Heat Protests Indeed

I've been trying to come up with a good way of mentioning the recent protests along the Olympic torch route, but I haven't been able to come up with more than some YouTube videos. That is, until I saw the headline for the Washington Post's latest take on the story: Olympic Torch Attracts Heated Protests.

Someone is a clever bastard.

Apparently this story hasn't got enough play in the US media markets, because many of the people I've spoken with have had little knowledge of what is going on.

Thousands are practicing civil disobedience in an effort to damper the spirits of the Chinese government organizing this year's summer Olympic games. While the torch has only been lit for a few days, it has already been doused several times, and dozens have been arrested in connection with the contentious runs through London and Paris. San Francisco is next, and clearly will be the site of the biggest showdown between the heavily guarded torchbearers and the citizens who are irate over the issue of Tibet.

Either the tens of thousands of Californian hippies and peaceniks will overwhelm the security and stop the procession in its tracks, or they will be cowed by what promises to be a massive police presence (and not those French police on Rollerblades either).

It will be the only stop in the United States before the torch begins its epic journey through every nook and cranny of China, so Wednesday will doubtlessly be a big day in the news.

Journal Entry XI

Journal Entry 11: NYT China Documentary

In some earlier entries, I’ve talked about the concept of the changing journalism industry, the influence of Internet sources of news and the rise of visual media.

Here, I’d like to mention an example of getting it right:

UO Professor Suttmeier introduced this NYT “article” in the first week of his class on China’s Environmental Politics (PS 399). To me, it represents the future of the journalism industry. The article is really a miniature website, filled with multiple yet related articles that together yield a real understanding of the environmental issues at hand. This is combined with video documentaries showing the issues at hand, interactive objects like maps, as well as a narrated/music only still montages. Additionally, you have interactive roundtables, reference links and even Chinese translations.

Clearly, this website is combining the best aspects of the digital media (depth of coverage, interactivity and multimedia) while also providing the content a thorough NYT polish and shine. Readers are able to take as long as they want exploring the topic, which is explored in many different ways and different perspectives. All the while, they are viewing the adaptive advertising at the head of the page.

While it certainly isn’t possible to provide this level of coverage for every item of news, it seems to me that even doing one of these every two or three weeks would be well within the means of any medium-sized newspaper. It would certainly make news a lot more attractive to subscribers.