living newspaper

Election Predictions. Look into a crystal ball and I'll Tell ya who'll win. And some will say one thing, others will say the contrary and in the end person A or person B will have predicted correctly, through luck more then any talent of their own and they'll inevitably spend the next four years patting themselves on the back for it. News media is covering EVERY angle of these elections. AOL is tireringly Republican and for this VERY liberal girl, it became redundant and irritating enough to send me else where for news. And elsewhere I found I liked what I saw. Polls were more on my side then AOL had let on EVER, and details where not being skipped and a platform was not being pushed. CNN reporters were refreshingly well rounded. The Yahoo reports definitely steared more toward the left. But what I noticed about all the sites was their use of video clips to not only share the debates long after it had actually occurred, but also to relate the news, to display and relay the facts through visual and audio sensory reception as opposed to the very cranial process of reading. But the news was the same as reading a newspaper article. A traditional newspaper article, uninfected by reporters "blogging" instead of reporting, these video clips where newspaper articles brought to life. Through color and motion and sound no longer where long sentences printed in ridiculously uncomfortable to read 8 pt print black ink on grey paper, but alive for the viewer to take in instantly, without the comprehension translation that occurs during reading. It was all spoon fed to the views, like caramelized onions and candied yams, made sweet for easier ingestion. And I thought to myself "how brilliant this is" that news can now become live action, as opposed to just mental translation. It was a brilliant way to use the Internet. Forget just including a typed story on an online page, you carry the story out in front of a camera and include it as a bite on a page filled with photos on the same event. CNN video was the best, dedicating an entire section of there website to only the video coverage of COMMENTARY, just like a newspaper article would be, instead of just recording video footage of the actual events for viewing at a later time. And it was SO much more effective then ordinary news broadcasts on TV. Those broadcasts always seek to entertain too, so a dramatic spin is always put into each story, each broadcast, which taints the news and sort of irritates the shit out of those who are watching and really just wanted to know what happened that day. It's like trying to candy spinach,,... the ingredients are just all wrong. By taking articles like they'd be written in a newspaper, filled with facts as opposed to drama, and placing into a medium that is itself candy like to ingest, you're using the right ingredients and the correct format. It's such an effective new way to report news. It's sort of like books on tape, only visual too, and not filled with story, but with facts that are presented to you as if you're getting those facts first hand, looking into the eye of the human being that collected them, as opposed to black ink rubbing off on your hands as you fumble through page after page that's way more then an arms length apart and eye straining to take in.

These video clips really were the best way to discuss the debates and relay the information in an unobstructed and approachable way. CNN video was really brilliant, but I noticed more then one website had commentary included on videos. Yes they all had typed articles attached to their news features, but EVERY news feature included this kind of video clip as well, and it was effective. They could play back parts of the debate that had inspired reactions in them and quote directly on a paused frame of footage, as opposed to having to go back and reconstruct the area of the debate by layering word upon word in descriptive text, in a way sooo few writers have enough command over for most readers to comprehend, much less enjoy. You don't have to discribe what you're able to show. Without the burden of having to describe you can then fit in so much more information, because nobody will be using brain energy just to get the idea and setting of it all. Descriptive information like that becomes reliable back drop, we know it's there because we see it so we don't really have waste much mental energy on it and can leave all the excess brain space to absorbing more discussion and fact relay, It's really a lovely idea. Plus, when a reporter is describing another's face, their description is inevitably molded by their interpretation of the candidate. If all the reporter is doing is sharing their commentary through a play back, you, the viewer, can see the face of the candidate yourself, you maintains the final judgement, and there's no risk of a reporter interjecting their emotional response to a candidates gestures before you get to view it yourself.

It's wonderful, when reading a novel, to piece together the authors words into a world of your own invention. That same device is so detrimental to relaying facts. It's much more effective to let people see for themselves, even see the reporters of those facts themselves, so they can make decisions about the person reporting the facts. I watched the debate on my own. My interpretation was one of disappointment mostly. I found the debates to be very dry and uneventful and found McCain being much more charming then I believed he could be. I was a little frightened actually. Yet I saw Obama not backing down, not loosing his resolve to give into John McCains attacks, and it was definately encouraging. It's always impressive to see a young man behaving more maturely and controled then an older man. It's a huge statement of the young man's character. Yet to visually be given an comment on specific points of the debate was so much simpler then having a reporter describe which part they meant in the text of the report. Plus I could see the person who was reporting. That made everything seem more honest. I enjoy this new kind of reporting. Videos are an immensely effective new format for article information. It was actually after reading articles printed in the New York Times that I realized how closely related were the video clips I'd seen on CNN the day before. Honestly, I felt the style and format of the information distribution was identical, but the presentation had been amplified through color and sound. I loved the translation. It was amazingly effective and I hope everyone will visit CNN Video, and watch these video bites on the debate.