This Week's Assignment

(This post is part of an assignment for the class I am taking, Writing for Digital Media at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This week, I will embed a Google map, open a Twitter account, and edit a Wikipedia entry.) 

Below is the map I created in Google. I've actually done something like this before when planning a road trip, but never embedded one in a web site before. The hardest part was figuring out where the html code was to copy.

Wireless Hotspots in Chapel Hill, NC



View Larger Map to see hotspots

My Twitter

To the right (top of page) you will see my new Twitter feed. I found the html code to do this at WikiAnswers. 

My Wikipedia Edit

The wikipedia entry I edited is presented (in part) below. My edits are in bold purple and large font size (when needed):

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The Bradley Method of natural childbirth (also known as "husband-coached childbirth") is a method of natural childbirth created by Dr. Robert A. Bradley (1917–1998) and popularized by his book Husband-Coached Childbirth. Teachers of the Bradley Method believe that - with adequate preparation, education and help from a loving, supportive coach - most women can give birth naturally,without drugs or surgery. The Bradley Method emphasizes measures that can be taken to help keep women healthy and low-risk in order to avoid complications that may lead to medical intervention.

The primary goal of the Bradley Method is healthy mothers and healthy babies. The method holds that, in most circumstances, a natural  (drug-free) (<--moved) childbirth is the best way to achieve that goal. Over 86% of Bradley moms having vaginal births do so without drugs. The classes teach nutrition, relaxation and natural breathing as pain management techniques along with active participation of the husband as coach. Parents-to-be are taught to be knowledgeable consumers of birth services and to take responsibility in making informed decisions regarding procedures, attendants and the birth place.

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Assignment Reflection

(This post is part of an assignment for the class I am taking, Writing for Digital Media at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This week, I liveblogged an event, and here are my thoughts afterwards.) 

By Marcie Barnes

I think I took this assignment a little too lightly at first. I did try to get it done relatively early, which is a good thing, because I had some major difficulties getting the first events I tried to cover to pan out. First, I tried to cover the Oktoberfest Celebration at Sugar Mountain on October 11. Trying to liveblog anything while on vacation with an impatient husband and three year old…is a bad idea.

Despite my best efforts, we arrived there just as the children’s activities were wrapping up and the band had already stopped playing. Not much to talk about at that point, and I could detect no wireless signal.

So, I decided to choose something at the upcoming NC State Fair. Smithfield the Painting Pig was performing every day at 1pm, which would make it easy for me to shoot over on my lunch hour, since the fairgrounds are literally only a couple miles from where I work. Even though I arrived with time to spare, I had a very hard time finding Smithfield. I had read somewhere that he would be outside the Exposition Center, where I had seen him perform last year. Turns out he was inside, and I didn’t find that out until after his performance had begun and the crowd was so thick there was no way to get a good view.

I also had no luck finding a good signal, although I read that some of my other classmates had no trouble at the fairgrounds. Maybe it depends on where you are, exactly? So, on to find another event, and now I am getting uncomfortably close to a time crunch.

So, third time’s a charm right? Yup, worked for me, as long as I found an event, cleared my schedule on a Saturday, and arrived with plenty of time. I still was unable to connect for a true liveblog, but the experience from my perspective was very similar, I think, minus the hitting the ‘publish’ button after every thought. I actually didn’t mind having my laptop with me; I didn’t feel particularly stared at, either. Perhaps more so at Sugar Mountain than anywhere else.

I actually felt a little weirder taking pictures at the brewery, I guess, because it was so crowded. I thought someone might say “hey is that going to end up on your MySpace page!” or something at any minute. I tried to get shots when people’s faces or backs were turned, for the most part. The only person at the brewery who asked me what I was doing was one of the partners. When I told him I was writing an article for a class, he just said “make it good.”

I also had to resort to quite a bit of handwriting, which I compiled that night along with my pictures and links. For the most part, it’s very hard to type on a laptop in a very crowded room with virtually no table space and hold a beer at the same time. Product sampling was paramount to the experience of this event, after all.

Overall, I had a good experience. Although I consider myself to be someone who always allows for plenty of time, this really taught me a lesson about allowing way more time than needed in a situation like this. Also, scouting out a venue in advance, when possible, would be recommended.

LiveBlog: Carolina Brewing Company Tour

(This post is part of an assignment for the class I am taking, Writing for Digital Media at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This week, I liveblogged an event. I chose to cover the brewery tour at Carolina Brewing Company in Holly Springs, which occurs every Saturday at 1pm.)

