Monday, March 1, 2010

Evaluating "Lac La Biche Post.com", Isaac Kaplyuk

I chose to investigate and evaluate the laclabichepost.com, because it is a local paper that I grew up with,and I decided to see how legitimate (or maybe not) their website for the paper is.

Overall Content

The purpose of the web page is to provide the weekly local headlines. Factual information is obviously presented because it is a newspaper site-accuracy is a must.As for products being sold or advertisements, on the site there were none that I could see; in fact, there were just separate tabs labeled 'Advertising' and 'Classifieds' if you wanted to see such things.

The information on the page is incomplete as there are just short blurbs of stories, and you must click the 'Full Story' link to navigate to a separate page for the full story. There is a feature photo on the home page with a full caption, and authors for the blurbs and the individual person who shot the photo are not named on the homepage.

The intended audience are locals of the area or readers of the paper. The site does not state that it targets a special interest group of an kind, and the site isn't for researchers, children, or librarians specifically, but said individuals could most certainly navigate the site.

Compare With Other Resources

Compared with the range of information resources based on this topic within the site, that is, the local happenings of Lac La Biche/Lakeland County, this one is most certainly the best. Other larger papers don't really cover the happenings of these areas, unless a larger, more pertinent event occurs. This site covers small, local events, but also covers hard news stories and other stories with headlines that read 'Bright Fireball Spotted Over Northern Alberta'.

This site is preferable to other resource types because it focuses on the local area readership, and focuses on all happenings, which larger papers and sites wouldn't regularly bother cover-it keeps locals in the know, even if they don't have a paper handy.

Since this a newspaper site, the dates are current, or as current as they can be considering that this is a weekly paper.

This site is about as comprehensive as it gets for such local areas. The site even links out to other local paper sites, providing for even more insight to smaller locals. Aspects of things going on outside of the general locale may not be covered as in depth, or even covered at it all as in the case of larger papers. Further links aren't provided in the stories that I checked out, but as mentioned earlier, links are available to other local paper sites, possibly providing further information therein.

Author

The author/producers of this site are the same people who run the paper. The author of the article is the byline, at the top.

The authority or expertise of the people who run the site are those with, at the very least, a Journalism diploma, so the expertise is there.

If there is any kind of bias present, it's just towards the local area. The stories have a broader connection in some cases, but tie in to the local area to give locals the angle that concerns them.

The site and the paper appear to be owned by a group called Great West Newspapers Limited Partnership.

Check the Links

The criteria that is used to provide links (the links that are given are ones to other local news sites, and other things within the site like Classifieds, Photos, Advertisements, etc;) are either papers that are owned by the same company, or things that are relevant or pertinent to the site and its readers.

I couldn't tell when these links were revised.

The links are comprehensive as they provide everything that you would expect them to-no samples of any kind really to be had here; and, they are mostly just links to other local newsgroups, essentially (found near the top, right hand corner labeled 'Other Publications, accessible anywhere, anytime on the site.)

The links offer possibly more comprehensive coverage if the event that occurred is more thoroughly covered by a different paper if said event happened closer to that specific area. For example, an event could occur in Athabasca that the Lac La Biche Post could cover, but the Athabasca Advocate, Athabasca's local paper, would most certainly cover it more in depth.

The links don't appear to be evaluated in any way, but they shouldn't be as this is a legitimate local newsgroup site.

2 comments:

  1. Half-way through the first sentence a space is needed after the comma (before the word and).
    A space is also needed after the second sentence in the second paragraph.
    I found the fifth paragraph confusing.

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  2. "..,and I decided to see how legitimate (or maybe not) their website for the paper is." -First Paragraph, the wording here seems confusing. Maybe -and I decided to see how legitimate the website for the paper is.

    "The intended audience are locals of the area or readers of the paper."

    The intended audience is the locals of the area..

    "The author of the article is the byline, at the top." -The top of what is not referenced.

    overall well done.

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