Please evaluate and critique Huffington Post.
Huffington Post essentially acts as a news aggregator, culling editorial content from across the Web and presenting it at one location. It supplements the aggregator with a network of liberal bloggers, including several celebs.
It is a very controversial Web site in that the content it aggregates is not paid for. Many media outlets complain that Huffington Post copies and pastes content from their sites directly onto HuffPo, with minimal attribution. Other critics complain about the outward liberal bias of this "news" Web site.
Last fall, Huffington Post launched its first city-specific site--right here in Chicago. The editor of Huffington Post is a Ben Goldburger, 25 and a former reporter for the Sun-Times.
Click around the site and pay specific attention to the content. Questions to consider:
Where is the content coming from?
Is there enough attributions? Should there be more attributions?
Do you think Huffington Post should pay for the content it links to or is it fair game?
What about the alleged liberal bias? Do you see it? If so, where?
What about the Chicago page in particular? What is your opinion of it? Is it comprehensive? Or do you need to supplement it with other Web sites?
Is there anything that Huffington Post could be doing better?
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Without a doubt, the first thing I notice is that the layout goes against the standards we’ve talked about with nearly every other online news outlet—cramming a million story links above the fold, advertisements, etc. It’s strange because we talked about this website when we discussed blogs, and now we are discussing it as we talk about news websites.
ReplyDeleteIf you scroll all the way down on the very first page, there is a big list of links to every site that the Huffington Post took content from. In the actual stories, it was a little more difficult to find where that individual story had come from, but I still think it’s fair game (as long as the attribution is there somewhere, obviously). We as students don’t pay news outlets when we quote them or reference them in research papers, I don’t want to say it’s the same thing, but it’s sort of the same thing. One story I looked at was a ‘quick-read’ pop-up style (which I think is a cool feature, that probably ‘tricks’ people into spending a lot more time on the site than they thought they would). When I clicked for the whole story, it directed me right to the Sun-Times website, which is perfectly enough attribution.
The Chicago page was different than I thought: because it is city-specific and the overall Huffington Post still exists, I expected it to be much more city-specific. I thought every story would pertain to Chicagoans. I actually liked what I found better, though: huffchicago.com seems like an (almost) comprehensive site for a person in Chicago to visit. It has all the news categories as the original site, just with more stories people here would find useful. It didn’t reach too much to the suburbs, but in that case neither does the Tribune or Sun-Times (in their regular editions).
The politics was slightly apparent—where I found it most was in the wording of headlines. I see where people are coming from with the controversy, but I didn’t think it was a big deal. At the risk of putting this out there, I’m not at all into all the liberal stuff, yet I would still return to Huffington Post, so I think that is a decent judge of it.
Honestly, its always really difficult for me to find what I think should change, because I can only think of things I see, not things I would like to see. I usually come up with many more ideas during our discussions of the sites, though. So until Wednesday, I’m pretty satisfied with Huff Post.
I can see the purpose that the Huffington Post serves for its daily readers. It’s a conglomerate of stories, mostly from other news sources. But people could probably use it on a day-to-day basis to check out what the site editors consider popular, interesting headlines from the day (and click the links to the outside source). I’m not really sure how the site has done so well, though. Maybe because they have that graphically focused picture/headline format that gets a lot of people drawn in to the story first.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I can’t stand the format or style. I don’t like how they have the one largely featured story that takes up almost the entire screen above the fold – the design forces you to scroll a lot. It doesn’t even look like a cohesive site – the flow is interrupted by changing fonts, font sizes, and colors.
On the other hand, the site does offer some decent original content. There were some decent blog posts heavy with factual information, but then there were also some that were on the most trivial topics. They do choose credible news sources to feed from.
I also thought the “Green” topic heading that has environment-related stories is an interesting idea for categorizing the stories. I don’t know of a lot of news sites that have a page exclusively devoted to this topic that people can’t see to get enough of.
The local page for Chicago also had a decent amount of good coverage on it. They covered everything from pending Olypmics issues, social issues, political issues like Blagojevich and the Obamas, plus helpful links to local applications regarding crime watch, cheap gas, and good restaurants.
If the Huffington Post worked on their format (and maybe produced some more original content), I might be more inclined to use them as a news source more often.
mmediately, the Huffington Post Web site caught my attention.
