Personal opinion about "An Inmature Medium" from Ramón Salaverria

From my point of view, I consider Septembre 11 facts really important for on line press development. There were some problems that journalists couldn't do anything in order to improve them, as connection problems, minutes after the attacks.

I am really satisfied with the consolidation of new formats in order to have more complete information, more dinamic and interactive datas. And that consolidation, separated traditional format to online press formats, and internet press had more autonomy than traditional media. But I think that don't verified if one information is true, and don't contrast some information about one fact, is a very serious offense to the public (who have confidence in that medium,) and to other journalists (who do their job correctly). I consider checking information is very much important than being the first in publishing breaking news.

An inmature Medium, from Ramón Salaverría

This report want to summarize the article from Ramón Salaverría about the role that internet newspapers played in the 11S terrorist attacks.

The objetc of the intestigation are 18 online newspapers from different countries. About Spain, Salaverría will analyse elpais.es and elmundo.es because they have the biggest number of visitors in our country.

News Relevance of September 11 events

In that attack, more than 3,000 people dead, there were thousand of injured people, the most significant area of Manhatan was destroyed, the Pentagon was damaged and four commercial aircrafts were hijacked and crashed. These facts cause an act of mass-mediated terrorism, and the factors that contributed to magnify this media impact were the space and the time factor.

About the space, Twin Towers were the most famous urban landscapes, and Pentagon evokes secrecy and invulnerability. So, both places assured a maximun exposure for the media. For that reason, hundreds of journalists and cameras can access to these areas very quickly.

The time factor was relevant too. The time which the attacks started 8.46 a.m. in New York, 13.46 GMT; allowed maximun live media coverage. In addition, the rhythm of development of events produced a frantic information beat and this contributed to maintain the atonishment and the visual attraction at all times.

WWW became the platform which users massively rushed to search information. According to google, during the two following hours the start of the attacks, an average of 6,000 searches of the acronym CNN were performed every minute. 80% of 500 most searched words of that day in google were related to the terrorist attacks.



The Weakness of Online Newapapers on the News Coverage of Septembre 11 events

A few minutes after the news of the first attack broadcast, Internet had to respod to a sudden multiplication of traffic, and many online newspapers (the most famous) collapsed. The smaller media offered more satisfactory technological performance to the public's information demands than the larger media.

In addition, the spreading of news without a clear verification was a general trend on a good proportion of digital publications. After analysing the selectionated media, we discover that on September 11 in response to the information needs of the public, editors took the decision of giving priority to the last minute news, before data could be verified. Journalists understood that the evanescent of character of digital media as a justification for impunity and for that reason, wasn't neccessary to correct errors in the next publication. (Click here to saw elpais.es 11s error information)

So, in conclusion, online media journalists tended to give more importance to speed than to acuracy, and they adopted some sense of impunity justified by this need for speed.

If we talk about de own identity of the online media, it is important to emphasize that the most part of these media modified their layout and their character in order to be the first media in publishing breaking news. The online media which mantain the standart layout, didn't publish any background piece at all homepages.


Strenghts of the Online Newspapers

September 11 events proved that the Internet press has its particular character and its particular audience. And after that fact, the news web sites increased very much the users visit.
Paradoxically, that growth in audience rating occured when online media had economic problems because advertisment in that web sites reduced drastically.

In addition, it will be an important development of multimedia information, becase the web was used as a platform to offer the last minute news and also as an archive for providing context and background data with news content in images, sounds, multimedia products, interactive infographics... that television and radio didn't have. These actions, aided to configurated new journalistic formats for the web.

Here, you can see one infographic product from elmundo.es

Analysing eldiariomontanes.es

eldiariomontañes.es is an online media from Cantabria. Using Alexa Traffic Rank, we know that it is in 16,90 position in the global rank and 447 in the Spanish rank. Investigating about its audience, eldiariomontañes.es appeals more to Hispanics. Its audience also tends to consist of childless women between the ages of 25 and 45 who have postgraduate educations and browse from work. Aproximately 86% of the site visitors are in Spain. eladiariomontañes.es 's visitors view 3,5 uniue pages each day on average. If we go to the OJD website, we can discover how many visits a day it have in agoust: 85044. In summer less people use to visit this online media than the other seasons.

Analysing the acces to information, in the frontpage it has this main sections: Cantabria, Sports, Economy, People and TV, Free time, paticipating, blog, services, newspaper library, hightly news. But the option to search information is only for words search, not for sections search. However, it has got advanced search: you can leak your search with author leak, place leak... www.eldiariomontanes.es

From 2006, this website has an online newspaper library wih hipermedia contents and also, it has got a navigation map of the site.

The last update is visible in the hompage, on the top of the website on the right hand.

You can identify the author of the news in some cases, when the piece of news don't come from an agency. But if you want to read something from one especial person, you can use the advanced search and you can use the author filters.

The print section is avaible in the website in PDF format if you want to pay some money for it. Click here

About special reports, it hasn't got any deep reports section, but it give special coverage to Cantabria, becauste it is a regional online media. For that reason, advertisers know very well which is the tarjet group.

Before, we say that it has a print edittion, but it has got more edittions, for smartphones, Ipad or tablets. It also has got RSS chanels. Click here

If you want, you have the option to register online. You have to create an user, a password and a security check. If you aren't sure about what the media can do with your personal information, don't be afraid, so, it has got a legal advice too, where you can find the data protec politics and user conditions. Click Here

When I have been investigating the website, I was surprised when I can't find any staff information... but if you look at the last part of the website, you can discover how many online media has Vocento, the comunication group of eldiariomontañes.es, and you have the option of click in someone and go to its homepage.

Analysing the news content, we can watch that it has got a latest news section included in the homepage. The homepage design has on the top a newsvideo galery. The news structure in the first level (homepage) has a subtitle or a previous title, the title and two-three lines with relevant information. It usually has a photo too. Under the relevant information there are the number of coments that the piece of news has got, and finally, under the number of coments, it appears if the piece of news has enclosed something like a video, PDF, etc

Analysing the interactivity tools, is important to talk about the blog section (Click here). This section has other sections: art and culture, current information, author blogs, Cantabria, Cantabros auround the world, science and technology, films, sports, football in Cantabria, books, local, Mas media, music, nature, free time, personal blogs, Racing and TV. In addition, the user can create a blog too, but the user has to be registered before do that.

This website offers the option to share content in the scial networks like Tuenti, Facebook, Twitter, Windows Media... and the option to sent information by e-mail.

Users can have interactivity in the website doing some coments in the news or giving some votes. The are other interactive sections, like forum, with a previous registration, with some condicions and a moderator, and chats (and videochats) with the same characterists. But if you want to get in contact with the news author, you can't. You can only know the name of the person, not else.

There are some rules to participate in chats, forums, put some coments... but the basic rule is to respet Spanish laws.

Considering the ranking of those news, it is similar that important online news appear on the up side of the page and on the left side. From my point of view I think so, because on the up side you can find the most amount of images and on the left side. In the other parts there are sport information (in the middle) and some ads.

And finally, about the design, I would like to express that users can't personalize contents on the homepage, and can't change the colours.