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Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Experimenting with a kerfuffle causer

I'm playing with the "citizen journalist" stuff that seems to have the MSM all in a kerfuffle. The other day I posted a story on Digital Journal and now I am sitting back and seeing how it does. I'm counting hits and checking its earnings.

I had to make two trips to the UWO to gather the information, conduct the interview and obtain some art. This cost me at least four litres of gas and more than four dollars in parking. It will be interesting to see if I even break even on the story.

The story concerned research at the UWO calling into question the way foot injuries are handled. If you injure a shoulder, the physio does not tell you to brace the injured joint, refrain from using the affected muscles and do this indefinitely. No, you exercise the muscle and joint and encourage healing with strength and mobility.

But with foot injuries, it is another story. We bind them up in shoes, fit othotics to brace and support them, and we prevent the foot muscles and joints from moving freely. We weaken the feet; We don't strengthen them.

The above, by the way, is a much better summary of what is being done than what I wrote in my Digital Journal piece. (Maybe I can do some rewriting later.)

One difference, out of many, between the DJ and the MSM, say a paper like The London Free Press, is that the reporter can add images to the story itself. If something would be best illustrated with a photo, a graphic, or some other piece of art, it is easy to do. No separate from the story slide show.

Also, going back and changing info is easy. Notice an error after publication and click, click and you have corrected it. I notice that errors made in the paper make their way to the online site and then stay there forever. I find this very odd.

If the talented people who gather the news for the MSM today ever found a way to write for an online paper that could pay them adequately for their work, the debt-heavy monsters ruling the news roost now would be plucked.

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