Wordleing Philly Journalism
Posted by chanders on July 18, 2008
Since I’ve been in Philadelphia studying journalism, one of the most fascinating things to watch has been the three different newsroom cultures. Philadelphia’s pretty unusual insofar as it has three media properties– The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com– all owned by the same company, but all really really different.
As soon as Jeff Jarvis turned me on to Wordle, I knew I had to give it a try. I’m going to spend copious amounts of ink and time over the next year turning this all into a book — but I don’t know if I could say anything better than I can with these three little word clouds. Here are the three homepages at about 10am this morning.
The Philadelphia Inquirer. The broadsheet. The paper of record. Very Serious. News.
The Philadelphia Daily News. The tabloid. The “people’s paper.” News … but sports, too. And the Eagles (and it’s July!!)
Philly.com. The redesigned website. Of the web (it’s trying to be). Think fast — what’s missing? (A: News). What’s there instead? (A: Philadelphia). Tagline — “anything and everything Philly.”
On the horizon — newsroom integration. It’s limited, for now, to photos and the copy desk … It makes sense in a lot of ways, and times are tough for newspapers.
But, it would would be a shame to do this one day and have all these little word clouds look the same.
