Good & Bad Design

By: Lauren Foreman

Alignment, proximity, and repetition! As essential elements to developing good design, these are very important. I realized how important they were in some of the bad examples. Before I read the reading, I could tell when I was looking at a bad or inconvenient design but did not know why. Alignment was often the problem. Too many different alignments make the site look unorganized. It is all about presentation because these sites may not have even been bad sites, but if they are not visually appealing and easily usable, I simply do not want to view them. A site that can not be easily navigated is another turn-off. This is just frustrating. When I am frustrate, I not only choose not to view it but begin to dislike the site.

Video

By: Lauren Foreman
I watched a story on suspicious betting at a dog show because I thought the natural sounds would be interesting, and I wanted to hear how the blending of natural sounds in the clip was supposed to sound. The quality of the sound was pretty good, but at some points it became distracting- a little hard to hear over the natural sounds. Visually, nothing jumped out at me. I could appreciate some elements more than others such as the little tiara on the winning dog's head. However, while the visual and audio elements were of sound quality, I don't think much would be lost if this story was in print because it was basically an announcement of the results and what those results meant. The story in itself did not move me particularly. Neither did the video.

Backpack Journalism

From: Lauren Foreman

While I do think backpack journalism goes a little too far, exclusively seeking to perfect my chosen medium of print when there is an obvious need for journalists to be equipped with the skills to serve a more technology advanced audience is not the route I have chosen to take personally. Being that news is centered in serving an audience, it would be impossible for me to pretend like I can portray different stories effectively using one medium of journalism. If anything, that is mediocrity.

What would not work for me are producer driven stories because this can be limiting to the reporter or team of reporters and ultimately the audience. When you have this kind of official of the newsroom being the sole dictator of how a news package is put together, you lose the variety of opinion, which is in a way representative of the public. You also run the risk of having a very special part of the story being cut out simply because the producer was not there and did not know how special it was.