please…
Can someone delete me from this blog? It’s messing up my entire wordpress account.
Disabled Community Hypotheses
Individuals with physical disabilities use Internet forums and social networking sites to build community with both other individuals with physical disabilities and able-bodied individuals because they may have difficulty leaving their homes and finding accessible transport to other venues.
Individuals with physical disabilities aren’t looking for specialized news content for people in wheelchairs, but they gravitate toward topics and features related to personal interests, such as sports and entertainment.
When individuals with disabilities do consume specialized content, they only want news and information that is hyper-specialized to their exact issue and disability.
The ideal format for this community would be an online or mobile application because accessibility seems to be the biggest issue, not content, and this would lower costs for thrifty 20-somethings.
Hypotheses for young entrepreneurs
Based on our interviews this past week, the Young Entrepreneurs subgroup came up with a few hypotheses of entrepreneurs and what they’re looking for in a news product.
Entrepreneurs tend to create their businesses on the side, given the fact they’re already working in a business, adding to their business properties or are in school.
Despite their goals and plans, they’re always searching for advice and support from family members, fellow entrepreneurs, as well as successful business people.
Entrepreneurs are also looking for news at their convenience on a product with multiple platforms.
It’s a news product that’s clean and youthful, but gives them thorough information.
Entrepreneurs also want a news product that keeps article comments and discussions on topic.
Hypotheses for parents who homeschool their children
1.) For homeschooling parents, resources from and camaraderie with their particular homeschooling community is of the utmost importance.
2.) Because the market lacks a consistently reliable print periodical and because the nature of homeschooling is such that parents often need a large variety of information quickly, they turn mainly to the internet for resources about homeschooling.
3.) One thing that homeschooling parents value highly is their close relationship with their children and families.
4.) The homeschooling community is incredibly diverse, with a wide variety of motivations behind homeschooling, educational methods and participating families.
5.) Homeschooling families value different aspects than those present in the traditional education system, namely self-motivation, self-directed learning and learning outside of the classroom.
Future of News
Future of the News Today
Projections on Media for LGBT College Students
-College age LGBT people don’t have a lot of time to consume news, so whatever we propose needs to be simple, convenient, and get straight to the point.
-LGBT people are just regular people; they are interested in LGBT related issues, but not only in these issues, so there needs to be general content too.
-LGBT community members get the majority of their news online and prefer Web sites with an interactive/networking element.
-LGBT community members can be from a variety of ethnicities, races and countries of origin. This needs to be considered and integrated in any media product we develop. (Example: variety of language options and international news.)
-The presentation of a publication (online, in print or on television) is of high importance. A sleek magazine, or a streamlined Web site is attractive to our audience.
-A publication needs to research what topics are of particular interest to LGBT college students, and create stories or features on those topics, without focusing on the “gay element.”
I interviewed a 23-year-old C.E.O. for this project. He is a former Northwestern student who left college with senior standing to focus full-time on his company. This young man may be different from other young entrepreneurs in that his current business is not his first major start-up. At about 13 years old, he began a company similar to the “Geek Squad” and subsequently sold it off to Best Buy. His current company has office space on North Michigan Avenue, so his success is probably the exception and not the rule.
That said, his news habits seem to reflect the general news habits of young entrepreneurs. His media consumption tends to be “fluid.” He checks several Web sites everyday, at multiple points throughout the day. While he does subscribe to RSS feeds, he still enjoys checking homepages because it allows him to put everything in context. He especially finds aggregators such as Twitter helpful because they include news from multiple sources and point him in the direction of additional information.
While he still appreciates newspapers, he reads them online. His print media consumption is limited to magazines. He said magazines are good for long, more in-depth, analysis-based pieces as opposed to shorter stories or hard news. While he frequently checks Twitter on his phone, he also appreciates the portability of a magazine, especially for travel. He said he said he couldn’t predict whether magazines will go digital as Kindles and other e-readers become more popular. These comments lead me to believe that our product should be forward thinking and have the ability to be viewed in multiple mediums.
Perhaps the biggest surprise to me was that he did not seem interested in using a media product for networking. He said there are plenty of social networking sites already available and that entrepreneurs, by their very nature, are good at “meeting people.” They could use help in other areas, instead, he said. Based on our conversation, it seems that a product with non-industry-specific, practical advice, great business profiles, and links to additional information could be a very helpful and inspirational source for our audience.