By Marcie Barnes

12:44 - I'm in the parking lot, have seen at least a dozen people enter already, and I was afraid there wouldn't be much of a crowd on State Fair weekend. The facade is quite unassuming.

12:47 - An announcement in the lobby - beer samples before the tour, and I need to have my ID ready.

12:51 - Waiting in a long line for beer, some happy jazz/swing music is playing overhead. Sign near serving area reads: Now On Tap: Pale Ale, Nut Brown Ale, India Pale Ale, Summer Wheat, and NEW Oktoberfest. I think I'll try Oktoberfest, it only seems fitting.

12:59 - I've counted (roughly) 75 people in this room, the entire operation consists of a front lobby area and a large warehouse-type space behind it. There are more people still coming in. Guess free beer is popular! The Oktoberfest is yummy. I must admit I have never been a fan of their main brand, Pale Ale, because it is too bitter for me. Oktoberfest is just right. It's a very refreshing medium-colored amber, and there seems to be a hint of orange which is nice. (Note: their website says nothing about orange, maybe I was imagining that!) Now, a jazzy rendition of Bridge Over Troubled Water is flowing from the speakers above.

1:07 - Tour still not started, people still pouring in and waiting in a long line for beer. Many are going back in the line for seconds (or thirds, or fourths).

1:19 - Taps are off. Music is off. John, who is one of the three partners, starts the tour. They have only one employee, and do all the work themselves up to the point of distribution. The brewery is 13 years old. The Pale Ale was their first beer, and it is brewed year-round along with the Nut Brown and India Pale Ale. They have a winter porter coming out in November, and there are many other seasonal beers. They have a six-county distribution area.

1:28 - John is passing around barley and hops for us to see/smell. He explains how each affects the bitterness (hops), darkness (roast of the barley), sweetness (barley), etc. The Oktoberfest brew has the highest alcohol content at 5.7% which is related to the fact that it uses more barley, which produces more sugar for the yeast to convert to alcohol (and carbon dioxide).

1:31 - The barley sample comes my way. It has a nice, fresh, sweet smell. The hops sample was neither nice nor sweet smelling. The girl in front of me recoiled at the smell. I can only describe it as something unpleasantly pungent, to be nice. Now I know why I don't like a lot of hops in my beer, besides the fact that I don't like bitter.

1:33 - A comment from the audience is about rice and corn being used in beermaking. John describes how the big national breweries use these ingredients to make a light, cheap beer. Their brewery uses only (Holly Springs tap) water, barley, hops, and yeast. They use a different kind of yeast for the ales as they do for the lagers.

1:35 - He tells how they got started. Three friends were homebrewing for a long time and one of them eventually took an apprenticeship at a brewery to "learn the ropes". They moved to NC specifically to open the brewery after looking at demographics and noticing a deficiency in local breweries in the area. Someone asks him what beers he likes besides his own and he says: Sierra Nevada, Anchor Steam, and Highland (out of Asheville).

1:37 - He gets into the specifics of the recipe: grain is cracked, mixed with warm water, and steeped, which makes mash. Liquid is drawn out, leftover grain is given to a local farmer to feed his cattle. Liquid is boiled for 90 minutes, hops are added. Liquid is cooled rapidly and pumped to fermentation tanks. Whole process takes six hours. The two large tanks hold 2500 gallons of beer when full. Yeast added here in the big tanks. When it runs out of sugar to convert, it goes dormant, and they reclaim it and reuse it again.

1:42 - Once beer is done here, it is filtered through a system and sent to last holding tank, where it ages for three (ale) to six (lager) weeks. Another tourist asks about dry hopping. He says they only do that sometimes, like with a recent Thanksgiving lager. I don't have a clue what dry hopping is.

1:44 - He says they do not use any preservatives and do not pasteurize their bottles. I am happy to hear that. I thought there was some sort of government-imposed law about that with commercial bottling, but apparently not. It does shorten the shelf life compared to other beers, but beer is not meant to sit on the shelf like, perhaps, wine. Pasteurization and preservatives would compromise some of the healthy benefits of beer.

1:45 - We move closer to the bottling/kegging area. He's explaining the bottling process. Would be cool to see the machine running, but I imagine that would be logistically difficult. Machine bottles 100 bottles per minute, they only run it a couple days a week.

1:48 - He says he's wrapping up, turning taps back on. Says he'll leave them on maybe until 3:30 if we are "good".

