A weblog for Pete Ellertsen's mass communications students at Benedictine University Springfield.

Monday, June 05, 2006

USA Today's news portal

Here's a newspaper blog I stumbled across this morning that gives more of a wide-open portal to the day's news than Slate.com's daily roundup of the New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times. It's called On Deadline, and it's put out by USA Today.

Here, for example, is today's roundup of immigration news in On Deadline (with the links stripped):

Border troops arrive, and Yuma yawns


National newscasts and websites are turning to San Luis, Ariz., this morning to cover the start of the National Guard's border work. But Arizona doesn't seem to be as excited this morning. Most media outlets of size in the state are using the Associated Press story from nearby Yuma. How are the major Arizona papers choosing to lead their homepages this morning?

Arizona's top three papers, by circulation:
Arizona Republic: "1 missing, a dozen hurt in boat collision"
Arizona Daily Star: "2 assisted-living homes put on probation"
East Valley Tribune: "D-Backs end 7-3 road trip with sweep of Braves"

And in the Yuma paper:
Yuma Sun: "Stray cats multiplying all over town"

But in some respects, the Sun has been there already. On Saturday, the paper covered the arrival of the Utah National Guard members, who were already planning to do border work as part of "long-standing efforts" with Arizona. "The only thing that has changed is that we are now part of what is being called Operation Jump Start, which is President Bush's call for troops to help with border activities," a Utah Guard spokesman tells the paper. "It's really not a huge deal."

The spokesman says the troops will work at the border for two weeks. A unit commander reports morale is high.
Wonder how Hadrian's Wall, the Maginot Line and the Great Wall of China were covered back in the day?

Slate, by way of contrast, focused in its roundup of "today's papers," on international relations, Iraq and the Geneva Convetions. It's still a good roundup of the national newspapers but I think I like the way USA Today (which often has front-page stories included in the Slate roundup) casts its net a little wider.

About Me

Springfield (Ill.), United States
I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.