New York Times coverage of Obama's speech - a different reporting form

• The New York Times used the tools of the web to bring the story of Barack Obama's speech to Congress last week in a different and innovative way.

The web offers journalists many opportunities to report on events in ways that we never could have done with another medium. Witness the New York Times coverage of President Barack Obama's speech to Congress last week.

The Times had a straight news story on it, certainly, with all of the accompanying reactions and standard forms that print news stories are supposed to take.

But reporters and editors put together information about the speech in an innovative way that shows what can be done when a bit of creativity and imaginable are combined with the tools that the web gives to good editors and reporters. The screen shot to the right shows how the Times combined:

• a video of the speech;
  
  
• a marked timeline of the video so users could select a particular part of the speech if they wanted to;
  
  
• a transcript of the speech so readers could follow along the video or simply read it without the video;
  
  
• commentary and information from the reporters and editors about each part of the speech.

This package undoubtedly took some fancy coding to set it up correctly and some testing to make sure that it worked. No news organization could invest this kind of time and effort in anything less than a major story.

But here is an alternative to the straight narrative, and it is impressive.

Congratulations, President Barack Obama

A remarkable feat by a remarkable man who will take the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009.

An author and college professor, he is now at the pinnacle of political power.

We join with the world in wishing him well.

And congratulations to the United States of America.

Barack Obama: America's 'Professor in Chief'

Richard Monastersky, a senior writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education, has an article in a recent edition of the publication pointing out a number of things about the election of Barack Obama and Joe Biden with regard to higher education.

• Obama is a former professor. He taught at the University of Chicago Law School for 12 years.
  
  
• Michelle Obama worked in the administration of the University of Chicago.
  
  
• Joe Biden has been an adjunct professor at the Widener University School of Law for 17 years.
  
  
• Jill Biden is an English instructor at Delaware Technical and Community College's Stanton-Wilmington campus.

The article then quotes a number of academicians about Obama's professorial and deliberative style. One drew the comparison between him and Bill Clinton, another ex-law prof:

But Mr. Obama must avoid the temptation to overdose on deliberation, says Ms. Hoff. (Joan Hoff, a research professor of history at Montana State University at Bozeman.) The nation witnessed the hazards of that tendency during the presidency of Bill Clinton, another former law professor. "Clinton would talk everything to death and not come to a decision," she says, particularly with regard to delayed decisions about Kosovo, Bosnia, and Rwanda.

And then there was the ultimate academician, Woodrow Wilson.

The article is titled "America Elects a Professor in Chief."

How open will the Obama administration be?

National Public Radio had a story this morning speculating on how open the new Barack Obama administration will be. The story quotes former University of Alabama student (and friend) Christi Parsons, who covered the state legislature in Springfield for the Chicago Tribune when Obama was a state senator.

The gist of the story is that when he was in Springfield, Obama understood the press and conducted himself in an open manner.

But will that translate into an open presidency? Probably not, although we may finally see a president with the self-confidence of a John Kennedy in dealing with the press.