The New York Times Home Page

For the last two months, this blog has received daily RSS feeds from The New York Times, linking mainly to their home page and latest news stories.

Having viewed and skimmed through their home page on a weekly if not daily basis, I have gathered that they follow some of the key concepts that define journalism.  Indeed, the home page displays fairness, attribution, accuracy, relevance, as well as newness.

One of the main factors found in journalism is fairness, which includes reporting both sides of the story and remaining unbiased throughout the process.  Until the last day in which the election results finally came in, the NY Times has done a good job of posting stories on both presidential candidates and in reporting both the good and the ugly of each candidate.  The home page constantly updated their main photograph, primarily switching between Obama and McCain.

Another important factor to consider is attribution, in which not only the facts are reported, but also the source of these facts and where they came from.  The NY Times for instance, always lists the author's by line at the beginning of each story, and concludes with the names of the individuals that contributed to the overall story.

Accuracy goes hand in hand with attribution in the sense that the facts that were indeed attained are in fact accurate.  From what I have read most of the posted articles are indeed accurate, but more importantly, when there has been a mistake, they make it their priority to update the story with a corrected version.  

Relevance, was in fact the keyword for the topics that were chosen to compliment the Presidential Election.  And while the home page was centered around Obama vs. McCain, they made sure to squeeze in some other international news breaking stories throughout the day.

Finally, newness is what ensures that the reader keeps coming back to visit the home page. When there is a subject of interest, the reader expects to be updated throughout the day with any new information, wether it's a new photograph, the addition of some multimedia package or simply a new headline.  if there is nothing new, then the reader will look elsewhere on the world wide web.  Just today, as the NY Times covered the Obama visit to the White House, a new photograph was up every time I went on the home page.