For my remediation project, I chose to transform an article I had written for The Red & Black entitled Parking Services praised for customer aid into a Facebook news feed.I chose to transform this article into a Facebook news feed for the following reasons:
1. It gives the reader more insight into the people and events of the article.
2. It describes the article from multiple perspectives.
3. It shows that things are interconnected and happen simultaneously.
4. It provides readers with a sense of community.
5. It allows for the news to be more personalized and appeal to its a viewers in a better way.
6. It helps news outlets receive and develop story ideas and is, arguably, where the future of news is headed.
To me, it was an obvious choice to use a Facebook news feed to transform my original article into a more interactive and engaging text. The news feed, by nature, puts more focus on the people in the story rather than the actual events, which, in this case, would be Parking Services receiving a few awards for their outstanding service, and lets each individual tell their story from their own perspective. For my project, that is exactly what I intended to accomplish. I feel as though people who read news articles very rarely focus on how the news was gathered and who these people are that were actually interviewed. While it’s not of the utmost importance to know these things, such as how hard it was for the reporter to get in touch with their sources or what kind of life and experiences the person interviewed has had, it is helpful. With a Facebook news feed, readers can now see and, hopefully, understand the process that goes into writing an article and that the people mentioned in the article are people with real lives and emotions just like the rest of us. This gives readers more insight into the article itself and allows for more transparent reporting which, in turn, makes people more interested in the story. The news feed highlights these multiple perspectives and shows readers that there is more to the story than what actually ends up being published.
In this particular article, I remember some feelings and events that I did not include in the story, such as Don Walter, the manager of Parking Services really kind of lecturing me about good reporting (which I really kind of interpret as him trying to protect his career and being genuinely hurt by all the bad press Parking Services gets) and David Mitchell’s bad experiences in the past receiving multiple tickets. I figured that this would give readers a better and more in-depth understanding of the article and, perhaps, make it more interesting to read.
Also, it is important when reading news articles to note that all the people and events mentioned in the story are interconnected. All the things mentioned in news articles do not happen in a vacuum and, many times, occur simultaneously. I have tried to incorporate the times of certain events into the Facebook news feed as much as possible. While the times are not completely accurate, I tried to make them as accurate as possible. The time stamps add a new dimension to the story. It makes the readers more aware that reporters do in fact work on very strict deadlines and that the final article depends in large part on the people that the reporter can get in touch with during that time period and the specific experiences of those individuals. If people did not have their own lives and were never busy, it would be extremely easy for reporters to get in touch with sources. However, that is not the case, and the lives of the people reporters interview greatly affect the outcome of the article.
In addition, the goal of the news and of media in general, really, is to connect people with others, including the reporter and the people they interview. As a result, news articles need to relate to their readers. The Facebook news feed makes it easier for the news to foster a sense of community because it makes readers feel as though the next person or source is only a click away. It makes readers feel like as much information that was available to the reporter is available to them, and it makes them feel as though the people mentioned in the story are just like them, Facebook profile and all. This makes the news more personable and essentially gives it its appeal. With a Facebook news feed, the readers can connect to one another, and, if they wanted (and if I knew more about HTML and web scripts), even friend each other. This would make it so that people could get the news they wanted from the people that they were interested in. It would unite people with common interests and foster more of a conversation between people regardless of color, gender, or background. This is what news and print media is currently lacking. It needs to unite people, foster a sense of community, and get them genuinely interested in what is going on in people’s lives half way across the world.
According to an article by The New York Observer entitled Man Bites Blog: Hey, You Media Wimps! If You Want to Save Newspapers, Learn to Love Your iPhones, Then Go Join Facebook, “It’s all about giving users attention, because that’s mostly what people are looking for when they’re online these days.” People want to know that they are real and that other people perceive them to be that way as well and that what they have to say matters. People want to interact with others and form an online community. The article quotes Mike Germano, president and creative director of a marketing agency that specializes in social networking and new media, who believes that on Facebook (especially when it required a college e-mail address to sign up) people are forced to be who they really are. This gives a site more legitimacy and makes people want to read or hear what they have to say because they know that the person they are talking to is real and may be more like them then they actually think. In a Facebook news feed, any body can connect to another person, can view others’ profiles, and can see that they are, in fact, real with real interests and desires. According to the article, “Newspapers can take a lesson from “status culture” by integrating it into their sites. What are readers reading right now? How many people have their eyes on one story? Who are they emailing it to? Where are they blogging it? How are their friends using the site?” By integrating statuses into online news culture, news corporations can give viewers a more accurate representation of the world, where news stories come from, and who the people are that influence them.
Overall, where news and print media fails, the Facebook news feed compensates for it. Reading a paper does not allow readers to view and contact other people. It does not allow for them to meet or understand others better than they already did. No, all one can do with a paper is look at it and take the news organizations word for it. In this new world of interactivity and in the Information Age, people want to experience things for themselves, and the Facebook news feed allows readers to experience the thoughts, emotions, timeline, and communication of real life events and the people that take part in them. It gives the readers more control over the text by allowing them to navigate their own way through it and seek out the information they want or need and allows readers to more actively engage in the text through links and a more graphical interface.
When it comes down to it, I agree wholeheartedly with Bolter and Grusin. The purpose of my project – and all media, really, is “to achieve the real,” and the only way to do that is to “integrate and absorb all other media.” In my project I attempt to use a variety of other media, such as pictures, art, text, and hyperlinks to create something bigger than itself. I hoped to create a technological representation of my article that was somehow more real than what it was on paper, and I believe I have accomplished that. With the article as a Facebook news feed, people now have the freedom to connect to real people, find information the way that they want to find it (and that interests them too), and experience the news and compile it themselves. With a Facebook news feed, people are no longer passively receiving news from a distant source but are actively shaping the news, creating it, and figuring things out for themselves – which, let’s face it, is more real than anything you can ever read in a book. Books, papers, and magazines encourage a reclusive kind of behavior where people stay to themselves and take what only they can get, while the internet and more interactive texts encourage people to enter the real word, communicate with others, and experience the multitude of information the world has to offer for themselves.
