Crochety

As a class project, I'm really excited about the concept of shells. How cool — we approach an issue from different angles, different media and end up with a well-organized launching pad for readers to get as much information they want in the way they want.

As a reader, I'm less than thrilled. I realized when looking for good examples of shells online, that I never get drawn in by shells. I like to find what I want from the person closest to the action. No news source can do that for even a single issue. Maybe it's just me. But, as a reader, I see shells as a new answer to an old newspaper question: "How do we make ourselves the source of news for our readers?"

I think the question is flawed. With the internet, no news source can ever hope for that. If someone is online, reading our website, it costs them absolutely nothing to go to a different website — which means they will the moment they want better information. As a reader, I was frustrated by some parts of the God, Sex and Family example. About.com was used as a source, and my immediate reaction was, "why am I here and bothering with this giant hand? I could have found a better answer much more quickly using Google."

At the same time, I loved "Now Leaving Colorado City," because it was great presentation of a perspective I couldn't have gotten anywhere else.

Shells are a great way to organize information. But they take time. And we really have to think about time. How many minutes should we spend making a flash graphic to dress up information our readers could find in seconds?

Progress Report:
No articles from me this week. Instead, I've been learning all I can about Missouri school finance and how it is driving what we're experiencing with the deficit. There's a lot to this issue and it's also numerically intimidating. I've been taking a few of the other K-12 reporters to interviews this week and I think we'll be soon be able to write about this with some authority.
The blog is also getting more posts (and more hits!), next week we'll each have an assigned day to post something.