1:56 - I finally make it back to the taps. Ask John if I can stay here and have a small sample of each, he says sure. The Summer Wheat doesn't really remind me of wheat, but I can definitely taste the hops. It's much more bitter than the Oktoberfest. I love the back of John's shirt: "All it takes is a liver and a dream".

2:02 - India Pale sample - Their website says it's the most highly hopped, and I can tell. It's so bitter it tastes metallic to me. Very crisp, though. The "bar" is situated at the end of a giant room-sized walk in cooler. The taps are literally drilled into the side of the cooler. Tourists are jovial and polite in the requests for their favorite flavor of free brew.

2:12 - Pale Ale sample - Doesn't smell as hopsy. I can actually taste more yeast in this one, which I like. Still too bitter for me, but I know a lot of people like it that way!

2:20 - Stout sample - this was dubbed "hidden stout" because there was no tap handle and the "bartender" didn't know it was there at first. This was a good one to end with because it smelled like Kahlua! I don't see anything about it on their website, and I wonder if this is the Winter brew that is coming out soon? Anyway, it's definitely heavy, but tasty. Has a sweet syrupy taste combined with the expected bitter hop flavor.

2:28 - Asked if this was a large group for them, and got the answer that no, it's a small group. He estimated about 100 people today, and says he's seen up to 300 come in! Wow.

Later Notes: Due to the popularity of this event, I recommend arriving early and getting a place at the front of the line. And bring a designated driver, too. This is a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon, learning about the brewing process and sampling some great, fresh, local beer. And it's a great way to support your local economy as well. There are also health benefits to beer not widely discussed in mainstream media the way those of wine have been (although I disagree with the part in the above linked article that says mainstream beer is as good as a microbrew, due to the fact that they -- mainstream -- use cheaper, lighter grains like rice and corn, so "equally high-quality ingredients" doesn't ring true.)

Sample Restaurant Review

(This post is part of an assignment for the class I am taking, Writing for Digital Media at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This week, I will be writing a sample restaurant review for crowdrestaurantreviews.com, which will include instructions for other reviewers, in red.)

T.G.I.Friday's* - 1100 TIMBER DRIVE E GARNER NC 27529* - (919) 779-1935* [star rating] 

[Restaurant name, address, and phone number are required, and will comprise the headline, along with your star rating. You may enter an optional sub-headline:]

New Friday's in Garner Proves Reliable 

[Please provide a little about yourself, to provide context for your readers. The introductory paragraph is a good place to do this.] Friday's is always a safe choice in our family, because of the large and varied menu. However, after my recent choice to stop eating chicken and turkey in addition to red meat (I've never been a red meat eater (deleted:"since childhood")), it was a bit more challenging to find something good to eat on this visit.

[(Deleted: "Tell about") Describe the menu, what you had to eat, and get others' opinions. (deleted: "at your table, if possible.")]I was disappointed in the salad menu, which was not nearly as large and varied as the rest of the menu. There were only four choices, and they all featured chicken. So, I decided to order the Ahi Tuna Ciabatta Sliders; this from the menu: "Ahi tuna, lettuce, tomatoes, green onions and Anaheim chile sauce on ciabatta. It won Food Network's Ultimate Recipe Showdown. Can you name another burger that's a TV star? Didn't think so."

Well, if Food Network liked it, then I shall try it!

Did my entree look like the picture (taken from their website)? As usual, not exactly. The tuna was more hidden by the bread, rather than featured. But the height of the sliders was true. The taste was good, the chile sauce really made the dish. I was tempted to substitute good old mustard and ketchup for a true "burger" taste, but I tried the chile sauce and I'm glad I did.

Of course, most patrons of Friday's are not vegetarians. My husband, a proud meat eater, had the sirloin cooked medium with fries and a side salad with ranch. He reports that his steak was "tough and dry." He's normally a ribeye-with-baked-potato fan, and they don't have (deleted: "bakers") baked potatoes at Friday's, which is always a disappointment for him.

Our three-year-old had a hard time choosing between the typical, but also nicely varied, kid's menu. Finally he decided on "sketti"--to my delight--one of the vegetarian options for kids, which comes with a choice of sides to include salad. A small serving of veggies like broccoli would be a welcome choice as well, but kudos to Friday's for also offering carrots with ranch as a side: go raw veggies!

[Tell how the service was.]The service was great. My husband actually was annoyed that, at one point, he had two and a half full glasses of tea on the table. "Are they trying to drown me in tea?" he mused. But that's better, I suppose, than a single glass - half empty.