ReplyDelete"Obama's First 100 Days" read the banner headline. "Great," I thought,
"A site that will delve into what he's doing and how." And when I
found out the site, which I've never been to, focused on breaking news
and opinion, I thought it was all going to be a really different look
at politics. But then as soon as the page loaded, I saw this terrible
bright blue font – it reminded me way too much of those blinking,
"You've won a prize!" ads on so many other pages. They should tone it
down a little or go back to basic black – streamline it a little bit
so the reader takes their news a little more seriously.
I thought the sections were well organized – but having it all in the
same shade of green made my eyes skip over some things. And for a
paper that says it is "news and opinion," why isn't there an opinion
tab right at the start? Or is it all a news/opinion hybrid, which in
my opinion, sort of defeats the purpose of both the news and opinion
sections? I think news should be unbiased and straightforward, and
opinion should be an opinion about something – an event, a political
figure- something with a newsworthy element, but not a straight news
story. The "Big News: News so big it needs its own page" was a pretty
funny attention getter. I thought the "popular stories" section was a
good idea – giving people a rundown of what other people were
interested in, and then linking to the other "You may also like…"
stories. But a feature in entertainment on celebrity skin products?
Seriously? Why and how is that news? And do we honestly need to hear
more about Britney Spears – so much so that she has her own news tab?
I don't think so.
I liked the Video tab, but didn't really understand the Airlines one –
a whole section dedicated to the airline industry? Is this how
Huffington Post started? Are they get paid from certain airplane
makers? Why can't this stuff just be stuck in a business section?
I especially loved the Green section – I haven't seen this at other
sites, and with it being such a hot button issue, it was great to see
a whole section dedicated to green news and environmental stories,
including the G.I.Y. "Green It Yourself" feature – a great touch.
I want to know more about how the site got started and the staff – are
they paid? Is it all people posting up onto their site without
editorial checks? How does it all work?
Overall, an interesting site – but probably one I wouldn't visit regularly.
With my first look at Huffingtonpost.com, I really liked the layout. The first advertisement is below the fold and I think the gray margins on both sides of the publications are a nice use of white space, and successfully balances out the text and photo heavy center of the page.
ReplyDeleteI would agree with the liberal bias the site allegedly possesses. The bloggers represented on the left margin have predominantly liberal views. With the first post listed, the first line reads,"...Republicans who would rather sink the economy than give a Democratic president legislative success." Three large photographs of Obama dominate above the fold then directly under is the headline "Leahy: Invesitigate Bush NOW." However, they did have a video of Obama hitting his head on the entrance doorway of an aircraft. Does that balance it out? Probably not.
The Chicago page was dedicated soley to the city and metropolitan area. There was little attention to the suburbs, which was similar to the Tribune homepage, obviously not including triblocal.com.
The links or sources that are offered on the bottom of each page are a little shady. There are tabs that divide the site into sections, explaining where each sections receives their information from. For example when I clicked on "Living" the specific sources were different from when I clicked on "Business."
Overall, Huffington Post had a clean design, put into three margins; blogs, then the second two photographs with headlines and captions. I think they may be a little more respected and read if they produced at least a little of their original material, however it is almost a double-sided knife because I feel like being a collage of news from different sources is what they are.
When I first looked at the site I realized that it did not follow any of the rules that we discussed in class that would constitute a well organized and well designed web site. When at the very top directly below the name of the site is a large advertising banner that stretches across the whole screen. Below this is poorly chosen font for President Obama’s Primetime speech which looks like it was just copied and pasted from a word document. I will say that the photo of President Obama is appropriately running across the page and takes up a large space to get attention but the caption under it with direct quotes is too large and the same bold red font is used in the caption.
ReplyDeleteNext I looked at the overall organization of stories and tabs on the site that would lead to the stories and they were at the top and organized, which was the only part of the site that had a hint of organization. As you scroll down it’s as if all of these stories have been thrown on to the page. The blogs are all on the left side of the page displaying a picture of their author and there are advertisements in between stories and these ads are the same size as the pictures used for the stories so you can easily find yourself looking at a picture that you thought at first glance was about a story but it ends up being an ad.
