interactivity

Watch Evansville's courierpress.com site today -- and not just for the likelihood of more severe weather in the southern Ohio Valley, though they get plenty.

No, I refer to a major site redesign; with it, a new user experience architecture. Barring unforeseen delays, it launches today. Update: It went live about 2 p.m. Eastern time.

Ever-industrious Tim Harrower, working on a new edition of one of his textbooks, recently asked me some questions about journalism, online and the intersection of the two. My replies follow. I know he asked others in online media, so I hope maybe some of those folks will share what they said, too -- start of a new meme, perhaps?

On to the Q&A:

Question: Most journalism students are intimidated when professors tell them that, if they want to become reporters, they'll have to write stories, shoot video, narrate slideshows, record podcasts and create Flash graphics. But really, how realistic is that?

Troubling research findings reported by AFP: TV and video games increase teen depression risk.

Key points:

"Time spent engaging with electronic media may replace time that could be spent on social, athletic or intellectual activities that could guard against depression. ... Being exposed to media at night may also disrupt sleep important for emotional and cognitive development."

I'm not one of those people who believes today's young people have been dumbed down or made unproductive by media saturation, or spoiled by common access to privileges we considered unattainable in my middle-class, small-town childhood. Young people today are smarter and more worldly than we were.

Steve Outing cautions that style-over-substance print newspaper redesigns miss the best chance to retain loyal readers from older audiences:

"The key ... is to retain older readers by making the thinner print edition emphasize serious, quality journalism, retaining or expanding your paper's watchdog role in the community. Forget the stuff that's solely geared toward attracting young readers; they're for the most part gone from print.

"Then use the print edition to guide your paper readers to the extra stuff and the goodies that are on the digital side of the business."

I just got off two conference calls with slideshow-style Webinars in two consecutive hours.

In the first one, the meeting started at least five minutes late while participants struggled to get the Webinar slideshows to appear on their screens.

In the second one, the same problem held the meeting up for a couple of minutes. Not so bad. But about halfway into the call, a participant put the conference on hold, meaning the rest of us heard "holding pattern" beeps every 10 seconds or so from that one person's phone line.

This time last week, I complained mightily because I tried to write a blog post in Drupal's browser text entry form and lost it in progress. Drupal 6 did not have any way to save drafts in progress.

This time this week, it does: the Autosave module, just today, got an upgrade for Drupal 6.