Some contradictory tales

Dear Al-JE, I’m feeling confused.  In my last post, I mention a segment that you did describing Japan’s nuclear situation as over-hyped.  And yet your features now include an article about “A world in denial of nuclear risks” and another claiming that “Japan fears nuclear plant meltdown.”

So which is it?

Al-JE Loses One of Their Own

Among the features and opinion pieces and in-depth coverage of the various world uprisings, Al-JE themselves were in the spotlight when one of their cameramen became the first journalist to be killed during the Libyan uprisings.

Ali Hassan al-Jaber, a 20-year veteran of television news in the Middle East, was fatally shot in an ambush near Benghazi (eastern Libya) yesterday.  According to reports, al-Jaber and two others were ambushed in their car, and one other person was also injured.  Al-Jaber suffered three bullet-wounds, one of which injured his heart.

Wadah Khanfar, the director-general of Al Jazeera, has vowed that the network will not be intimidated or silenced.

This serves as a chilling reminder that information is power, and those who seek truth in opposition must often do so in the face of grave danger.

Al Jazeera’s Tony Birtley, a colleague in Benghazi, expressed his outrage:

“This is an extension of the campaign against Al Jazeera, and Al Jazeera Arabic particularly – because everyone here watch Al Jazeera Arabic. Their work has been heroic, and it has been a great shock to lose a colleague.”

The Libyan people came out in a mass show of support for Al-JE and its reporters.  During a demonstration last night, Al-JE reported the people chanting, “With our souls with our blood, we’ll protect you Al Jazeera.”

Holy Interactivity, Batman!

After weeks of personal turmoil, wishing that Al-JE would do something interactive, a timeline appears!

This is actually pretty cool.  Each of these elements is a bit of the timeline, and although the layout is a bit confusing, the overall effect is fun and dynamic.  You use your mouse to zoom in and out, and to drag the page around from element to element.  Or you can use the play button and jump from video to video in order.

And then, a map appears!

It isn’t mind-blowing, but it’s a start!

Now, I’m not going to take credit for having urged Al-JE to take advantage of all the internet has to offer.  I’m not going to assume that this respected news outlet took my advice and bravely forayed into the world of interactivity. I’m won’t speculate that the amazing map that I made charting the locations of Al-JE’s story topics encouraged them to try it out for themselves, resulting in this simple attempt at Google-mappery.

I’m just going to say, you’re welcome.

Several of the pages also have Twitter feeds now, tracking hash-tags related to the region being highlighted.  It’s not quite “interactive,” but it’s still an attempt to exploit some of the more dynamic elements of the internet.

It’s a respectable attempt, and I’m glad that Al-JE is starting to see their site as more than a repository of clips from their videos and print.

Coming to Terms

Well, I keep perusing the Al-JE pages and hoping that I’ll come across some really awesome graphics or interactivity, but it keeps failing to happen.  I just have to come to terms with what the Al-JE site is, and what it’s not.

It is:

• A great resource for breaking and in-depth world news and analysis.
• An example of how a news website can be both informative and attractive.
• Full of beautiful photos and videos from the front lines.
• Blissfully devoid of advertisements.

It is not:

• A source for flashy web-empowered news gadgets.
• Attempting to provide any charts, graphs, or interactive images – not even in the business stories.
• Using modern techniques for conveying information.

Al-JE is keeping it old school.  It’s straight text and images, video and audio.  No frills, just news.

I’m tempted to tout this as a strength, because I’ve gained so much respect for Al Jazeera since I began following them a few weeks ago.  I’m tempted to wonder whether graphics and interactive tools are diversions from the real story, attempts to draw in readers using ploys rather than relying on the strength of the reporting and the narrative.

I’m tempted to try to defend Al-JE on this.  But at heart I’m a web-nerd, and I like web-gadgets, and I think the lack of them represents a real failure to capitalize on the potential the internet presents for story-telling.  I don’t really believe that charts and graphs and maps that you can click and manipulate are just frills.  I think they help people understand the story, to visualize how things work, and see patterns that are hard to explain in words.

