Too many good quality web sites still have the look and feel of the newspaper from which they sprang, or the newspapers that the editors and producers used to work for.
They often do not take advantage of their medium — its immediacy, capacity, flexbility, permanence and interactivity. They ignore even the simplest and most powerful tools of the web, such as linking. Some sites, however, are trying to break that mold. One such site is Truthdig.com, an investigative reporting site begun by Robert Sheer, a columnist who was recently bounced by the Los Angeles Times in an ill-conceived cost-cutting move.
Sheer and Truthdig.com are profiled in a recent Online Journalism Review article, in which Sheer is quoted as saying, “We’re not pitted against old media. What we are pitted against the model old media is trapped in. We wanted to stand as an alternative model to what’s going on on the Internet.” It’s that “old model” that many journalists today can’t get away from.
(Posted Dec. 7, 2005)
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Tags: Robert Sheer, Truthdig.com