and they just can't hide it...

Our World, is a news based website that caters to teenagers in an attempt to get teens engaged in discovering and understanding the news.

Our World, which was created by entertainment producer, Martin C. Jones, is said to be created for the MySpace generation. The generation whose whole life is either displayed in either Facebook profiles, blogs, Twitter accounts and message boards, the world wide web over.

The first provided news segment does just that as its web based only news show covers a range of topics of politic and social concern. The ideal for this show is innovative, as it is important for kids of all ages to be aware of their surroundings in their communities and around the world. Sometimes regular news broadcasts seem to segregate children/teens from getting the information that they should know so that they can grow as individuals. This is where Our Would fills that void of what is missing in today’s news, which is something for the kids.  The catch phrase for Our World reads, “this isn’t your parents news”, and it isn’t as the reports are broken down and are of few capacity so that they can be easily processed by short-attention spanned teens and young adults.  This format is quite nice and it keeps the viewer engaged especially with all the flashy graphics, music and presented topics. In a way, this type of format reminded me of when the channel,  Nickelodeon had a news show called Nick News where they would report on three to four topics of political, business and world news for kids to comprehend and come away with their own opinions.

From first glance, the Our World website is a little under developed, but the navigation is something that should’ve been done with news websites a long time ago. There are separate subject tabs that you can click to a go to a different page with all the information pertaining to subject tab’s topic. This prevents clutter and erases the  uncomfortable feeling of being thrown loads of information at once. Assuming that more content will be added to the site, the site has some right ideas by having separate categories and by the design, this site is sure to attract teens to its interface.

What I’m seeing a lack of in a lot of these news websites, and not just this one, is a promoted forum or a message board. A while ago, I used to operate a fan forum with some other young individuals and  from working on one, I noticed people loved to be apart of, as it feels like a community, a family almost, as a place where teens can go to meet other teens who are like minded and are interested in the same types of topics. As silly as it all sounds, I can remember being a teenager and discovering the usage of  teen-themed message boards  and being apart of some sort of opinionated collective. Gurl.com comes to mind as one of the first places I roamed when my family first got the Internet, and I enjoyed it immensely as I learned from the peers around me in this safe setting. With an Our World forum, teens can watch the news segment and then discuss it with other teens in the forum, thus from reading others opinions they can form their own or learn something from a varying opinion, thus creating a more well-rounded teen. In conclusion to that ideal, I think that a separate section of the site for a forum would help fuel interest in the site even further.

As newspapers and blogs try to find some sort of common ground, news consumers are having the luxury for the first time to find news in all kinds of areas. Not only are blogs overtaking the market, but mobile devices and social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, have features on their interfaces where you can “follow” news sites or have messages sent to you via cell service. And you can do this in quicker time than it takes to turn a leafy page in a newspaper. Oh, and no paper cuts in sight!

Blogs still are edging newspapers to the sidelines for getting information out in a timely and even orderly fashion. While blogs have been critiqued to breeding the  “citizen journalist” aka the every day Joe having the choice to make and create their own blog space on the Internet, as well as bringing the magnifying glass over more written biases, spelling errors and misinformation, with each passing year, blogs are giving an alternative to those who want their news as fast as getting a Big Mac and crunchy fries at McDonald’s.

The newspaper business is, at the moment, suffering to compete with the blog market as jobs are becoming scarcer and newspapers are folding, ready for the recycling bin. Newspapers are a tad at fault as once the Internet boom occurred in the late 90′s, newspapers started to throw every bit of information they had on their websites, almost neglecting their paper pages, thus this led to their readers thinking, “Why should I pay for page after page of paper, when I can go online for free, get the same information and then some?” Newspapers sort of became the Dr. Frankensteins of their own demise yet while Mary Shelley’s monster Frankenstein was a slow shuffler, Internet blogs get created every single day, every single minute faster than you can say, “It’s alive!”

What online blogs contribute more so than just quick delivery is that they beat newspapers with more personalized news. The news done by the every day person not the paid journalist. The every day person who gets interaction from readers (comments), dishes out multimedia (video, podcasts, downloads), posts archives (for those who like to dig back into time) and just has much more  “stuff” on their pages to explore, so that readers can get an even wider scope of the topic they are consuming. Since humans have always been curious crusaders, blogs and news websites have made it easier to unleash that desire for more information.

Blogs seem more personal to viewers than a newspaper, especially if the blog is ran by one or two people who are dedicated to beating out the newspaper’s tactics and that readers of the blog can contribute content or their viewpoints to the topic, not be a silent reader. Blogs have managed to give readers what they want, beyond the pages of newspapers due to all the different features they possess, and give readers something different from the ordinary page viewing.

So can blogs and newspapers come together in perfect harmony? Time will tell, as the two are doing silent battles with one another at the moment as they both try to find a middle ground to issuing out the news. Still one should use both forms of media to get the full story, and one should also find the medium that fits best with their needs.

In a wrap up, blogs are kind of like the flashy Corvette, and newspapers the old stand by Oldsmobile. Both cars run, both are geared to be reliable but one is just faster, stylish and newer than the other. Still with the public’s hunger for news both newspapers and blogs will be cruising along the media highway side by side, all possibilities open.

The New England Journal of Medicine reports that in order to fight against obesity, that the government should evoke taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages. Specialists have linked not only obesity to sugar enhanced drinks but to cardiovascular disease and diabetes as well.

The  Journal reports that once taxes are placed on the sugary drinks that it can lead to  decreasing the purchase rate of the item. With the national tax of 1 cent per ounce of sugary beverages would collect about  14.9 billion in sales. This tax tactic has also been used in order to curb cigarette smoking.

2) Stimulus Plan To Build Brand New Baseball Stadium

A financing program in association  with the federal economic-stimulus plan will be issuing a large amount of money for a new spring-training baseball complex in the East Valley of Phoenix.