Final Project:: Adapt and Innovate

After jumping through a few technical hoops (when are there not technical hoops), I think I've successfully posted the pdfs to lesliejwilkinson.googlepages.com, the web pages I built last semester for JOMC 710. Which works out well, in terms of linking and connecting all of my class projects for this program. This paper completes my requirements for completion of the certificate program. It's been a great three semesters of learning. Congratulations to all my fellow graduates and best wishes for continued success to the returning students!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Adapt and Innovate: Newspapers succeeding in the online world."
PDF versions available at the above link.

Abstract: My final project in the certificate program, I've come back to explore and write about what Adapt or Die has meant to the newspaper industry in the past several years.

Adapt or die. That phrase would jolt the newspaper industry into action, pushing it to put more energy and content online. What have newspapers done to change the mindset and get things moving? Who’s getting it right? Who’s winning the battle to beat circulation and make money on the web?

Newspapers heard the call to innovate over the past couple of years: the Newspaper Next survey woke many people up and brought to light the notion that to win the battle of declining print circulation and profits meant innovators had to come out of the corners of the newsroom. It’s very much seemed as if a button was pushed and newsrooms sprang into action. Suddenly, newsrooms around the country were exploring blogs, video and interactive graphics.

This paper draws heavily on research that has been conducted over the course of the entire Graduate Certificate in Communication and Technology program, including research conducted specifically for previous classes. This paper is the culmination of my work in the program. I seek not to write threatening “Evolve or Die” paper that has permeated the internet the past couple of years. Instead, I will examine how newspaper websites are exploring new ways to entertain and keep readers.

Each One Teach One: Recommendations

So, what can be done to expand the reach of assistive technologies? Here are a few of my suggestions, along with a quick evaluation of a few major national sites.

1. Spend and budget money to develop alternate pages that are readable by a variety of adaptive and assistive technologies. Developers should also work to make sure their main pages have alternate tags and images that can stand in the place of Flash or Java animation and video.
2. Government websites are fairly committed to making their sites accessible to the visually impaired, thanks in part to amendments that have been made to the Americans with Disabilities act and other pieces of legislation. Corporations need to do a better job
   of doing the same.
3. Expand the use of adaptive and assistive technologies on national and international websites like cnn.com, nytimes.com, washingtonpost.com, espn.com.
   Cnn.com provides links at the bottom of it’s text-driven home page to CNN’s sites in Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, Korean and Turkish. Excellent! But, I couldn’t find a link to a text-only page.
   
   ESPN.com: I couldn’t find a translated or accessible page. The site does do a far amount with podcasts and sound.
   
   NYTimes.com: Also, no easily visible button to translate or link to an accessible page.
   
   
4. Reduce the cost of these technologies so users are not as limited by the cost limitations of getting online.
5. Awareness and education. A better understanding of what it takes to develop these kinds of sites will help developers and designers in their creation of truly user-friendly websites. Also, web design classes should be sure to include a module on adaptive and assistive development and adaptive and assistive technologies.

Elections back in 1924...

I found Susan Crawford's blog at some point in the past two weeks as I've been looking for resources. She's a professor of cyberlaw and communications law who blogs about those areas as well as the impact of technology on different aspects of society.

This post came through the RSS feeder this evening on how technology had a major impact on elections in 1924:

"... The new technology was remarkable. It had found a way to dispense with political middlemen. In a fashion it had restored the demos upon which republican government is founded. No candidate would be able to stand up to it who was unprepared to enlighten the electorate. It potentially gave to every member of the electorate the possibility of a direct reaction to the candidates themselvs. It reproduced to some degree, for the first time in the United States, the conditions of the Athenian democracy where every voter, for himself, could hear and judge the candidates.

The year was 1924: “…America finds herself this year in the act of virtually choosing her chief executive by an instrument that was up to a brief two years ago generally considered a freakish fad.”

“Politics,” the newspapers said, was “radio’s next big job.”

Worth a mention here because of how it relates to my other world of newspapers and dealing with change and the impact of new technology.