Wednesday, September 24, 2008

A blog brought to you by: Sarah Marbach, Melinda Lopez, Sarah Liu, and Nick Lepf.

The website, time.com is an online spinoff of one of the most acclaimed and successful magazines in American history: TIME. The website consists of a plethora of stories—many consist of text/photo links to for the user to simply click on to acquire the full story. Perhaps, the most invasive articles are the stories in the middle column of the homepage—making them the featured periodicals. As time progresses, the newest article replaces the previous news article in from the limelight by replacing the largest picture of the website with its’ own newer, but cropped to same size photo. At this time the most current feature story penned by Mark Thompson titled as, 7 Questions About the $700 Billion Bailout” accompanied with a picture of the witness table at Capitol Hill during a Senate Banking Committee hearing featuring the Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on the left side appearing to be scowling at the cameraman as the picture is taken. Next to the Treasury Secretary is the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke with a less than content look on his face.


The subtext below quotes the Treasury Secretary, (Henry Paulson) with a relatively optimistic statement: "I Believe We're Going to Get a Bill That Works"; the next line consists of a lesser optimistic statement of “Congress and the Bailout Plan: Business As Usual”. The story informs the reader of the reconstruction of the homeowners mortgages and foreclosures in the United States. Over 11 trillion mortgages are delinquent; the bail out is forcing Democrats of the Financial Services Committee to consider the notion that the deal is too good for Wall Street. By giving taxpayers a piece of equity in the companies they would bail out. Many members of Congress want to make sure the government only pays fire-sale prices for the assets to protect taxpayers from a big loss, other members of congress feel the too low of a price could effect the plan effectiveness at stabilizing the market. Visit the full story at 7 Questions About the $700 Billion Bailout The two concomitant stories in the center file have been stripped from their photo rights’ (merely by being older); however they still are in the focal point of the webpage--these would be the feature stories for a frequent user of the site (if one were to visit this webpage just a few times over the course of a week they would likely notice this motif of the site). However, for a new reader the next story they would likely be lured to is: Palin's Troopergate Moves Getting Bad Review in Alaska

Before the election Alaska Senate Judiciary Committee had started the inquiry when former public safety commissioner Walt Monegan alleged that he might have been dismissed for not firing the allegedly loutish state trooper Mike Wooten, who was in a bitter custody battle with Palin's sister.






The story titled Iraqi Parliament Paves the Way for Provincial Elections written by Rania Abouzeid covers the election in Kirkuk is delayed from Oct to the end of Jan, and the issue of the troubles still exists because “the poll is likely to precipitate a struggle for Shi'ite hearts and minds between Maliki's supporters”. The parliament is trying to unit the country before the election because of the many rivals existing within there own communities.

Other questions:

Emailed Articles: This sight offers email articles on the front page of the website with most popular articles. These emailed articles differ from the home page shows because they are categorized by each special interest, from Health to Election to Entertainment. Visit the email articles

Blogs: Throughout the site, there are an abundance of blog opportunities. For example if you select the World tab there are blogs about the top articles and a blog for every tab on the home page. The bloggers are many independent blog sites that are a collection of reporters, political experts, and editorial columnist. Visit the blogs

Discussion Boards: there are no apparent forums or discussion boards; however the site does proffer external sites such as buzz.yahoo.com, facebook.com, digg.com and private Emails for individuals to further partake in the stories.

Video/Audio: videos are located at http://www.time.com/time/video/

3 comments:

MaryW said...

I think that time is engaging but I don't think I would use it everyday. Mostly because I already use google news because it compiles news and I can ind out about any topic that I want to. So it would be hard for me to switch from a database news source to an individual source.

Cheryl T said...

I found time's site ok. I liked it's organization; however, I would not use it regularly because I need to be able to get local news as well as national/global. I don't have much time to get all of this, so I usually just check out caller.com to get a little bit of everything with the occasional look at msn news while I'm checking my mail.

Yannis.Koutroupis said...

As popular as TIME magazine has been over the last couple of decades I have not been an avid user at any time. I've always just preferred other outlets where I can also get local information, and the topics they cover are not the most appealing to me and my interests.

ABOUT THE BLOG

This is the blog for the TR section of Media & Society, Fall 2008, at Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi. The blog will feature postings by students on a variety of media topics.