There is no doubt that The Huffington Post has become one of the most influential political blogs in the World. It has, in the almost four years of its existence, become the 89th most visited website in the US. For a private blog to reach that feat in a market such as the US is very admirable. The Hufpost was able to do so by following a few measures to enhance its standing and offer an alternative to the mainstream media. Although most of the contributors to the site do so free of charge, that does not lessen from its credibility. With more funding being reported, the Hufpost is becoming more able to hire its own reports and work on the site's interface to improve usability and reader interaction. In addition, a large percentage of the material is from reputable news sources, such as the NYT, WSJ, and other more prominent source.Hufpost's ascent to its current position was a testament to people's changing preferences when it comes to reporting news. The same could be said about Jordan. In the Jordanian media market the picture is changing as well. More grassroots websites are becoming popular as they deviate from the decades long status quo of tight government control over what gets reported and which opinions are given sound waves. The below graph, from Alexa, shows how web-only, government disaffiliated news sources are surging in the popularity and are close to overcome more traditional Jordanian news outlets:
the graph shows the growth (slope of the drawn line) in rank of two web-only Jordanian news sites is outpacing that of older, more established newspapers.In a private, community fueled website the issue of monitoring content is very crucial. Readers would basically say anything they wish without any repercussions. As well as writers, who are free to report about subjects they deem important. At the same time, allowing contributors to explore new areas of reporting and have initiative when it comes to investigative journalism.
What ammonnews could do to enrich its content and build a better reputation is to rely more on the community of readers it was able to amass to monitor content and comments. For the former, a Digg style mechanism could be employed to let readers make worthy news stories become more prominent on the sites home page. This way the site's editors are able to focus on what readers are looking for and what is more important to them. At the same time, readers can vote for comments to "bury" the offensive ones containing fowl language. Fowl language should be the only reason a comment is buried/deleted. If the silent majority is in fact ammon's concern, their voice must be heard regardless of what they have to say.
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4 comments:
Ammon is just a tool. I don't wish them any success.
Well, there better than many official news website, and they do publish news that you won't see on an official paper
The fundamental difference is 'open attitude'. HuffPo get that, Ammon don't. The two are worlds apart in vision, philosophy and in the way they want to engage people.
When conceived, HuffPo was not about wanting to shout or shun, it was not about self promotion, nor about gathering friends with niceties on the site. It was about providing a solid alternative to the media already out there. It was not about what Arianna Huffington wanted to say, but rather what the many had to say, and the many were looking for.
At HuffPo you can feel the sincerity in wanting to keep trying to make the product better, work for people. At Ammon, I've never felt any sincerity, unfortunately.
Mohanned, Ammon isn't perfect. I wish you could elaborate.
Tha2ir,
I agree. They're starting something that has a great potential.
Nadine,
I totally agree. Ammon still subscribeس to the Ass Kissing machine we've grown old knowing. But, as they still a new player in the Jordanian media field, they can still modify their way of carrying their mission into truly projecting their moto of "صوت الاغلبية الصامتة"
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