Besides the organizational and stylistic qualities that the site lacks the content is updated quite often and the writing seems to be good. This is a site that I wouldn’t use to find my news and current events just because it makes it frustrating to find the news you want to find on the website especially when you visit it for the first time.
My first impression of the Huffington Post website it just does not seem like a very credible source. The layout and pictures do not have a "professional" aspect to them. This site seems more like a gossip and speculation blog. I'm not exactly sure why I feel it's unprofessional, but this was my first observation.
ReplyDeleteWhen I clicked on the first few stories on the top of the homepage, I noticed the site has gathered much of its information from the Associated Press and I was even redirected to the Daily Herald. Furthermore, in my opinion, the attributions for the original reporting sites (sources) are not shown or credited to clearly enough (unless the viewer is redirected to the actual original site). Nonetheless, I feel the original reporting sites should be shown more credit in some way or another.
Moreover, I do think the Huffington Post should pay for the content it links to. It is not fair to take (or steal) the content from one site and just paste to your own without some form of compensation and credit. This is something anyone can do. The Huffington Post website does have a fair amount of advertising and it is a rather well known news outlet so I think it could pay for its content with no problem
In additon, I do notice a liberal bias with the content the website chooses to report. For example, on the homepage under "media," there is a video entitled, "Watch: Jon Stewart Rips Bill O'Reilly Over Hypocrisy On Privacy." Jon Stuart is known for his liberal tirades.
I would not use the Huffington Post for my news gathering because I would rather go to the original credible sites where it gathers or takes its news from. In addition, I could read my news without such an opinionated spin on the stories.
Although it was busy, I really liked the Huffington Post website. It was able to keep my interest and keep me involved in the stories with lots of pictures. There is alot to look at though, to be sure, and I did have a slight problem with an "article ADD" where I would be reading one and then jump to another, entirely unrelated article, and another, and another.
ReplyDeleteOnce I clicked on a certain link, the page became much easier to digest. There were some annoying advertisements in the middle of the article which made it hard to read, but I liked the tabs that accompanied the article up near the header. Also, the media content was very well presented, easy to find, and quick to load.
The content doesn't seem to have any specific source, other than the world wide web. There are posts from authors, reporters, and a plethora of other professionals. I definitely felt like more attributions would have been great, because I wasn't too convinced of the validity of the articles.
I don't think the Huffington Post should pay for its articles if they are coming from the internet's public domain. If they're coming from places like newspaper websites, then they should be paid for.
As to the alleged liberal bias, I definitely sensed it, but it didn't jump out at me as supremely annoying. I thought it would have been interesting to see arguments from both extremes, though.
The Chicago website seemed pretty barebones to me, as compared to their other pages, particularly the politics page. I think something that was really done well was the green links box at the bottom of the page. That was really helpful, and very informative as well.
The Huffignton Post is one of the sites that I usually go to when I hear about something in the news. I enjoy sites which our link huts, and can direct you towards multiple perspectives about stories. One of my favorite parts about reading on the internet as appose to through regular print journalism, is that there is always an active conversation. The thing that is great about the Huffignton Post, is that while you have to deal with slanted commentary, you are also linked to the original story, but also are thrust into a very active comments section which usually has some enriching inspired debate.
ReplyDeleteI will agree, that the Huffignton page is the hardest page to navigate through of all that we have explored, but I also think that it probably makes them more money. The more clicks the better. Also I think that by cramming stories into one another, you may inspire readers to audible over to other stories and hopefully return to where they came from.
I love the Huffignton Chicago page, and I am very happy that we as a city, are privileged enough to have it offered to us. I enjoy having a mini Post, that is tailor made to stories I enjoy reading, which are mostly of local variety.
The first thing I noticed when I accessed the Huffington Post, Chicago Web site was the obnoxious and repetitive www.freepeople.com advertisements. Not only was it bad enough to see three in matter of ten seconds of viewing the page, but it was the same three ones in different sizes! After I refreshed, there were three new advertisements occupying the top quarter of the page: AOL; Bank of America; and Gateway Alcohol and Drug Rehab. Maybe it was luck of the draw the first time around.
