JESSICA WRIXON

 

By JESSICA WRIXON

October 2, 2014

When it comes to creating and launching a new Website, there are many things to consider. One major thing that will set the site from the rest is the way it can excel past it’s previous competitors and set the bar for future ones.

In Entrepreneurial Journalism by Mark Briggs, Briggs cites many points on creating and utilizing strategies in a competitive landscape. One point he makes is to always develop a strategy. When creating a Website, there are many different types of audiences to reach out to, so having a specific demographic is important. A great tip on this is to figure out who is to be reached through the Website. Choosing what age, gender, location, background, or profession is going to be reached will help to narrow a thought down to a specific targeted audience.

Another point Briggs makes when it comes to creating and utilizing strategies in a competitive landscape is to understand the competition. Odds are, there are direct and indirect Websites that are successful on the web. One way to succeed past older, well-known Websites is to figure out how big the competitor’s Websites are. By figuring out how many viewers they have and what works for it, a better audience can be targeted. Another way to succeed off of the competitors is to see how well the other sites do when it comes to social media. Being involved in social media networks like Facebook and Twitter, a site is more likely to get more viewers and have more shares among all different types of audiences. If a specific site does well within social media, it’s best to create an account and gain more followers. However, if a site is for an older demographic, it is best to shy away from social media and stick to a Website.

Even though choosing a demographic and in what angle a new site should take is a great start, it’s not good to launch an idea that’s too big. A Poynter.com article titled How Entrepreneurial Journalists Can Identify Opportunities, the best way to launch a Website is to focus on smaller ideas. If a Website starts out big, it has more of a chance of holding more failures than successes, thus creating it to lose audience attention. By starting out small, a Website has more room for trial and error, which will eventually build up to it’s expectations and lead it to become an opportunity for success.

One failed Website as told by Entrepreneur website, is Pets.com. This Website started out as a big online pet store in 1998, spending millions to launch and even bought a Superbowl ad. Although the Website got a lot of attention at first, people felt that it was too expensive to pay for shipping on animal products and didn’t feel like they were receiving much of a discount. With the recession going on, people found the Website to be useless and it closed in 2000.

By starting off little and gradually progressing, a Website has more of a chance at success by targeting a specific demographic and learning from effective competitors.

 

 

September 25, 2014

One of the most debated topics of the summer, children immigration, has brought about a lot of questions. What happens to these children and where do they go? Mainly from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, these children make the journey across the border illegally looking for family or a safe place to live, and often face many dangers along the way. Some children lose their life, while others risk becoming seriously injured or deported. Although there are many challenges child immigrants face, thousands are a success. One example of this is the true story of a 17-year-old boy named Enrique who makes the challenging and dangerous journey across the border to find his mother.

Sonia Nazario, the author of Enrique’s Journey and a Pulitzer Prize winner, captured the challenges young immigrant children face when trying to reach freedom and family in the United States. Along with revealing Enrique’s vigorous journey through a heartfelt novel, Nazario answers many questions through the Enrique’s Journey Website many people have about the immigrant children who seemed to triple overnight.

American citizens wanted to know where these children were coming from, what they were here for, and the challenges they face throughout the journey.

In the case of Enrique, Enrique took the journey to become reunited with his mother, who had migrated to the United States in search of a job eleven years prior. While many other immigrant children cross the boarder to reunite with family, many enter the country to look for safety away from the violence and drugs their homeland has become inhabitant of. Although immigrants run from the danger in their own country, they face many others while trying to get to the boarder. On the Enrique’s Journey website, Nazario shares photographs of young immigrants who lost limbs to trains or gangs, physically showing how dangerous their journey can be. The pictures serve as a great addition to Nazario’s website because it really shows viewers what these young children face for freedom. It helps to show that leaving a hometown to live a life free of fear comes with a price that risks their life.

However, Enrique was not the only one who made the journey. There are thousands of kids like Enrique who crossed the border and made it into the United States. According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, many unaccompanied immigrant children were matched up with sponsors in the state. By visiting the Website, people can see how many unaccompanied immigrant children are in their state. In looking for more information, people can contact the Office of Refugee Resettlement or even their local church to see how to get involved.

Journalist’s Resource shares an article that provides American citizens with the logistics of why these Central American children are crossing the border by the thousands. Driven out by gang violence and the vicious power of the drug trade, these children leave in search of hope and a better future with their family, while many Americans deny their welcoming without thinking of what it might have been like. One way to make the public aware of what life was like before America, contacting a local church or even a police station to get in touch with an immigrant is a good story to listen to and explain the hardships they once faced.

Sophia Nazario’s recollection of a heartfelt journey to find his mother is not only a great read, but brings light to the people often referred to as ‘illegal aliens.’ Everybody wants freedom and everyone wants to live free of constant fear. The Pulitzer Prize winner enlightens the world with the story of Enrique’s journey and the people who face dangerous hardships just to save their life.

 

 

By JESSICA WRIXON

September 18, 2014

When it comes to launching a successful website, many try and try again, but fail. Out of all the websites that exist within the Internet, what is it that makes a website successful enough to stay up and running? According to Mark Briggs, the author of ‘Entrepreneurial Journalism: How to Build What’s Next for News,’ there are many key factors to being a successful website launcher.

With the ever changing media and the demanding public, Briggs brings up two factors to help launch and keep a website by setting goals and trial and error.

