CHRIS SEGAL
Director of Strategic Planning
The majority of Pepperdine news spreads by word-of-mouth. Rumors about what celebrities might appear at Step Forward Day, to why there are no more fountain drinks in the CCB, fly through the Peppervine. Campus news may spread verbally but many college students are using the Internet to get their local or world news.
Many sites like Yahoo and Google are become leading portals because they allow users to customize their homepage with news that they find interesting. Customization is a great tool of Web 2.0, the term used to describe an Internet that is interactive. This customization can also impede having a more complete worldview that readers of print products will hopefully have by flipping through the pages of multiple stories.
For example, if my Google homepage only has feeds for celebrity, local and tennis news, I would probably miss the day’s big story about the war in Iraq or a sports story about Barry Bonds.
A physical newspaper forces people to flip through those stories to get to the one or two stories that they intended to read. Hopefully someone will have their interest sparked by stories they did not intend to read while flipping through the news pages. This is harder to do on a portal that only shows a certain type of news.
Web site developers closely watch their online numbers to see the reading patterns of users to try and place stories where they will be read and generate the most traffic. Many Web sites do a good job of prioritizing top stories in their sections so readers will be exposed to top stories while trying to find the obituaries or other high traffic sections.
This customization of news has become more apparent with fewer people, including students, being able to hold a conversation about current events even though they might read multiple news Web sites daily. We read things online almost constantly but may receive little substance.
My friends that read only sports know more about sports news than I ever will, but they also have no idea that what General David Petraeus reported to Congress. My friends are not ignorant. They have chosen to specialize in one type of news.
That is a change from past generations reading habits. Never before has the bulk of a generation had the ability to read massive amount of news without even being aware they might be missing other important stories.
It is easy to feel informed about the world while only reading about a certain segment of the news online. To counteract this urge to get the news of interest to me quickly and filter out all the rest I visit Google news daily.
Once there I poke around the different section tabs to the sections I would normally have no interest in, mainly the science and sports tabs. I read the business and entertainment but have to make an effort to get the other news. To get an idea of what stories are being reported takes an effort to poke around the Web sites that you already visit. Read a few paragraphs and if the stories do not catch your attention move on to the next stories or Web site.
Another good feature for the well-informed on google news is the top-rated news story. This gives the reader an idea about what stories are receiving the most traffic.
This is a concept that is being used by most newspaper Web sites. Many newspapers and news organizations will have a tool within their pages and stories that have the top read stories or the top e-mailed stories.
Utilize these tools to find out what else is going on in the world that may not show up on your personalized Google or Yahoo homepage.
09-13-2007