For this critique I chose to look at nytimes.com which is based on the major national traditional print publication, The New York Times. It’s been a while since I’ve gone to this particular web site and I found myself looking at it differently based on a lot of the things we’ve gone over in class. One of the first strengths of the site that I found was its incorporation of various media. We talk a lot about that practice in conjunction with blogging, and I started to take for granted that the use of multimedia on a site was unique to it. I was pleasantly surprised to notice that nytimes.com used the practice as well. Before this class it was probably not something I would have taken the time to focus on, but now I’ve realized how much the use of different media can add to a news site. On the home page alone there are videos posted, as well as links to other stories based on the current story posted, slideshows, and audio. As you go deeper into the site clicking on various tabs or topics, the use of multimedia is carried on demonstrating that the site uses the practice for all of its stories and not just the home page.
I found one particular article that seemed to encompass many different forms of media within it, ‘Foreign Ways and War Scars Test Hospital’. The article is part of a series called Remade in America: A series about the newest immigrants and their impact on American institutions. The article had a basic written story, a video, a slideshow, several images including charts and graphs, as well as links to outside sources to explain certain things that were discussed in the text. After taking the time to read or look at all the multimedia options the article presented I feel like I know a lot more about the issue than before. I liked that I was able to get the information in many different ways because I focused on different things and picked up on different things depending on which media I was engaging with. For example, when I read the text I focused a lot more on the facts that were being presented, when I watched the video I focused a lot on the viewpoints of the subjects of the article, and when I looked at pictures I focused on the emotional aspect of the piece. In that respect I really enjoyed the use of multimedia in a story. I felt like I really got a lot out of the article.
However, there were some things that I didn’t like. I found that the story started to get very repetitive. The same facts were presented in each different use of media with the exception of the charts and graphs. I would have liked to see different angles of the story or an expansion of something discussed in the written text. I think that would help readers get more out of the story than they do. But that criticism is also a double edged sword because I also feel like the use of multimedia makes it easy for readers who don’t have the time or don’t care to explore all the different media to pick a format that they enjoy most and get the information that way. In that sense I think it is a good thing that the same information is presented in each form of media.
This use of multimedia to present information isn’t something that can be seen in traditional print. Even though there were a few things that I didn’t like about nytimes.com’s use of different media, I firmly believe that it gave news a lot more dimension than can be found in print. The Newswars videos that we watched pointed out that today’s consumers of media like to ‘infosnack’ and take in media in small doses in ways that most appeal to them. The online version of The New York Times allows users to choose how they get their news and overall I think they’re doing a good job at it. I personally don’t seek out news very often but I know that when I do in the future, an online news source is probably how I’m going to do it because of the many ways I can choose to get the information.
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