When launching a website, setting goals is a huge factor to keep the site up and running. When goals are set, the person or team launching the site has narrowed down a broad topic of who to reach out to and what kind of message they want to send. They can subject their information to a certain demographic rather than having massive amounts of unorganized information. By setting goals, a website can also benefit their visitors by starting off slow and working piece by piece. Often times when sites are launched, it’s too overwhelming for a visitor to handle all in one sitting, especially if the site is directed towards a less tech savvy generation. It takes them some time to get used to how the website is set up and what information is under which tab on the homepage. When goals are reached, the website can advance after proven to be successful and more goals can be set for a more improved and interactive website.

Another huge factor to keep in mind when launching a website is to take advantage of the trial and error method. Living in a technological age that constantly demands change, we as people want the newest, the best, and the most interactive. We want the latest and the greatest and if we’re not hooked right away, we look for something better.

By taking advantage of the trial and error method, sites give themselves the benefit of the doubt to create the next best thing when it comes to holding the attention of the public. When creating new ways to attract an audience and keep them as daily users, some great advancements to make would be an easier way to navigate the website, a new method for user interaction, or even something like a broad topic search bar so the audience can get what they need faster. By keeping up with technological advances and trying new things, new websites may set themselves up for failure, but could also set them up for great, ongoing success.

Although launching a website comes with difficult and tedious challenges, digital journalists also face similar issues. Digital journalists are most likely more technologically advanced compared to journalists who specialize in print. However, with the vast information the Internet provides at top-notch speeds, what could be so complicated for digital journalists? It’s the lack of established skills traditional journalists benefit from that the internet has readily available at any given time. Traditional journalists who never had the Internet in assistance to writing a story learned the old fashioned way of how to get in contact with people and set up interviews and although many digital journalists still do this, there really is no digging around as much as there was and is in traditional writing. Writers had to find information the hard way, rather how digital journalists can easily send out a tweet and ask for information, pictures, ideas, videos, and all sorts of other information. The Internet is so easily and readily available that it helps to weaken the strength traditional journalists possess compared to digital journalists who can have everything they need at the touch of a mouse.

Digital journalists may never know the past difficulties traditional journalists faced compared to what the web can provide them with today. Even though both forms of journalism are still widely accepted, digital journalism is most likely in it for the long run, especially since the Internet has only expanded for its 25 years in existence.

 

 

By JESSICA WRIXON

September 11, 2014

9/11 anniversary shows the impact of the Web 13 years later

The Web is one of the most relied on sources for anyone to retrieve any information regarding every topic that can be thought of. It has changed the way we think, learn, read, and believe.

Out of the many ways the Web has impacted the world, one factor is how it has lead the human race to believe anything. Any person can create any kind of story, whether it be completely farfetched or slightly off. One thing I’ve noticed with social media today is that many people share ridiculous stories on social media outlets like Facebook and twitter with bizarre URL’s.

Most of the time, these people who share these stories have never heard of the website before but share it anyway thinking it can bring up conversation or is just an absurd literary piece. Websites are never checked for credibility, thus leading to false stories and people who believe them.

Although the Web has its negative affects, there are many ways it has positively impacted us. One way the Web has changed our world is by making it easier to find information on anything. With major search engines like Google or Bing, it is very rare a person doesn’t find what they are looking for. These search engines connect people to millions of results in the matter of milliseconds. Not only can people find information quickly, but now they can access any sort of any information via smartphone in seconds and from anywhere in the world.

Another interesting way on how the Web has changed our world is by bringing people together. People from all around the world are connected to the Web, allowing sharing to occur between all different walks of life. Now, you can video chat with people on different continents, share videos and pictures through social media sites and email, as well as read blogs from people who live a completely different life than you. This has also made things easier for people who want to learn more about the cultures and religions from all around the world. They can now stay in touch with old friends and family members with just the click of a button and can share their life with the world.

Although the Web has changed the world in many ways, one way the Web can most certainly be notable is on September 11, 2001. Thirteen years ago, the Web wasn’t nearly as refined and advanced as it is today. Social media has boomed over the past few years and provides everyone with an easier ability to connect with anyone in the world. Back when the September 11 attacks happened, many people turned to their televisions and the radio to find out more information on what was going on in New York City and why. Even though the Web wasn’t as advanced as it is today, many people took advantage of this fairly new media outlet to dig up more information on one of the most horrifying, saddening attacks to happen in the United States of America.

However, this marked a day where people started to rely on this big electronic database that wasn’t as common as a television or the radio. In a 2013 Washington Post article, the attack created such a large amount of data that flooded the Web so badly that is became ‘virtually unusable.’

Getting all the same information just from different sources, people wanted to try something new that would hopefully have more content in regards to the vicious attack, but since the Web was so flooded, media outlets and sources wanted to make this work for the public. With crashing Web pages and unloaded URL’s, one major outlet, CNN, had the right idea to shrink data and content to strictly words, making getting to the page efficient, easy and fast.

Since the attack, major news outlets have learned how to handle double the gigabits when it comes to the flow of traffic on the Web after a very demanding story hits the news. Regardless of the attack being one of the most tragic things to happen to this nation, this happening has helped expand and revolutionize the media to handle the overload of users it experiences everyday. By using the Web for information, our country as a whole can learn from media sites with just the click of a button and retrieve their information with little to no effort.