The Drudge Report

This Web site has a collection of stories about the inauguration from other news sites such as Yahoo! News, The Washington Post, and Breitbart TV. The general layout of the site is very unappealing and lacks organization. It does offer a variety of viewpoints because it is a conglomeration of news, but it lacks original content. These stories can be found by doing a basic search on the Web, but this site seems to be targeting one stop news shoppers on the Web. The stories listed on the site include the "flub" of the oath of office, the massive crowds in attendance, and a general story about President Barack Obama's speech.
The most significant difference between Drudge Report and The Huffington Post is the fact that The Post uses original articles in addition to linking to other sites. The main story includes a video of the inauguration as well particulars of Obama's speech. The layout is more organized than Drudge Report but is still simple in style.

Timely editors

Editing isn’t just about grammar, punctuation, and spelling which is made evident in the book, “The Art of Editing.” A significant responsibility that editors have is that of fact checking and making sure information is accurate. Editors must also help maintain the balance between reporting news and keeping advertisers and the audience happy. Decisions regarding whether or not to run a story that may show an advertiser in an unfavorable light are often assigned to editors.

An interesting development in the realm of journalism is the idea of citizen journalism. While it can aid in fostering an interest in the local paper by the readers, it can make more work for editors. Community members who may not have much experience with writing and grammar are submitting stories for publication and it is the editor’s job to decide whether or not the story makes it in the edition.

The time of copy editors, and video editors, and sound editors is coming to an end. Many news outlets are moving toward multimedia formats and editors must be skilled in all areas of editing. Newspapers are filming video and posting audio on the web. Television news stations are posting written articles to go along with video on their websites. All of these developments are making it necessary for editors to become familiar with all types of media in order to remain competitive and employable.

In addition to all of these duties editors must fulfill, they also must have a good understanding of the audience for which they are editing the news. They must not only decide what news is relevant to their audience, but, as stated in “The Art of Editing,” “editors must balance what the public wants to read with what it needs to read,” making the job of editing an art.

A quick peek

My name is Brett Smith and I am an English major with a writing concentration at the University of Michigan-Flint. I work part time in the writing center at school and work full time as a manager of a group home for developmentally disabled adults. At times, it proves to be a challenging job but overall, I enjoy what I do. In addition to my usual duties at work, I am also an instructor with the American Red Cross. Primarily, I teach Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and first aid for work, because it is an employment requirement for anyone who works with us, but I have taught some classes in the community. I’ve only had to use my training once when I performed CPR on an individual about three years ago and fortunately the individual survived.
Going back to the subject of school, I am officially a communications minor, but I have been focusing on courses related to journalism. This class will be my final scholarly endeavor in this field because I am graduating in May of this year. This course should prove valuable because I enjoy news writing and feel that my writing could improve with some news editing experience. As of yet, I haven’t written any published news articles, but I have written a significant amount of a news and feature stories. I enjoy writing feature stories because they allow you to really get into a particular subject on a deeper level and seem to generate a lot of interest among readers.