ReplyDeleteThe content seemed to be dominated by AP reports, but also linked to the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, and Daily Herald, to name a few. As for attributions go, well, for the AP reports, it took a few minutes before I noticed the little AP attribution obscured in a clutter of words bordered by advertisements and links to Huffington Post’s blogs. For a bit, I thought the AP articles were written by the staff of the Huffington Post because the superfluous blog links with an accompanied picture. I could see how this might anger the AP, but as for the other posts, you were directed to their respective Web site, which is no different than any other news aggregate site, no?
I could see how someone might be taken a bit back by the unnecessarily large graphic of the day’s top story, but in this case, I think it is appropriate. But for a professional newspaper, not at all, but for a Web site that is known for their liberal bias and abrasiveness, sure, why not.
I read some of the blogs and their respective bios. I guess this is a blogger’s Web site. It was interesting that they had a wide range of bloggers from chefs to newspaper editors, writers and so forth, but I could not help but feel a narcissistic vibe. Although this is the type of Web site that would likely irritate me more than inform, I prefer this over www.chicagobreakingnews.com – which I felt indifferent about.
Huffingtonpost.com is very cluttered, the choice of colors unattractive, and not so user-friendly. The website does a good job of providing more news information than most news websites but, they could be better organized and made easy to navigate by the average user.
ReplyDeleteThe fonts, font colors and page colors should be changed to rich, attractive colors or even left at black. I clicked on the media button and the orange that jumped at me when the page opened was like that of a burning sunlight. The movie advertizement at the top of the page with varying videos that flash every second is also distracting.
The only thing I liked was the fact that the biggest story of the day takes center stage on the home page.
In any case, there is "too much" of everything going on with this website. This can be improved by reducing the amount of contents on each page and placing them in sub-pages with links and one line captions that lead readers to them.
Great website but needs improvement on the color choices and ease of navigation for the average reader.
To start things off, I hate how they have the HUGE banners on the top of the page. Not only is it annoying, but it always made the page take forever to load. After you get past these banners the site is just all over the place. Other than the links at the top of the page, the opening site has no organization and it is just real hard to figure out what each story is. Even after clicking upon the links you come to a page that is set up exactly like the home page, with stories all over the place. it is just very hard to navigate from story to story.
ReplyDeleteThe information put on the site is from other credible news sources so to me this site should not be held as a credible news source and almost like a news blog. The one good thing about the stories on this site is that they properly quote where the original story was from.
After looking at the Chicago page, I think that it is pretty bare. There isn't much on the page compared to the main pages. I think that to make this page 100% better they just need to make the site more organized and easier to navigate.
When I first took a look at Huffingtonpost.com my first impression was that of a website that may not be that credible. I think that the layout as well as pictures look unprofessional and that is something that I think for sure needs to improve on the website.
ReplyDeleteWith that being said, I did like the layout and I appreciate that it is pretty simple, with the two gray bars on the sides. However, it is confusing with Ads mixed in next to pictures. Again, the pictures look very thrown together and not professional at all, some are very blurry and others look like they were edited very quickly.
As far as where the content comes from, there is always a writer but not always who that writer works for, which is misleading I think. Also, I don't know if I really understand or agree with the idea where they just take information from another website and directly copy/paste it onto theirs as work. I feel like in some ways it is a cop out. They should, I think, have to compensate for taking other people's work because right now they are essentially making money off of writers that they don't have to pay.
Over all, I think that the website is fairly well put together but the whole idea of the Huffington Post is still a mystery to me.
The first thing that caught my attention about the Huffington Post was the huge photos and the huge font for the main story on the front page. I think that it makes the site look really tabloid-y, and not in a good way. I think that they should rework the design a little bit to make the website look a little more credible.
ReplyDeleteI am really confused about where a lot of the stories come from. Some of them are attributed to the AP, some of them cite a few other news cites as sources, but for some of the stories, I couldn't even figure out where the information came from. I think this is quite problematic because how can someone trust news if s/he doesn't know where it came from? I also think it's problematic if the Huffington Post copy-pastes a lot of this news without fully attributing it and/or paying for it. If they're not going to pay for it, they should at least properly cite it and link to the original source so that people can figure out where it came from. I clicked on a few links that I thought would link me to a story on Huffington Post and I ended up on blogs for reporters from the Washington Post, for example, but this is mostly just confusing and quite disorganized.
