Slate.com, the online magazine started by Microsoft Corp. and now part of the same media conglomorate that owns The Washington Post and Newsweek, now has a news *aggragator called "The Slatest" (a play on words mashing up "Slate" and "latest"). They explain how it works in today's edition.
Here's how I want to use it. Chapter 1 in our textbook, which was already assigned, talks about how local, regional and nationally oriented newspapers in California handled a typical news day when the book was being written. But it came out in 2005, and the world has changed since then. So let's hope Wednesday is a typical news day and compare today's news with what was in the papers five years ago as it was captured in our textbook.
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* Probably you already know this, but an "aggragator" is defined in Wikipedia like this: "In general internet terms, a news aggregation website is a website where headlines are collected, usually manually, by the website owner." Somebody once said there are two types of blogs: (1) linkers; and (2) thinkers. Aggragators are the linkers.
Two other points:
- Journalism, the whole communications industry, in fact, is full of jargon. You'd think professional communicators wouldn't use use words people don't know. But you'd be wrong. When I come across jargon in the class blog, especially at first, I'll star it with an asterisk and define it in a footnote.
- If you're a grizzled veteran of my classes, you already know this, too. But if you're not and if you've had teachers who wouldn't let you use Wikipedia, you should know this: I use Wikipedia all the time, I think it's more reliable than other encyclopedias. I just try to be careful when I use it. Wikipedia is part of that changing world, I guess.
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