Category: Internet and web

Paper covers Va. Tech shootings “blog-style”; Facebook abuzz

Editor and Publisher‘s website discusses the Roanoke Times‘ “blog-style” coverage of today’s Virginia Tech shootings. As “the closest daily paper to the Virginia Tech campus,” Editor and Publisher reports, the Times “has been covering the shooting … on its Web site with updates to a blog-style story, with the first posted at 10:17 a.m.

“The Roanoke paper also provided photographs that the Associated Press moved nationally. One, showing police carrying injured students out of a building, appeared on the top of The New York Times site early this afternoon.”

Update: Students respond to Virginia Tech shootings on Facebook.

A Facebook group apparently unrelated to the shootings called “I Survived VA Tech 2006-2007” has somber new meaning. The group lists 19 incidents the school has endured over the past year, including the August 2006 capture of William Morva, an escaped inmate who was accused of killing a police offer and a security guard and was at large in the campus area. That incident prompted the shutdown and evacuation of Virginia Tech, according to roanoke.com.

A group receiving numerous wall posts is “William Morva Should Get the Chair.” Created by a Virginia Tech student, the group’s description, – “Although we did get to miss some classes he sucks” – is drawing ire from some people.

Hat tip: Mindy.

The web: whose job is it?

The latest post from Eric Hodgson of Fuzzy Content poses that nagging question about the web that we’ve all heard or asked many, many times:

Whose job is the web, anyway?

For many university staffers, the answer is, “Not mine.”

Writes Hodgson: “In helping colleges understand how a Web site should be managed day-in and day-out, I am sometimes surprised at how closely Web content is held by a select few. It is also surprising how many departments want nothing to do with keeping their site up to snuff for visitors.”

For those who say, “The web is not my job,” Hodgson responds:

The Web is everyone’s job, since it affects every department. If you are in the Biology department, and that site is out of date, you need to either change the content or alert the proper channels. You may not be an official “content author”, but if you find a mistake, get it fixed.

More good stuff over there.