I also see the liberal bias on the site, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't lend much to the website's credibility, either. No one wants to come to a website and see such a huge volume of left-slanted stories because it's just too narrow. For all of these reasons, I can't imagine why too many people would want to use the Huffington Post regularly as a news source. The sources for the information is ambiguous, the page design is too sensational, and everything leans to the left.
I don't necessarily think it's a bad idea to be a news aggregate website. I really like the Google news tab because it gives you access to all the most popular news stories--it's a quick way to get a sense of the headlines. But it doesn't seem like the Huffington Post is too concerned with being balanced or objective. Sure, they have a good scope of coverage, but it's only showing one side.
I'm not much of a fan!
Being a person who really appreciates photographs and the imagery and impact that they can have, I never thought that I would say this, but there were just too many on huffingtonpost.com. In addition, I was confused about whether or not some of the pictures were just links to pop-ups or whether they were actual stories on the website. These two factors made the website seem trashy to me.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of the content, I thought that the website was sufficient but the trashy and confusing layout of the homepage didn't make me want to even click on any of the articles.
The sources of the content were sort of hard to find or maybe ambiguous is a more appropriate word. In this respect, the attributions could definitely be more prominent and clear throughout the articles.
For example, when I clicked on an article about the parliamentary elections in Israel, I was at first under the impression that it was actually a Huffington Post article because right under the headline, "Israeli Election Results: Both Livni, Netanyahu Claim Victory", it read Huffington Post and then a name, Hanna Ingber Win (Who I assumed was the reporter). But when I scrolled down to the actual article it read "From: AP" and even further down there were more updates from other various sources such as Haaertz and the Jerusalem Post. In this regard, however, I thought that it was refreshing to see a Western media source using foreign media outlets as sources of information.
Overall, I thought that the website was poorly organized. I don’t really have a problem with the fact that they “steal” news by literally just copying and pasting articles. But they should definitely do some work on the layout and overall organization of the website to make it more appealing and user friendly.
The HuffPo Chicago site should’ve taken our city’s blueprint to html and made a grid-like layout. For all the ballsy nuts and cheeky bolts, it’s like a tunnel connection between subways, pulling my eyes in opposite directions. Their vision is 20/20, but mine (and the site’s) could use correcting.
ReplyDeleteThat said, let’s review some of their contributors. The top story is from Crain’s Chicago Business; so is the second. I had no trouble spotting the new address in the story’s address bar, but I might like a bit of variety in my top two stories. It’s like HuffPo Chicago made Crain’s the official authority on Stimulus package editorials. The columnists/bloggers are a little trickier to identify, having to read their bio to source their home publication, if one exists. At the bottom of the home page, the news sources are listed in order to depict a balanced pool of swag. The goodie bag is rainbow colored, but I don’t think Huff-Po was invited to the party.
There is a reverse benefit, however. If you find a writer you like, in my case, I’ve found many, catalogued in one place, I might ditch HuffPo for their blog on the newspaper site. I’ve donated my advertising value back to the mothership, and so now I’m stimulating the economy, like a good American should.
The liberal bias exists in some of the featured articles, but out of necessity. For example, Ann Coulter being investigated for voter fraud- anything anti-Ann Coulter is just merely balancing the extremist pundit codswallop collecting around the political media poles. That which permeates from the far right requires a lot of liberal ammo to neutralize.
The QuickRead is sly. It keeps the reader on the HuffPo Chicago page, while alledgedly saving you time, showing you an ad (displayed beside another publication’s material), and above a menu of more “quick-reads”. I’m going to assume the HuffPo stole it’s “See Where News Happens” Google map from chicagobreakingnews.com. Sorry. Aggregated.
I wouldn’t visit this page to collect news. I would, however, come for the blogs, and I would visit a HuffPo page to get a realistic glimpse into another city. I don’t think it’s criminal to publish a database of viewpoints, even if one seems to get more airtime than another. It’s another media experiment - in the end - helping shorten the viewer’s trek across the web. I don’t think it needs to supplement anything because it’s already overpacked with text and image. It’s a claustrophobic from a visual perspective. I think it needs to de-supplement.
Besides, no informed citizen opens the Huffington Post expecting a conservative agenda. Most people who visit consider conservative news “lies” and liberal news “exposure.” It’s a different perspective on fact, but truth might always be negotiable.