Knowledge Organization System #1 I Chose to Review the Hindu & The
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Knowledge Organization System #1 I chose to review The Hindu & The Intercept. In contrasting these two, the obvious differences were pronounced fairly quickly. The Hindu is the considerably larger operation, delivering traditionally balanced news from India daily. It has all of the large-scale printing and research facilities one might expect from a news enterprise, employing well over a thousand people. According to the Audit Bureau of circulations, it’s the second most circulated English-language daily newspaper in India with approximately 1.6 million readers. So in general, it’s dealing with a lot more data. The Intercept on the other hand, is much smaller and more specific in its journalism, claiming: “Our longer-term mission is to provide aggressive and independent adversarial journalism across a wide range of issues, from secrecy, criminal and civil justice abuses and civil liberties violations to media conduct, societal inequality and all forms of financial and political corruption.” I didn’t necessarily have a reason for choosing these two particular publications and hadn’t been exposed to either prior to beginning the assignment. I’ll start by looking at each publication individually, beginning with The Intercept. I wasn’t aware that Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras founded the Intercept, but I was familiar with the documentary “Citizenfour”, which chronicles the Edward Snowden revelations from an amazingly intimate perspective. Despite seeing the film, I wasn’t aware of the Intercept’s existence. The film helped reveal the truth about what kinds of surveillance the average American citizen is subjected to by the NSA. The Intercept is owned by First Look Media (first launched in 2013); a news organization founded by philanthropist Pierre Omidyar, who also founded eBay. Poitras has since left the editorial staff, but now produces documentaries for another firm owned by First Look. First Look operates as both a studio and digital media company. The only other publication on First Look’s website seems to be “The Nib”, which mainly features political cartoons, or essays in comic format. The Intercept itself employs somewhere around 42 people. This sort of independent media organization interests me, but according to an ex-reporter for The Intercept, First Look suffers from a lack of proper organization, where the managerial staff has been seen as incompetent in the past. When The Intercept’s homepage is first loaded, a jumbo image linking to the top story fills the entire screen, with the Headline in the bottom left corner and the author’s name right underneath the headline. The feature story is subject to change multiple times a day, making more of a “latest” story rather than a “top” story. On the top left of the image is the Intercept’s logo and, a side menu icon that expands when clicked. As I opened the menu, the top section presents a search bar and options to change languages from English to Portuguese. The actual menu items include “Glenn Greenwald”, “Unofficial sources”, “Robert Mackey”, “Intercepted podcast”, “Features”, “Documents”, and “About & Contacts”. At the bottom of the pop-out side menu appears to be information typically found in the footer: Social media widgets, copyright, terms of use, privacy, and a sitemap. So far, the site's minimalism in design feels effective and tasteful. It feels almost impossible to feel lost because the range of news is limited. I wanted to point out what a unique feature the “Documents” section was. Here, they publicly provide the raw documents that inform some of their stories, so readers can see the proof for themselves. This feature has been used since The Intercept’s conception, as they were one of the first sites to host Snowden’s leaked NSA documents. Scrolling down past the main story’s jumbo image, I’m presented with a link for federal employees to leak information to the Intercept. It’s a detailed guide on how to properly encrypt leaks to share if you see anything that you might consider to be illegal or immoral with the incoming administration’s handling of power. It also includes safety precautions at the bottom of the guide. Judging from The Intercept’s origins, this feature makes perfect sense. I would assume that this is where some the stories categorized under “Unofficial sources” are originated. As I scroll down, There are links to their top stories represented by large images and a headline to the right of them. The only other remaining and distinctive sections (aside from links to more stories) are for subscribing to their newsletter and a link to their podcast called “Intercepted” with Jeremy Scahill. After that, it’s an endless scrolling through history of the site’s past feed, all dealing with issues I rarely see covered in mainstream media, such as surveillance, cyber security, and leaks from within the American government. Overall, they’re keeping it all quite simple as far as Information organization goes. I’ll take a look at a story with the headline: “Observable Reality 1, Trump White House 0” authored by Robert Mackey. Mackey is a senior writer for The Intercept and has had broad experience in American and International journalism, including The New York Times and The Lede, a breaking-news blog. Every biography page on The Intercept features an email to reach the author, as well as SecureDrop links (A method of sharing data anonymously) and PGP public keys for encrypted correspondence. Being a social media specialist, Mackey provides several embedded videos and complimentary tweets throughout his article. This story addresses Trump’s aide Kellyanne Conway suggesting that White House press secretary Sean Spicer presented “alternative facts” during his first press briefing. It appears Mackey’s goal is to reveal how ludicrous Conway and Spicer’s comments actually were, which wasn’t exactly difficult due to the overwhelming evidence proving his point. Now looking at the The Hindu: The Hindu is based in Chennai and started in 1878 as a weekly newspaper, but began publishing daily in 1889. It originated from a small politically charged group composed of 4 law students and 2 teachers. Their reason for initial publishing was allegedly to combat propaganda against a particular candidate running for judgeship for the Madras High Court. In 1995, they were the first Indian newspaper to start a website as another medium for delivering their news. As the page is loaded, one of the first things you will see is their humbly-sized logo that features an impressive crest showing the “Kamadhenu” on the left, which suggests auspiciousness; the Elephant on the right, which represents strength and power; and the lotus (purity and independence). In between the Kamadhenu and the elephant is a conch shell that is meant to represent “the voice of the people”. Below the crest is the today’s date and a link to “today’s paper”. After the Navigation bar, every section of the page has a very similar layout, more or less. Some Sections are bigger or smaller than others depending on the topic. Most of these topics have their own pages that can be reached from the navigation bar or navigation menu, so actually scrolling down this display feels a bit like scanning an actual newspaper. This is the second version of their website since it’s inception in ‘95. The site’s design was actually done by Mario Garcia Jr., of Garcia Media from Tampa, Florida, USA., and the web publishing system is from Escenic A/S, Norway. The implementation was done in-house. The Hindu is generally considered to be left-leaning, but it doesn’t necessarily show. While many of their top stories were international, it was very intriguing to scope out the current affairs of India. The headlines appear to be straightforward enough, but there are so many of them coming from different sources that it would be tough to generalize a typical “style” for The Hindu. I’m going to look at a top story for starters. I chose a story called “69% of political funds was from unknown sources” authored by Devesh K. Pandey. Pandey’s biographical page only provided an email to reach him. The caption reads: “Association for Democratic Reforms says the income of national parties from unknown sources increased by 313%”. This piece is analyzing national and region income for “political parties”. It’s a short, data-driven story that reads more like a financial report. Maybe not quite representative of The Hindu’s journalistic style. Another piece I looked at was entitled: “The voice of Modi’s foreign policy” by Suhasini Haidar. The caption reads “Jaishankar’s biggest success is the India-U.S. relationship that has gone from being one of a number of India’s strategic partnerships to its most important one”. This appears to highlight the importance to India of the U.S. withdrawing from the U.N., giving China a strategical opportunity. Therefore, they are extending term rules concerning India’s foreign secretary. Still delivered in a neutral tone overall. I’m realizing that there are several ways to navigate the Hindu and find many of the same stories in different ways. Although the mapping seems complicated, every article is properly organized with appropriate headings and sub-headings. I still have to wonder about the permutations of In conclusion, the sheer amount of information on The Hindu compared to The Intercept was outstanding. On the Intercept, I felt like could actually read all of their current stories in one sitting, while on The Hindu’s site, the stream of headlines felt endless and almost overwhelming. The reporting style between the two are vastly different, with The Intercept delivering their news with a more aggressive and dramatic tone, and The Hindu appearing more flat, or matter-of-fact about their delivery.