Sunday, February 25, 2007

The New York Times' Screens blog features several different videos from YouTube, the popular free online video blogging web site. In last Wednesday's blog for example, Virginia Heffernan (the author of Screens), discusses Hillary Rodham Clinton's online video blogging.
The site is relatively simple, it's a part of the New York Times web site under the Arts section. It has a white background with visible and clear black font. The author occasionally plays around with font shape and style but she doesn't stray too far from the norm. the simplicity and clarity of the web site is understandable due to the fact that there is a need for it to appeal to a wide range of readers, I can't begin to imagine how many people read the New York Times and visit the web site each day. If it was a more specific blog site with a smaller audience with a certain focal point, the author would have more room to experiment and play around with it. In addition, the subject matter is not all that colorful or out there. The most recent blog was not interesting to me in the least bit. That is mostly because I did not know who Rick Rubin and Ray Stevens are, and she fails to provide any background information or explanation as to the subject matter at hand. She seems to be running on the assumption that her readers will know what she's talking about, and maybe her audience will, I don't know what kind of people read her blogs. She does have some interesting YouTube videos on the blog site from time to time. I found the blog about Hillary Clinton very interesting.
She does, however, incorporate a lot of Videos and pictures in her writings, thereby taking full advantage of the things that the new age of internet has allowed writers to do, and she has an appealing wit and edge to her writing.

1 comment:

jacky martinez said...

We both noticed the various video clips that there are from You Tube and that there isn't much color on the blog. I agree with you on that the blog is not out there either and that's it's fairly simple. I think you were more specific on what the blog was about because you talked about some posts. I focused more on the conventions of the blog. I like how you incorporated some information about posts and made commentary on the Hillary Clinton video because it gave the reader an idea of what kind of posts you can find on the New York Times blog. This was something I did'nt talk about at all. Something that I learned from your post, which I had no clue on, is that the author's name is Virginia Heffnan.