Assignment #4

While reading over the online and printed editions of today’s (Friday February 8th) Buffalo News, I saw similarities and differences in the two. While looking at the front page of each there is an article focusing on communications technology. The article was about how members of the military in Iraq are never out of reach and keep close in touch with their computers, through email, cell phones, text messaging, blogs and social-networking sites. In the Sports section, stories about Demetri Kalinin of the Buffalo Sabres missing the Sabres skate with the flu and Jeff Parmer, former Niagara Falls High School basketball player and his troubles with winning in college. On the front of both City and Region pages, there is an article about the historic Hayes Hall clock and how its restoration will soon be completed. There are also Classifieds and Obituaries online as there is in the printed newspaper.
On the online site for The Buffalo News there are breaking news videos and news that just came out that did not when the paper was printed. Online, you can search the archives for past articles or search a topic and see if there is an article about it in that day’s paper. Also, online there is a Buffalo News blog section. These blogs are separated into three groups: Sports, News and Opinion, and Entertainment and Lifestyles. These three categories are also split up into groups that narrow the topics of the blog.
On the online edition, you can search for articles and watch video. Obviously it would be impossible for there to be a search engine and a video player to be available with every printed newspaper, so that is why it would appear online and not in print. The online version does have a section for latest news updates. This would not appear in the print version, because the Buffalo News only prints a morning edition and no longer prints an evening edition. So, any event that happens during the day that would make news headlines wouldn’t make it into the print news until the next day, but with an online version of the news, you can update it whenever news breaks and the readers can be informed right away. Also, the blogs are not available in the print newspaper.
I found that on the online version of the newspaper it seemed that there was a lot more advertisements than there are in the print newspaper. On the front page of the printed newspaper, there isn’t a single advertisement on the page, but when you pull up the front page on the online version, there are seven advertisements throughout the page. However, when you read a print newspaper on the weekend you will find tons of ads for different stores with their sales and products printed right inside. I am not sure why today’s version of the print newspaper didn’t have that many advertisements on it. I would think that more people would read the print newspaper and not the online version, because they are more used to it, so I would think people would want to put ads in the printed version. At the same time, the advertisements online are all links and if you click them will take you directly to the page, so it is easier for readers to access the advertisement.