Digital Media

Please note individual project draft under pages

I like the way the Sideways site uses flash. While on the main screen it’s a little bit difficult to figure out what is clickable, the site does a good job of differentiating what is clickable in subsections. What look like buttons at the top do go to different sections. I like that it is easy to toggle the sound on and off. The visitor has a lot of different options to choose from besides looking at the trailer, which is what I would expect coming to a movie site. I can learn about how to taste wine, what wines go best with what cheeses. They’ve really taken the topic of the movie and expanded on it so much. The goal of the site is to make me want to see the movie and while I was interested in seeing the movie before, I want to see it more now. One thing that I didn’t like was that the studio drop-down menu kept coming down when I would accidentally mouse over it and it wouldn’t go away. I like the Life Uncorked vignettes.

The IMDB site has a lot of links and unless I’m looking for something specific it’s probably not going to be very helpful.

I couldn’t believe how much stuff was on the Grey’s Anatomy Web site. I haven’t watched any episodes this season, but I watched it religiously last season. The links across the top are self-explanatory and it’s easy to see what is on each tab without looking too closely at it. Although there is a lot of material, it’s categorized well and I don’t feel overwhelmed by the site because everything seems to branch from main categories and it’s easy to go to a different category.

I was trying to come up with ways to tell a story about media ownership without using a lot of text. It seems like the best way to do this would be through interviews with people who have a role in the media. Some people who might be good to interview would be Seattle Times Publisher Frank Blethen, who is a critic of the consolidation of ownership of the media and crosscut publisher David Brewster, founder of Seattle Weekly and Town Hall Seattle, and editor Chuck Taylor, former editor and writer for The Seattle Times and Seattle Weekly. They would likely have some good insight on what the dangers of media consolidation are and what is likely to need to happen for media to diversify. We could do a timeline of media in Seattle for a visual look at how things have changed.

Jonathan Alter’s long narrative story on Life With Cancer registers at a 10.3 grade level on the Flesch-Kincaid scale with 10% passive sentences.

“The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry  is a short story that has a reading grade level of 5.4 and 7% passive sentences.

News stories can vary greatly on reading level: 

The Bellingham Herald’s front page news story, “Man dies in city shooting; police seek 3,” was written at a 9.6 grade level with 5% passive sentences.

 The Seattle Times news story, “UW shooting suspect proved elusive,” came in at an 11.2 grade level and 33% passive sentences.

In comparison, The Seattle P-I’s, “Stalker finds victim at UW, kills her,” is written at a 7.8 grade level and with 9% passive sentences.

While I would normally read a long narrative piece like Jonathan Alter’s My Life With Cancer in Newsweek’s hard-copy form, I was able to read this story, chunked into six sections, online because of the moving writing.

Jonathan Alter, a reporter at Newsweek, shares his own experience with cancer in light of the revelations that Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow both have recurrences of their cancers. He shares his own insight on what the medical community could do to improve treatments and ways the medical community was invaluable to his own treatment. 

I enjoy reading this sort of narrative content and I also enjoy writing it. The reader and the writer can share an experience – whether it is the experience of the writer or of someone else.

Another type of content I am interested in is the audio slideshow. In this Seattle Times audio slideshow the reporter recorded audio clips of people who were waiting to audition for American Idol. The photographer took several pictures of people and the audio was edited in so that their pictures were showing while the audio was playing. Audio slideshows are a great way to combine powerful visual elements with audio that tells a story. Another audio slideshow, After the Tsunami by Betty Udesen, uses photos and text together with the haunting sounds of Indonesia after the deadly tsunami.

I have also been experimenting with podcasting lately. It has gotten me interested in creating my own podcast. I enjoy Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, a short program that covers one rule of grammar each week.