Week 5: Apr 20, 2009 to Apr 24, 2009

This week I made the changes to the ads for the Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) and International Press Institute (IPJ), following Pat Smith and Brian Schraum’s suggestions. I also finished the changes for the other 3 ads for the Committee of Concerned Journalists (CCJ), International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), and Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
With all the ads, I created a hyperlink for the Web sites and a small triangle which looks like a play button, so that the readers are tempted to click at it and be taken to other Web sites.




For the RSF ad, I added the bullet points for the explanation of their mission. All the bullet points would lead the eye to the triangle, that is the play button sign.


With the CPJ’s ad, I made the triangle red, the same color as the fire of the torch on the logo. This made the two stand out of the black and white of the rest of the ad.


With the IFJ’s ad I changed the colors of the ad to make the color contrasts work better. I also used the name of one of its campaigns “Stand up for Journalism” as its explanation.



I did a video with Jane Kellogg, covering our editor Stuart H. Loory’s lecture. When I shot his answering the audience, he moved around, so I decided to take the camera off the tripod. This explained why the footage was not as still as it could have been.

While Kellogg was a magazine student and said herself that she hardly had any video experience, I learned from her the importance of perspectives in telling a story. When we edited the part in which Loory mentioned that the bloggers should have the right to say what they wanted, even when they might make it up, I intended to leave it at that. But Kellogg said: “I wanted to include his shrug” after he said that. That shrug escaped my notice. So while I was too attentive to what was said, she paid more attention than me to what was seen. And that’s very important with videos.

As for my research on the map for World Watch, I tried to find a way to embed the Google map on Global Journalist’s Web site. To do this, I first tried embedding it on my Web site but got into trouble with the coding. The Web site gave this notice: “The Google Maps API key used on this web site was registered for a different web site”. I will ask my IT trainers about this.
RESEARCH: I finished the set of questions that I wanted to use for the layouts and send them over to my committee chair for his opinions.
Here is how my questions looked.
There will be in total 50 questions for the survey.
1/Are you male/female?
2/How many hours do you spend reading online news a week?
These questions are for each of the six websites
For the following questions, there will be a 5 point scale, 1 for “Totally agree” and 5 for” Totally Disagree”
1/ Do you find the Web site credible?
2/ Do you find the Web site competent?
3/Do you find the Web site trustworthy?
4/Do you find the Web site annoying?
5/ Do you find the ad intrusive?
6/ Do you find the ad irritating?
7/ Do you find the ad enjoyable?
8/Do you find the ad pleasant?
Professor Daryl Moen pointed out that the questions needed to be structured in a way to measure the different degrees of audience’s reaction rather than just to get them to answer Yes or No. I will also need to work on the layouts to make them more realistic and focused on one Web site layout with three ad positions for two different ads. This will help me to control better other factors and just focus on measuring how people will react to the ads when the content is changed and the placements are changed.