Thoughts

I was a little hesitant while reading Cohn's article because although I think it is important to give the people what they want instead of trying to force news down their throat, if you pitch ideas right to the people will you end up having all the same stories? I've talked about cognitive dissonance before but I believe this could have a tendency to occur if people were given full editorial freedom in picking stories. However, I did like his idea of using an iterative process, using the feedback from one stage to inform the next step of the process. I definitely would use this in planning and developing my online publication. Korr and Kennedy discussed mostly the value of having links to important, related or contextual information and making it easily available on one's website. I definitely agree with this practice as people do want to know more about certain subjects, or want the chance to learn more, if only they knew where to turn to. On my publication I would always have a sidebar of related and contextual information because I think it more clearly informs the reader. Gannon made me hopeful in that the old journalistic values will not be lost, and that fairness, accuracy and completeness will win over people in the future. I found it interesting though that he did not include objectivity or credibility- which is a huge issue with online publications, comments, bloggers, etc. Still, Gannon requested that his commenters do write their full names, and I definitely agree with this practice. A little accountability never hurt anyone.