MAJOR RESEARCH/CREATIVE ACTIVITY SAMPLE #3
"Getting back your clout via the Web", News Photographer, August 1997.
This article presents the results of the research and development work I have conducted since 1996 on more effective presentations of journalism content on the World Wide Web. Along with this presentation of the theory and methodology behind my work, the article presents two of my prototype websites that showcase my theories of the potential for original journalism web content development. Also, I promoted my belief that at least some online journalism content should be developed originally for the Web. Too many journalism publications are merely dumping onto their websites the content they have developed for print or broadcast. This repetition presents the online news seeker with no incentive to go to the Web site other than to catch up with what they might have missed in the paper or on TV. Journalists are missing an opportunity to develop a new audience of readers/viewers/visitors that think first of the Web when seeking news.
For many years, I had canvassed the Web, examining the presentations that had been developed for online journalism. I realized that these presentations were static, mostly text-heavy, and, for the most part, boring. I developed these two web sites with the intention of promoting two basic theories:
I produced the web sites and then wrote this article, describing the theories and the workings of the web sites. I submitted it to News Photographer because it is the premiere professional journal in my field and because I had developed the described websites particularly for photojournalists and videographers. The two web sites featured in this article are "Raucous Rascals make themselves at home on Monterey Bay" and "Campaign '96, a web gallery", each of which is described in more detail in other folders of this package.
Jim Gordon, professor emeritus of photojournalism at Bowling Green State University, is the editor of News Photographer. He accepted the article and published it as the lead article in a feature supported by news of two separate newspapers' work to upgrade their online content development.