[Tell about parking and wait time (accessibility).] The parking and wait time were good. It was a newly-opened restaurant on a Sunday (Saturday may have been a different story). We had little trouble parking and there was no wait.

[Please visit the restroom and review that as well, as this can be representative of good management/cleanliness.]The restrooms, ugh. I have a feeling another little boy had been there before us, because there was urine on the floor and a lot of messy toilet paper as well. Please, restaurants, more bathroom checks! In addition, for some reason there was a lot of water on the floor near the drink station, and someone had simply plopped a caution sign on top of it. The mess was never cleaned up the whole time we were there. I had to steer our son the long way around it to get to the restroom.

[Please conclude with a summary of your experience and why you chose the star rating you did.]Overall, Friday's is a good choice for families (and others, too). I was absolutely not disappointed, and glad I chose the chile sauce Ahi sliders. My husband was not impressed with his steak, but he knows he needs to go to a good steakhouse to get a good steak, for the most part. So, good food, great service, needs work on cleanliness - I give it three and a half stars.

[The review itself needs to be at least 500 characters.]

[You will enter your star rating at the bottom of the post, with other optional items such as sanitation grade, photo(s), video(s), other image files, links, etc. ]

This Week's Assignment

(This post is part of an assignment for the class I am taking, Writing for Digital Media at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This week, I will be identifying a publication for which I will continue to create online content for later assignments.)

crowdrestaurantreviews.com

Proposal: A restaurant review site set up in the fashion of a social network where people can contribute their own restaurant reviews, ratings, comments, photos, videos, relevant files (menus, etc.), and recommend specific dishes. They can also help improve the site by linking to restaurant sanitation grades, other reviews (professional or otherwise), and other information such as franchise information, news articles, or the restaurant’s web site. In addition, users will be able to display their favorite restaurants and friends (other members) on their profile page, identify if they are a foodservice employee, and link to other social networking sites.

Restaurant owners or managers will also be able to participate by adding messages, twitter/RSS feeds, menus, links, and photos, and will have an option to advertise via banners on their page(s). Each restaurant’s page will automatically display name, address, phone, and a Google map based on restaurant listings in each metro area. (Pilot site is raleigh.crowdrestaurantreviews.com).

The site will also include a robust restaurant search feature which will search keywords from the page as well as the review & comment areas of the pages (a search for “spaghetti alla carbonara” would return results where that term was found in the user-supplied text). In addition, users will be able to search by restaurant type, price range, and location.

Restaurant profile pages will be easy to scan and show the most pertinent information (as available): Sanitation grade, google map, menu, average user star rating, list of reviews to read, editor’s review, hours, price range, and a photo.

Purpose: Currently, restaurant reviews are scattered all over the place on the web. The most popular site for local information, citysearch, seems to be the preferred place to look, but it only allows for comments and a star rating from registered users. In addition, there is no one site that concentrates solely on restaurant reviews in Raleigh. raleighrestaurantreviews.com is close, but it is pulling reviews from a host of other sites which makes the information overwhelming in volume. The purpose of crowdrestaurantreviews.com is to give a true “crowdsourced” view of each restaurant – allowing users to be the food critic, write their own review(s) and add pictures and/or video to make each review much more realistic and complete, instead of just displaying a laundry list of comments.

Competition: Citysearch.com, tripadvisor.com, diningguide.com, raleighrestaurantreviews.com, many others.

Audience: The audience of this site is vast, as it covers anyone who eats out and may be looking for specific information about a restaurant online. The main theme will be “…where you are the food critic”, so an important part of the audience will be people who enjoy writing and reporting, to include students and people with an interest or who work in a journalistic field.

The larger chunk of the audience, though, will be those looking for restaurant information online, so they will be educated, middle-to-upper class people looking for a good dining experience. They will be largely web-savvy, and will be looking for critical information to be up front and well-organized.

Age ranges likely are to be college-age through upper-middle-age. Although the pilot site is based on Raleigh, NC restaurants for now, this model could easily be applied nationally and even globally. The site will need to be tested on all platforms and browsers due to the diverse nature of the audience. Because of the dense multimedia experience this site will provide, non-broadband users would likely shy away. Advanced browser features and broadband are needed to fully experience this site.

Design: The design of this site, as noted, will focus on getting the most relevant information up front in an easy-to-digest format. The primary color scheme will be burgundy, since red is associated with restaurants where people like to sit and linger, and also has a wine connotation.

Style Guide: The Associated Press Style Guide will be used to guide the (non-contributed) content of this site.

