Assignment: News Blog Review

"Your first assignment is to read an established news blog for at least three days. You will then post a review of this blog on your own personal class blog before midnight on Saturday, January 31."

The New Yorker News Desk is a blog collectively updated by various New Yorker staff persons. Over a three-day period (Tuesday, January 27 - Thursday, January 29), the main writers seemed to be Avi Zenilman (8 posts) and Amy Davidson (4 posts), with Elizabeth Kolbert and Michael Schulman each contributing one post.

At the start of each day, a writer (usually Zenilman) posts a summary of new news stories, labeled under the Skimming tag. These posts bring no new information to the table. Rather, they act as a summary of important events from the past day, linking the reader to other news websites or blogs (New York Times, New York Post, Politico, etc.). Oftentimes, the writer will provide links to several pieces that hold relevancy to the same topic.

For instance, on the morning of the 29th, Zenilman posted a link to this story reporting a possible end to mail delivery on Saturday, then to this opinion piece about shortening the work week. These two pieces are entirely relevant to each other, but they would not likely be read by an internet user without the guidance of such a post. As such, in these Skimming posts, even though the writer isn't reporting anything new, he or she is pointing out potentially new connections between multiple stories. Additionally, these succinct daily summaries of the news may be useful to someone without time to seek out the news from its original sources.

Posts labeled with Close Read also consist of news summary, but tend to focus less on important current events and more on soft news or, at least, less pressing hard news. The Close Read posted on January 27, for instance, discusses topics ranging from non-Guantanamo US-run foreign prisons to this year's Coca-Cola Super Bowl advertisement.

While much of the blog consists of news summary, the writers do bring some new material to the table. On January 29, Zenilman created a post in which she discusses Larissa MacFarquhar's article about Caroline Kennedy that appeared in the February 2 issue of The New Yorker magazine. The post acts somewhat as a follow-up to the article, as Zenilman posts a clip from the documentary Taking on the Kennedys (which MacFarquhar had referenced) before presenting a short question-and-answer with MacFarquhar.

The blog's appearance conforms to that of The New Yorker's website, which itself mimics the magazine. The links on the left-hand column are topped with category names written in the iconic Irvin typeface, while all text is a classic black on a white background. The blog's understated style maintains a classy, sophisticated cool, just as the parent publication does.

(It would appear that this blog is relatively new. When one clicks on archive, the oldest viewable post is from Monday, January 26. While I've been reading various other New Yorker blogs for quite some time, I only looked for and began reading the News Desk on, what do you know, Monday, January 26. Coincidence? I've emailed The New Yorker to find out.)