Al-JE is suspiciously devoid of anything resembling web-personality, suggesting a philosophical aversion.  The closest they come is this weather app that lets you choose a city and flip between Celsius/Fahrenheit and kph/mph.

ooooh, interactive.

You Don’t Know What You’ve Got ‘Till It’s Gone

Let me begin with a fundamental axiom that will underlie the rest of my post: advertisements are annoying.  They range from distracting to misleading, and sometimes (rarely) become entertaining.  At the end of the day, they’re in the way of the pure, unadulterated content that we’re trying to consume.

I hadn’t noticed how bad the situation had become until I had the chance to revel in the ad-free wonderland that is Al-JE online.  I was initially impressed, and then increasingly stunned to find that Al-JE has no ads on its site, none that I could find.  Go ahead and look.  It’s hard to believe unless you see it yourself.

Al-JE is funded mostly by grants and loans, and they have ads during their 24-hour news broadcast (although even those are incredibly infrequent).  It’s possible that they simply haven’t found advertisers to help fund their online efforts and that they would jump at the chance to include them.  I”m not going to claim anything about underlying philosophy here, because that would be presumptuous on my part.

If Al-JE’s site is going to fill with ads as their popularity rises, then I’m going to enjoy the freedom as long as I can.  It’s a startling difference from the way news sites are handled in virtually all other cases.

Sometimes the intrusion is relatively mild. Repeat: relatively.

Obama competes with discount cruises on CNN's homepage.

The single ad on the CNN homepage is as large as the images for the headlines, basically making it the third most important thing this homepage wants to tell you.  It’s distracting, but it’s also easy to skip over, especially for those of use used to skipping over these things in our daily search for news.

But sometimes, they’re pushier.

Business and financial ads frame sports and top stories on BBC.com.

The BBC has a banner ad at the very top of the page, essentially replacing the page’s header image, and a second ad appears at the left.  These ads are the biggest elements on the homepage.

Can it get worse?   Yes it can.  May I present the MSNBC homepage.

MSNBC's Blackberry ad hogs the screen and raises my blood-pressure.

There it is.  The ultimate in advertising awfulness.  The homepage loads, and then an area just below the header expands into this enormous, screen-hogging ad.  everything else gets pushed out of the way, and this monstrosity appears.  It’s the modern equivalent of a pop-up ad, shoving its way into your face and then squishing back up to crouch at the top of the page, waiting to pounce again.

I know advertiser dollars are highly prized, especially now when newsrooms are barely staying afloat in many cases.  I appreciate that including some of these ads may be the difference between keeping and firing part of your staff.  I get it, I really do.  But seeing these awful ads evokes both ire and pity.  I can’t help but think, “Look what these poor ******** are resorting to.”

When this is the type of thing you get used to seeing in your daily excursions into news-land, it’s refreshing – no, astounding to meet a news page that is not reeking of desperation.  Here is Al Jazeera’s homepage.  I know I’ve put it up here before, but it merits repeating.

Ahhhhh. Fresh.

Sigh.

Look at that lovely white space at the top.  Look how all the images relate to news stories.  Look how the color scheme stays consistent and pleasing to the eye.  Let’s enjoy it while it lasts.

Al-JE is All Over the Place

While much of Al-JE’s recent coverage has highlighted the revolution (can we call it that now?) in Egypt, they haven’t neglected other parts of the world.  Via their live stream, I’ve seen news about Tunisia, Nigeria, the US, the UK, and more.

To get a sense of their reach, I took all the hyperlinks on their homepage and created a map of the regions in the spotlight today. Their scope is vast, and while it may seem typical for large news organizations, you have to keep in mind that the links lead to rich, well-informed articles. These are not just 3-paragraph news briefs just pulled off the AP feed.

If you zoom in, you can see all the markers for each region. Each marker reflects one link on the Al-JE homepage relating to that region.