This Week's Assignment

(This post is part of an assignment for the class I am taking, Writing for Digital Media at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This week, I will be fixing headlines, improving an article, and writing headlines.)

Assignment 1

Headline: SciTechBlog: Ike bad, could have been worse

Problem: Missing verb, awkward.

Solution: Blog: Ike sparing, just like Katrina? (deleted "to be" verbs")

Source: cnn.com, September 19, 2008

http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/16/ike-was-awful-but-it-could-have-been-worse/

Headline: Tests find chemical also in liquid milk in China

Problem: Awkward, not compelling.

Solution: China: [Before: Tests find more of infant-killing chemical in milk]

[After: Tests find evidence of deadly chemical in milk]

Source: wral.com, September 19, 2008

http://www.wral.com/news/national_world/world/story/3572921/

Headline: UNC releases injury report

Problem: Not compelling, very vague

Solution: [before: UNC's Massenburg 'doubtful' to play Saturday]

[after: UNC's Massenburg 'doubtful' for Saturday]

Source: newsobserver.com, September 19, 2008

http://www.newsobserver.com/front/story/1224724.html

Assignment 2

Before: http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/1224290.html

After: 

Triangle home sales plummet, buyers struggle with lenders

Both sellers and buyers face tough obstacles, but there is hope

The plight of Triangle home sellers turned gloomier in August, and buyers don't always have it easy, either.

From bright to bleak, the Triangle housing market over the past year

Sales of existing homes in Durham, Orange, Johnston and Wake counties fell 39 percent from the same month a year earlier -- the biggest year-over-year decline since the national housing bust first nicked this region a year ago -- data from the Triangle Multiple Listing Service show.

Meanwhile, fewer buyers roamed the market as the number of homes listed climbed to a four-year high for the month, even as sellers budged on prices more than ever in the past six years.

"The sellers aren't getting what they want," said Ed Willer, a York Simpson Underwood broker in Raleigh. "And the buyers -- well, the lenders are beating them up. So it's tough on both sides."

The Triangle is coming off three frenzied years of record home sales and surging prices. But the market has come to a standstill, compared with recent years, as lenders tighten standards following years of easy money.

Thinking about buying? 

The pros:

• Sellers are starting to price homes lower, abandoning the ambitious price tags of two years ago. For the first time in at least six years, the prices of more than half of the homes on the market have been reduced at least once. At least 52 percent of the 14,041 homes on the market are price-drop listings, up from 41 percent a year ago.

• Mortgage rates are low right now, so it's a good time to buy. As long as you have good credit...

The cons:

• Good credit is a must right now. Those who don't have good credit are facing higher borrowing costs and are being asked to pay more up front.

• Appraisers are being very conservative. What this means for a buyer is that the appraisal may come in lower, even much lower, than the already agreed upon selling price, and the buyer may have to chalk up the difference, according to Triangle area real estate agent, Jeanette Benjey.

Thinking about selling? 

The pros:

• The good news for owners is that prices held steady in August. Average prices were essentially flat at $248,079, as was the median price of $197,000.

• People are getting reasonable prices for their houses. "I don't see anybody getting killed" Willer said.

• A recent dip in mortgage rates may encourage more buyers to pull the trigger. 30-year fixed mortgage rates in North Carolina are averaging 5.95 percent -- the lowest since April, according to Bankrate.com data.

The cons:

• Sellers need to be very flexible in the months ahead. The number of homes on the market swelled 8 percent to 14,041 in August -- the most in any August since 2004: competition is high.

• At the same time, showings dropped 18 percent from a year ago and pending sales sank 29 percent to a five-year low: traffic is low.
  

Have we hit a low?

Looks like we're close. The number of residential building permits issued in Wake County, the region's biggest, was down 43 percent through June, county records show.

"That's one of the things we have to see before we hit the bottom," said Stacey Anfindsen of Cary-based Birch Appraisal Group.

Anfindsen, who analyzes listing data for Triangle real estate agents, thinks recovery will come only after there are three consecutive months of both increased showings and pending sales.

Until then, sellers face a sobering reality: "You have more inventory than you've had in a long time," he said. "And you've got fewer buyers than you've had in the past four years."

