MCOM 63: Weekly Blog Post 02/28

This week we were assigned to look at blogger Ryan Sholin’s post, in which he provides links to some news sites which deviate from the traditional news forms and give a glimpse into the future of Journalism, utilizing the constantly evolving technology. There were two sites in particular that stood out to me and they also tied in with the reading for this week, the first two chapters of Dan Gilmor’s We the Media.

The Politifact site, from the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quaterly, provides, what I think is a crucial tool. It takes statements from eminent politicians and investigates and publishes the truthfulness of them. The feature that I already love is “The Truth O-Meter”, which evaluates statements, with ratings ranging from “True” to “Pants on Fire”.

I think that this is such a valuable site because of what Dan Gilmor says, that I very much concur with, “Most of us don’t stop long enough to consider what we’ve been told... (thereby allowing ourselves) to be led by people who take advantage of it.” People generally believe what they hear in the media and either don’t have the will or the time to investigate whether what they are being told is accurate or not. A site like Politifact does the work for the people. It investigates the validity of political statements and provides readers with the results in an easily accessible and entertaining format.

The other site that I thought was of special note was Election Headlines, published by Knox News and Publish2. This site very simply gives readers all the news, facts and opinions relating to the upcoming U.S. presidential election from across the web. They include everything from blog posts to New York Times articles. This is a great way of accessing all the latest election information, without having to trawl through every news and blog site. It is what Gilmor meant when he talked about making, “the internet work the way it should. Instead of you searching for everything, the Internet comes to you on your terms.” I believe sites like this are certainly the future. The user is catered for, making it easier to access the information that the individual specifically desires.