We read GQ, we’re just like everyone else
The person that I interviewed for this assignment was someone that I went to high school with. I had not seen him since we graduated more than five years ago, and he was not out in high school. During the 40-minute interview I learned more about him than I did in the two years I knew him growing up.
I met him at his house that he shares with his partner in Lakeview. I knew beforehand that his father was in town visiting, but I had no idea that it had been less than a week since he had come out to him. Living with his partner, I assumed that everyone in his family knew about his sexuality. Later when his father arrived toward the end of the interview, I was unsure how honest he would continue to be. However his father’s presence did not seem to have an effect on his authenticity.
He was very open to doing the interview, and answered my questions honestly and thoughtfully. He is obviously very interested and passionate about gay rights and other issues relating to the LGBT community, but other aspects of his life are more important and dominate his media consumption.
My work group’s original idea of a magazine or publication for LGBT college students, where sexuality was not at the forefront of the articles quickly went out the door for me during the interview.
My interview subject made it clear that being gay was not what defined him, and therefore it did not need to define the media he consumed. He was much more interested in reading articles on world affairs, architecture (his major in college) and news from his home of Brazil. He did check up on gay news every now and then, but it wasn’t his main interest.
He felt that the media generally portrayed an accurate, fair image of the LGBT community. Movies and television, however, presented an exaggerated, stereotypical view of gays and lesbians.
When I asked him what he thought of The Advocate, the nation’s most popular gay-focused publication, he viewed it with little enthusiasm. He agreed that it was a good magazine, but that he stopped subscribing to it, which was probably one of the reasons why the publication is headed towards extinction.
Like most of the news he reads, he gets the Advocate online, as well as The New York Times, CNN and other news blogs and compiler sites. His distaste for traditional newspapers is not surprising for someone of his age (23). He found newspapers to be too large and inconvenient to carry and read on the El or while sitting in a coffee shop. He preferred the RedEye, or reading the newspaper while at home where he is able to spread out.
I loved what he said about GQ, one of his favorite magazines. Even though the magazine is marketed to (straight) men, the homosexual undertones are obvious. The publishers don’t rope off the magazine to the gay community, in hopes of keeping the readership wide. I think many people realize this, but it allows slightly homophobic (or very sexually secure) straight men to pick up a copy of GQ and read it proudly in public.
The idea of more publications like GQ seem to be better than our original plan. LGBT college-students, high school students and adults want to be seen and treated like anyone else, and creating a publication just for them is counterintuitive to this process, even though it may seem like it’s providing a service.
Some people are not like aspiring journalists. They do not want a plethora of news to inundate them all the time.
That is what I found out from interviewing a 30-year-old serial entrepreneur, who is on his fourth business. In the beginning, it was only a side business while he was working a banking job in New York. But then came the recession and in January of this year, he started working full-time on his business, which acquires and manages over a thousand Web site domains, as well as their content and advertisements.
The Internet entrepreneur spends up to 17 hours a day on his laptop. Of course he sifts through headlines and news, but when he really wants to dive into the news is when he’s waiting for his plane to take off or he’s on the subway. Aside from getting a daily news wrap-up fromt The New York Times, he spends a good deal of time using the Viigo application on his Blackberry, which pulls all kinds of news articles and categorizes them under different categories, such as horoscopes, sports, technology.
Young entrepreneurs don’t want to be distracted by news, but they want it to be there –when they want it. The online whiz said he would take time to reallocate his time for news, if there was something worthy enough and relevant to his business.
Suprisingly, he had not taken much time to dive into social media sites to further his business. He uses Facebook and Twitter to promote his Web sites via fan pages and also operates a Facebook account for personal use.
But when it comes to using social media for networking, there’s not a lot of time left. So, one of the conflicts for young entrepreneurs, when it comes to social media, is the issue of being able to separate the business from the personal. For many the two are deeply intertwined.
However, he did warm up to the idea of a smaller network of friends and colleagues on Digg, who could flag information on the Internet, “Hey, take a look at this blog.” Having a trusted source, whether it was a brand publication, a reputbale blog or a friend’s recommendation, was greatly valued.