Assignment 3

Headline before: Scratching the Surface: Breaking Down the Global Warming Debate
Headline after: Dissecting the Global Warming Debate

Assignment 4

1. Contaminated meat from China blocked by U.S. government

2. Chinese contaminated meat blocked by Government

3. More sub-standard Chinese imports suspended: chemical and bacteria-laden meat blocked by U.S. government

Review of enn.com (Environmental News Network)

By Marcie Barnes

(This post is part of an assignment for the class I am taking, Writing for Digital Media at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This week, I will be reviewing enn.com and making suggestions based on our readings.)

enn.com is a good place to get environmental news. But does it pass the white glove test when scrutinized for possible problems? Let's find out. (added, trying to be less arid, add a hook.)

Navigation

The navigation on enn.com is clear, there is a prominent green bar running just under the banner/logo at the top of the page. I found it (deleted "It's") easy to tell what section I was visiting (deleted "you are currently in") because the section I (deleted "you are" and "currently") visited turned darker green and a little slider arrow moved to serve as a visual marker of where I was. (deleted "that part"). This navigation bar was consistent on each page I visited, so I always knew where to go if I wanted to move around.

Clicking on the banner/logo brought me back to the home page, which is good practice. The search box is placed well – near the top right – where many tend to look for it. Search results came up quickly and were organized by date, most recent first. I imagine an advanced search would be helpful for many users as well, that feature is missing.

Page Layouts/Site Organization

The pages are well balanced, and the elements on them work well together. I found my eye always going to the most important story first, and so on. Good balance keeps the reader's eye from bouncing about aimlessly and eventually bouncing away, much like in an erratic game of "pong":

 (added.) This site is well-organized, again, with clear navigation and placement of different items where the typical reader would expect to see them.

Consistency

There is a nice, consistent feel to this site. The lead story in each category is always in the same place, below that is a long list of other (earlier) stories to read, and below that a spotlight, commentary, and member press releases are always anchored in the same spot regardless of what page I was on. The advertising placement is also consistent, albeit a little prolific, on this site.

Because this site is a compilation of articles contributed from a variety of sources, subtle things such as tone and voice (below) and style do vary from article to article, but that is expected in this format. [Before: One thing I did notice, however, is that sometimes the full article is published on this site, and sometimes I have to click through to the source site in order to finish the story. I personally would prefer to stay on the site I’m on, unless I choose to go to the source site for more information.]...[After: I did notice, however, that sometimes the full article is published on this site's server while sometimes I click and am sent elsewhere. Good practice would keep readers on the original domain at all costs, and in order to avoid confusion. A link to a "source" site would be welcomed in case readers need more information.]

Tone

There is an intellectual and professional tone to this site: it is cleanly designed and gives off an air of authority in its design. In addition, the headlines are published with their source information underneath which really helps with credibility.(added.) Conversely, (deleted "However") the advertising takes up too much real estate on this site for my tastes, and the text ads embedded within the articles (described further in the hyperlinks section) make this site appear too commercial (deleted sales-ish), which may put off  (deleted "may be a put-off for") some people.

Writing Quality

Again, because this site aggregates (deleted "conglomerates") articles from “a variety of trusted global sources,” the writing is generally solid. However, I did encounter typos and formatting problems from time to time. This commentary box,

which has a prominent position at the top of each page, was overflowing with words. It seems that the editors need to place a character limit on what goes in this box, or redesign it so more characters can fit.

In this article, I found words running together in the lead paragraph. I also wanted to hyphenate “Tree Free” (a mistake passed down from the source site). I’m also not sure what was going on with the extra commas that always appeared just before the source in the byline.



In this article, there was a strange character (box) in the 3rd paragraph and another case of words running together in the 4th. These problems typically didn't seem to exist when I checked out the article on its original web site, so it looks like the editors of enn.com need to do a better job checking the information they post.

Hyperlinking

Words colored in blue are actually links to other pages/articles that support the current article, a style I employ on this blog as well. However, why not use the standard blue underlined link we are all so accustomed to? These non-underlined words probably would not stand out as hyperlinks to many readers.

Double-underlined words appear as “links” that, when hovered over, bring up a small advertisement. One, in the article Sarah Palin's Record on Climate Change, links the word “governor” to an ad that reads: “Artery Clearing Secret from Nobel Prize Winner.” There is no relevance in that. I’m not really sure readers want their text infiltrated with advertisements in the first place, isn’t there enough already? If there are going to be ads literally in the text, at least make them relevant. Another one in the same article links the word “Obama” to donate.barackobama.com – that makes for a relevant link.

Overall, enn.com is still a great place to get environmental news. It is well-organized, well-designed, and easy to use. (moved from former intro paragraph). There are just some things that need to be cleaned up in order for it to be a high-quality site. (added.)