Team Members:
Overview:
Our team has decided to evaluate the following national news websites: CNN, Fox News, The Huffington Post, USA Today, Yahoo! News, ABC News, Newsweek, NBC News, NPR, CBS News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, U.S. News, Reuters, The Associated Press, BBC World News, Wired, MarketWatch, Washington News, and World News. This consensus was reached after it was apparent that each group member regularly visits news sites to stay informed.
Each member will suggest five Web sites for evaluation, comprising a list of 20, which will be scrutinized by each person for positive and negative features. To evaluate the sites the group has decided to assign grades ranging from 1-10 (1 being the lowest grade and 10 the highest). Moreover, there are five categories (usability, design, content, currency and interactivity) for each grade. For example, according to an average of the group's grading, ABC News received a "10" for "Usability"; an "8" for "Design"; a "10" for "Content"; an "8.75" for "Currency"; and, a "9.75" for "Interactivity." So, the overall grade was 46.5/50, or an A. An individual also adds up each grade to arrive at a final grade; what's more, each member's evaluations were averaged to arrive at an overall group grade for each of the sites. Our grading scale was 40-50 = A; 30-40 = B; 20-30 = C; 10-20 = D; 0-10 = F.
Below each member's chart can be found along with a chart that includes an average of the group's grading. Here are a few interesting statistics regarding the group's findings:
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Joy Robinson
Class: Wed
6–9:15pm, McGaw 142 |
National News Sites |
I really like how you broke out the grading critera into five sections: Usability, Design, Content, Currency, & Interactivity and how you gave each site a letter grade. That is an easy, off the cuff way to determine legitimacy and effectiveness of a site. My one question is how did you determine what number on a scale form 1 to 10 to give each site in each category? Did you have specific criteria that each site should fulfill, or was it subjective? It looks really pulled together - good job!
I really liked the group grading chart and how you showed the averages of all 20 sites. We thought about doing that but didn't know if it was going to be too overwhelming to review but you did an awesome job of laying it out in a nice format and only showing the average rankings in each category. The categories you chose were also ideal for evaluating a "news" site. Good job!
As somebody who reads a lot of news on the internet, I'd agree with your choices for best and worst. The AP is a news organization that feeds to media outlets, but their site design wasn't very engaging and didn't make me want to surf through their stories. CBS, on the other hand, lives up to the reputation it earned for quality TV news with a really dynamic website.
Agreed that the NY Times site could be better, but I guess I'm so used to it that it doesn't even phase me anymore. It is a bit of a mess, but I somehow seem to always find what I'm looking for. CBS does have a nice simple site, but aesthetically I find completely uninspiring. Which is fitting, I guess, as it reflects the current state of network television news.
Nice job! I also read a lot of various news sites, and have some favorites which align with some of your top choices. I think your categories for assessment make a lot of sense -- specifically the "Currency" component (who wants outdated news?). I also think "Interactivity" is a great scale to gauge the importance of convergence from traditional news sources (print and broadcast) to an online environment -- keeps the new outlets competitive amongst each other in order to offer the most comprehensive content and coverage.
Thanks for all of the feedback! In response to Rachel's question, our grading on a scale of 1 to 10 was subjective to each group member. In the grading process, I kept in mind that a 9-10 was an A, 7-8 B, etc.
What a great category to look at, the news sites are so plentiful and have such importance as a major, if not only source of news for so many now. Specifically, the criteria you used I thought were particularly important to a news site, especially Inactivity. It got me thinking of how I would rank each of the criteria you used as the most and least important criteria of a news site. Would we be willing to be more lax with some criteria if others were outstanding?
The rating scale on a range of 1-10 gave you a lot of wiggle room in your analysis. I think a range that was less involved might have made your task easier. Lastly, I might have liked to have seen a chart of your results, instead of a table. Graphically, this would have been much easier to see just how the scores between the sites ranked. Good job..