Veteran online news guy Steve Yelvington has been writing about four keys to a great news website. You can follow that link back to his earlier post, or just jump in with today's item on "Being interactive." (Being timely, useful and entertaining are his other "keys.")
Not only was interactivity one of the topics for my class this week (timely), Steve even quotes a couple of my favorite writers (entertaining) and takes a side-trip to describe an Irish pub music session that sounds a lot like the ones I took part in for a summer in County Mayo. Pretty good example of "interactivity" there -- and of connecting with a community -- both of which should prove useful to the class...
As for the authors Steve quotes, I hadn't seen the late Douglas Adams's discussion of how we react to inventions at various stages of our lives. I like it. The William Gibson line he quotes... well, go read it yourself. The point is that Steve applies both to the Web interactivity topic.
Says Steve,
"For years it's galled me to see 'interactive' glued onto the names of organizations utterly opposed to interactivity, as in 'Daily Bugle Interactive.' Newspaper associations hand out awards in 'interactive' categories to websites that glue flashy bling-bling onto old-media, linear, one-way news lectures... "I don't know why 'interactivity' is so confusing. 'Inter' and 'active' are pretty straightforward. 'Inter' is about connection. 'Active' is about doing. What do people do on your website? Does it have to do with connecting with other people?" [yelvington.com - Steve Yelvington's weblog] Pubs, interactivity and community remind me: Knoxville bloggers are getting together at Barley's in the Old City Friday at 6:30 p.m.; maybe putting that note here in nice bold UT-centric orange and white will keep me from missing the event the way I did the last one.
1:05:15 PM 
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