Blog Tipz

As you may know, the United States held the primaries or caucuses in more than twenty-four states on Tuesday, February 5th (Super Tuesday), to nominate each party’s presidential candidates. It wasn’t uncommon to see media reporting at popular polling places, asking voters why they chose the particular candidate, and hourly updates with results as they came in. The outlet you chose to gather news from (if you follow the news), as well as the type of media (internet, TV, newspaper) is largely a personal decision, as some outlets are more biased and only report on one side of issues to attain greater ratings.

In relation to blogging, it is likely that you choose a particular blog, for the way he/she reports on new stories, presents articles, and his/her side on particular issues, including their writing style. Another key factor in the process of deciding whether or not the blog is the way the blog author presents information. Do they use graphics, maps, or tables, while presenting data or do they simply place it in a sprawling paragraph with little attention to functionality and readability?

While it may take more time to create tables, especially graphic tables using widgets, CSS, AJAX, etc., nevertheless is it important to keep the information in tables kept to a minimum, especially when users demand the ability to gain insight to what has happened within a minute or less. Using commonly known symbols/graphics, colors/styling is one of the easiest ways to be sure that everyone reading knows exactly what you’re presenting in the graph or table before they even read the header.

For example, universally the color green typically represents profit, earnings, or increases, whereas red indicates loss, deficits, or decreases in whatever it may be – monetary, traffic, population, or any other form of data. In the United States, the Democratic Party is represented with blue colors, and the Republican Party is represented with red colors. When winners were announced, the public could gather the results quickly due to the usage of colors, highlighting, and syntax. Bloggers should maintain a level of consistency in graphic creation, as this is an important factor of branding your name/blog. By creating a number of reporting formats – maps, images, tables, or videos, you are able to connect with a wider audience.

When featuring a popular story, be sure that it is located in a “featured” area or at the top of your page. Add similar stories next to them, blending all elements together to form a well designed “above the fold” appearance. Most of the news sources added a noticeable bar above the main content, below the navigation panels. Being first to report on breaking news isn’t always the best way to achieve authority, but reporting when you find that it is the right story to report on, making sure that almost all facts are correct and weighed out. Reporting false facts leads readers to guessing whether you actually know about the subject, the amount of time you spent acquiring statistics, and your integrity as a blogger.

Images below show the preliminary results as well as some partial results.
The images below may be enlarged when clicked on, and were gathered on 2/5/08.

ABC News – Combines the usage of candidate’s portraits, placing winners at the top of the table, with textual percentages and votes to the right side of the images, and includes the percentage of precinct reporting at the bottom of each area. Colors represent parties, and winners have a check box in bottom right corner of image. Engages users by including links to show democrats/republicans, watch coverage, and learn more about the elections in the particular state. 

Results 

A map was also created to indicate voting dates for each state. 

Map 

 

CBS News – Used calendars, maps, horizontal/vertical bar graphs, and political party mascots to represent information. Winners were placed in bold and highlighted in red with the amount of delegates reporting in parentheses behind each name. Inconsistencies between pages in the way information is organized, as the stronger-winning candidates should be kept at top. 

 

Results, Map, Calendar 

 

Results 

 

MSNBC – A widget was created allowing users to easily share information, crosses out candidates who have already dropped out. Because it was built in Flash, you are able to highlight over areas to see more details, combining a good appearance with pertinent information. Candidates’ portraits were used – linking to their news pages and appropriate colors were used to separate the parties. Like the other outlets, they also had video available and additional content.

 

Leaderboard Widget, Results 

 

Results 

 

FOX News – Used several different mediums to attract visitors such as political blogs, program schedules, graphic maps, polls, calendars, but uses a simple text-based delegate count sidebar area – making it less friendly to users for easily comparing information.

 

Results 

 

Yahoo! and Google – Both took advantage of their news services and created widgets in their sidebar (Google’s was more easily shareable), with links to results as well as maps (Google’s was integrated into their pre-existing service) that displayed live results or elections coming up. Yahoo! did a better job at integrating political colors, portraits, and graphics for determining winners.

 

Results and Maps 

 

Washington Post – Likely one of the best uses of space, the Washington Post used maps, a table with information embedded in it, and tabs to quickly show information. While there is no relation with commonly accepted symbols, it still makes it extremely easy to determine the information you need. 

 

Results 

 

New York Times – Several different versions of a table were created, one specifically for the home page during the elections. Using a key (win/lead) the NYT used colors and a clean layout for presenting the results. In another version, to accommodate people looking for upcoming primaries, it listed the number of delegates at stake in each state. As with a majority of other news sources, a map was created showing the winners and other stats.

 

Results

 

Map 

 

When it comes time to present a lot of information, such as the results of a poll, be sure to spend time making sure that all details are clearly marked with keys, margins of errors or other details should also be included. The overall look of the table/chart should appeal to the readers you target, with any possible confusion kept to a minimum. Following these ideas will lead to becoming known for presenting data in an accessible format.