Mixx Challange: Get Mixx’s Front Page into “the whole foxhunt”
This post will come out of left field, but it was inspired by Stephen Kings recent interview. He attacked main stream media’s attempts to distract us from real issues while covering frivolous non-news stories. Here’s an excerpt:
Yeah. You know, I just filmed a segment for Nightline, about [the movie version of his novella] The Mist, and one of the things I said to them was, you know, “You guys are just covering — what do they call it — the scream of the peacock, and you’re missing the whole fox hunt.” Like waterboarding [or] where all the money went that we poured into Iraq. It just seems to disappear. And yet you get this coverage of who’s gonna get custody of Britney’s kids? Whether or not Lindsay drank at her twenty-first birthday party, and all this other shit. You know, this morning, the two big stories on CNN are Kanye West’s mother, who died, apparently, after having some plastic surgery. The other big thing that’s going on is whether or not this cop [Drew Peterson] killed his… wife. And meanwhile, you’ve got Pakistan in the midst of a real crisis, where these people have nuclear weapons that we helped them develop. You’ve got a guy in charge, who’s basically declared himself the military strongman and is being supported by the Bush administration, whose raison d’etre for going into Iraq was to spread democracy in the world.
As you can see why this Mixx Challenge is called “the whole foxhunt”. I would like to see the front (popular) page filled with nothing but news. I’m not talking about news such as “Superman’s Sad Fate”, “The MythBusters Answer Your Questions”, or “Memory leaks, Firefox, Flock and Opera”.
I’m talking real bone fide news, the kind of which really and truly informs us of what’s going on in the world today. Unfortunately world news seems to be somewhat depressing, but hiding from the problem doesn’t remove it.
We have been told by sites like digg, reddit, mixx, and slashdot that the editorial power is in our hands. It is, however, are we really using it? Are we being truly revolutionary with our newly given powers?
So what’s the challenge already?
The challenge is to submit and vote up news of the day and have only news you would find in the newspaper, CNN, MSNBC, or radio (only better). Now this may seem like we’re taking a step backwards, but we aren’t trust me. Most of the MSM outlets don’t really fear social news sites (because they usually buy them for whatever purpose) because the content that usually ends up on the front page is in the form of a blogger ranting, someone rehashing information from another site, or someone’s opinion. I’m not saying all the popular submissions are like this, but a large percentage are. Mixx, at least, has more newsworthy items than some other sites.
Some criteria that I’ll lay down are :
- No celebrity
- No top x lists
- Has to be current for that day or the one prior.
- Must be something of consequence (yes I know this is broad).
Examples of what would work would be things like (some of these are old news)
- The Euro gaining favor over the dollar
- China shipping better quality goods to EU and the US ends up with the unsafe goods
- Credit fears still griping the economy
- Hopeful for Mideast peace.
- Crash sparks fiery rampage in France
Ok, we posted stuff and voted it up. Now what?
Now we’re going to need proof. This is where a group effort is going to help out. Once anyone notices that the pages is completely covered in “Prime Choice FDA approve” news take a screen shot. Then either email me at bhill78@gmail.com or post that screen shot over at the MixxingBowl Forum.
What would be nice is to have several screen shots over the course of the day, to show that quality can be maintained and the we the users can be trusted with our own editorial “powers”.
I’ll then post the results in a post here.
So when does this challenge begin?
Whenever everyone’s ready. Keep and eye out of the front page and when you see its met the criteria (albeit loose) screen shot it.
And if all else fails, this is a good way to kill some time and boredom.
** Now everyone form a line before you start bashing me all at once.
*****Edit ******
I just realize that it may be difficult to get a screen shot of an entire page because the front page extends beyond to fold. If anyone has an idea as to how achieve a full page screenshot, please post it in the comments or email me.
*raises hand*
Question: Some techie stuff is VERY important but not understood by Joe Six-pack and thus not considered mainstream media. What about those sorts of submissions?
@EVIL
Thanks for raising your hand first. You got a good point.
I would say that Tech is acceptable as long as its at a level that the average consumer would understand. Nothing like “Ubuntu release” or “Change your Dock on your Mac”. I guess something like “Sony releases new Flat panel TV that promises to be ‘green’”.
I also say that it would have to be a proportiionate percentage of Tech stories. Like 3 to 1 Non-tech to tech. Something like that. And unfortunately Pictures really don’t count as news, but then again since we have a Picture section, I wouldn’t worry about that.
Bring it
i can’t agree with this at all. first of all, then why bother with a “democratic” or “social” site if this is your goal? secondly, one reason digg (et al) ARE popular is because stories about million pound catfish are kinda refreshing and in the middle between Ms. Hilton’s Bush and Mr. Bush@TheHilton(with his rich friends)…you know what i’m talking about?
i’ve always like nerdy, techie, NEW stuff that isn’t in NEWsWeak myself, and it’s nice to MIX in serious stuff with it, even over-the-top stories about guillotines and boxcars.
and yes, Tech stuff is what runs the world…”stuff that matters.” as does politics, and clearly Paul and Kucinich are on the cutting edge of that, so why shouldn’t there be 100s of articles about the two most important politicians in the world right now (oh, except Bin-working-for-the-CIA Ladin, of course!)
there are already sites like NewsTrust.net (which is pretty sweet and a must-check-out) and just so many blogs and newsvine and the MSM sites and the European sites (BBC isn’t so terrible) and so on.
yeah, check out NewsTrust.net it might be exactly what you are looking for, sir or madam that posted this article.
peace =)
y
@yoda
Given a brief look at your profile, one could see why you wouldn’t want to attempt this and that’s cool. You don’t have to participate.
“i’ve always like nerdy, techie, NEW stuff that isn’t in NEWsWeak myself,”
Thats why Mixx has http://www.mixx.com/categories/tech and http://www.mixx.com/categories/science categories. Again, plenty of items to breeze through so you don’t have to look at the “non-democratic” or “non-social” popular page that was described in this post.
In the end, I do believe you missed the point of this post and, once again, that’s ok. Piece of advice though. Please alter or modify your writing style before you argue against something such as this. That helps define and support your credibility. It was definitely difficult to read through the run on sentences and ill-formed statements.
This isn’t a personal attack and don’t take it as such.
What a great idea. Count me in.
You can use this Forefox extension to save the entire page
http://pearlcrescent.com/products/pagesaver/
I use it all the time.