ShortFormBlog | aol news

After the Tennessee flooding in may, the mainstream media was criticized. Why? Because they underplayed a major tragedy that affected a lot of people – but people in a smaller state not on the East or West Coast. So, with that in mind, here’s a quick comparison of the coverage the dam breakage in Iowa has been getting so far. As of 8:29 p.m. EST, it’s not on the Reuters or BBC front pages at all. The New York Times only just put it up moments ago, and they’ve buried it. How about other sites?

MSNBC: Main imageIt’s the lead story at MSNBC, complete with a very dramatic photo to top it all off – pretty much the kind of play you’d expect.
CNN: Lead story (Breaking news)CNN appears to be pulling out all the stops for this story, asking for reader reaction to go with the photos on the site.

Washington Post: Lead imageIt seems like it might initially easy to miss, but the story, complete with dramatic photos, is on the front of the site.
Google News: Lead itemGoogle’s algorithms put it right up top, with the oil spill and the Afghanistan story. Earlier today, the German festival stampede was up top.

AOL News: Secondary leadThe site we occasionally freelance for chose to go with stampede at the German festival instead of the flooding as lead, though it’s up there.
Fox News: Secondary leadFox News had it on their front page, but it was below the captured NATO soldiers story and tied to other rain-related stories.

Posted by Ernie Smith • 1 Comment • Permalink

We spent a friggin’ month working on this. We sliced, diced and brought amazing context to Congressional expenditures (specifically the House – not the Senate, unfortunately), and now we’re happy to show you our multitude of hard work (and then some) for AOL News. How much did Congress spend on bottled water? And how much did they spend on Macs vs. PCs? Oh, and who buys more copies of The New York Times? We know the answers to all three. Thanks to the Sunlight Foundation for making this doable. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

Thirteen years ago, Microsoft gave Apple a big loan. Since then, Steve Jobs has become a bit of a graybeard but he’s also turned Apple into a company that’s now bigger than Microsoft. Literally. It just happened yesterday. How? Check out our AOL News article. It explains everything. Essentially, Apple’s market capitalization is based on their future potential. Microsoft’s is based on their continuing huge profits. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

Back in February, we gave Bieber a deeper analysis than he’s probably ever gotten at any other point in his career. Now, we’ve done it again – all-updated-like – for AOL News. Here’s a fun fact: Our boy the Bieb is responsible for approximately 23 million tweets over the last six months, which sounds like a lot until you consider it’s out of nearly 8 billion. Still though. It’s a freaking lot. OK, we need to take a shower. We know way too much about the teen heartthrob. We might be mistaken as a fan. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

Did some SEC employees have too much time on their hands? Last week, a lot of the buzz on the ‘net was around revelations that SEC staffers were caught looking at porn. But it’s not as bad as it looks. According to a study we found, 28 percent of people at your average cubicle farm (like this one) look at porn at work (we know, right?!). An internal investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission nailed around one percent of their employees. And we think we know why they were so bored. Read our latest AOL News article for some insight. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been hanging out with AOL News/Sphere. Cool guys. Anyway, this morning we posted a breakdown of the State of the Union. We’ll be working on more stuff like this in the future – we’ll keep you posted. Thanks for taking a stray kitten in, guys. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink

24 Jul 2010 19:57