...with some historical context
The Web helped pay my way through the University of North Carolina grad school in 1994, with a part-time job at a now-retired news site created by the Raleigh News & Observer... It's good to see both of those institutions sharing new online ideas.
Here's Leroy Towns at a Talk Politics blog hosted by the J-school, interviewing Ryan Teague Beckwith, a government and politics blogger at the N&O:
Q. "Where do you believe this blending of blogging and journalism is headed? Will journalistic norms be reshaped?"
A. "As a paid blogger for an MSM paper, I think
convergence is already happening. (As William Gibson famously said, the
future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.) Over time, I
think papers will learn to be more immediate, more chatty and more
transparent, while bloggers will learn to be more rigorously sourced,
more fair and more objective."
See the full interview
Impressed, I went over to check out Beckwith's blog, "Under the Dome," which traces its heritage to a column the newspaper began running in 1934. Today's lead headline didn't refer to actions committed under any public roof, but perhaps to a perceived need for some new legislation. The story was "Prosecutors drop sodomy charge," complete with a link to a background piece, "N.C. sodomy law dates to Henry VIII."
(Perhaps some folks thought they only went back to Jesse Helms? In fact, the original N&O arrest story already has some legs in the blogosphere.)
Hmm... There's an interesting "webification of newspapers" issue: Today, May 31, should the archived May 24/25 story have a link to today's "charges dropped" story?
Oh wait -- it does have a link! It's in an oddly titled "More Crime & Safety" sidebar list. I assume software, not a human, builds that list, and that it will be different tomorrow.
Idea: Put sharp, eager journalism interns on the case as "link editors" to weave a more complete web of news with more bidirectional links between today's stories and historical context -- and between archived stories and the latest developments. (A compromise approach for major issues: the Times Topics pages at http://nyt.com)
As the recently departed Utah Phillips was fond of saying, "The past didn't go anywhere." Play the "Bridges" audio clip on this page to hear that line in context, along with his observation that writers neglect rich historical context. His example was someone dismissing his songs about political activism with the phrase "that sixties stuff."
Says Utah, "That packaging of time (into decades) is a journalistic convenience that they use to trivialize and to dismiss important events and important ideas. I defy that. Time is an enormous long river... I'm standing in it, and you're standing in it."
And, these days, even Utah Phillips is YouTubing on this digital river of news we call the Web.
Speaking of history and "linking back": Our 1994 News & Observer Web spinoff, the Nando Times, did a lot of aggregating of wire service stories, stacking them up in reverse chronological order like cordwood -- or like today's blog posts -- and kept collections around for days as a big story developed, linking each new story to the list page. Sometimes the linkage provided context; other times, I'm afraid it was just overwhelming.
One rather extreme example survives from 11 years ago, although the stories behind the headlines have long expired from the archive.
(Web design and Media & Society students take notice: The corner graphic for the group of pages always looked awfully like "packaging" to me, even before I learned the word "commodification" in grad school.)
8:51:49 PM 
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