Online Reporting, Research & Writing

Example of Curation

Buzzfeed’s news articles have many links throughout their articles, creating smooth curations along with hectic curations. The website is more entertainment based, so writers have to adapt to this form of delivering news.

Jane Lytvynenko’s article “Here Are The Hoaxes And Conspiracies Still Going Around About The Parkland Students” gives information about the negativity that the public has placed around these people. This includes fake Tweets and photoshopped images.

There are not only links in Lytvynenko’s article, but there are images from social media that correspond to these links. This makes it easier for the audience to follow along with stories without having to click away from their article.

The crossing between images and curation can effect the audience in a negative way. The audience might only pay attention to the massive images instead of reading the actual article that is tagged along with them.

Here’s a summary of my social media and aggregation accounts

I’ve been posting online and aggregating for a long time, so I do have quite a few “aggregation sources” and other links about myself. The one place where you can find me is my own website, NancyHanus.com.

But my Twitter Feed (@nhanus) and my Instagram account have also been around for more than 10 years. I use YouTube and Vimeo to upload video, and SoundCloud for audio, although must of the things I’ve uploaded have been on publication sites, so what you’ll find on my personal profiles are videos of my family (mostly my daughter doing gymnastics!)

One YouTube channel you might find interesting, though, is this one called JournalismVideo, which I created for my MSU journalism classes and study abroad trips in 2010-2011. I had actually forgotten all about it until I dug it up for this blog. If any of you want to upload a video for this class on this site, let me know!

A journalism video account on YouTube for student videos.

I use Nuzzel for aggregation, as well as Feedly and Google Alerts. Feedly has been ticking me off a bit lately because the service keeps trying to upgrade me — and really restricts what I can do and have access for free. As a result I don’t use it much anymore. I love Tweetdeck for aggregating tweets and seeing Twitter lists.

There are a couple of really cool sites that allow you to aggregate in fun ways, such as StumbleUpon, which let’s you “stumble” into really cool stories based on your interests. I suggest you give it a try! I also like Flipboard, which I use on my iPhone and iPad.

For my professional profile, I use LinkedIn. I also have a profile at Muckrack.com. I have a Google+ account, but there’s not much there. It’s a good idea to have one because it gives you good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) but it’s just not something I keep up with.

Ron French’s article on Betsy Devos

Ron French created a very detailed curation about Betsy Devos’s interview on 60 Minutes. He uses multiple sources to back up the evidence he found about Michigan schools. His efforts and research make it be known that Michigan schools need improvement.

Just a few months before, Bridge MI released an article on January 28 titled “Michigan’s K-12 performance dropping at an alarming rate.” This article by Ted Roelofs uses statistics from the U.S. Census and other databases to provide access to the evidence used.

An outside source that French used is Brookings. This website uses hyperlinks in a different way. Brookings cite their evidence at the end of each sentence instead of including it directly in the article. This may be confusing to first time users and they may not want extended information.

The way that French introduces his evidence is by continuing his sentences as if the hyperlink was not there. However, the hyperlinks explain exactly what one should expect to find when clicking.

Ron French on Betsy DeVos interview

Recently Ron French curated a story for bridemi.com about the 60 minutes interview with Betsy DeVos over the state of Michigan schools, as well as gun control, and her bad reputation. The interview was… well… it wasn’t good, it was in fact pretty bad. DeVos stumbled through almost every question that was asked and really showed how much she didn’t know about Michigan schools.

What was good was the way Ron curated the story using links to previous Bridge articles to let readers get extra information on the story that they might not know. A good article he links to is Michigan’s K-12 performance, but many other links in the article are used.

Other than links directly in the article to relevant stories on Bridge there are also links in between the breaks to sources that were used to create the article. A good link for those who are looking to find out more about their school districts is Stanford University’s district comparison chart.

Ron French shines light on what Besty DeVos doesn’t know

In a “60 minute” interview with Besty DeVos, Ron French shines light on many questions that should have easily been answered by the current United States secretary of education. Ron also shines light on the lack of awareness that Besty DeVos has toward her job description and the school educational system in this live clip.

Betsy DeVos currently sits as the United States secretary of education and yet, she didn’t know and couldn’t answers fundamental questions like, how poorly the schools are doing academically and financially overall and or steps to take to bring solutions.(free Goggle art)

Ron French does a good job by providing meaningful counteracting solutions to help solve the rapidly growing problems that the educational system is currently faced with in Michigan.

Ron French, gives four different examples to move Michigan toward new ways that are beneficial to Michigan’s school, teachers and students while also highlighting important facts that are currently taking place and needing to be addressed. This story was covered in a way that allows the people to see who they elected or didn’t, and also how well they are really doing at the job they were selected for.

Other additional information is added below to bring more awareness to some of Michigan’s pending issues and solutions.

Michigan’s riding high. But a downturn is coming and the safety net is frayed.

Got 6 minutes? Highlights of a dozen studies on Michigan schools.