Please don’t promote or Recommend this diary. It will last long enough anyway.
I think we have pretty much all accepted Jerome’s idea about having a Morning News Open Thread as a signature anchor diary each day.
As far as I know budhy has volunteered Turkana and I, as well as Magnifico if he can be recruited, to get the ball rolling on this project. Here are my thoughts at the moment.
I think the best time to schedule this is 7:30 am EDT. Why is that? Early enough so you can look at it before work, late enough so that it will still be close to the top if work is where your broadband is.
I realize the time is not ideal for left coasters and expats, but though it may turn out to be a C&J style mojo fest for regular members YOU DON’T NEED MOJO. You have better than mojo, you have a direct line to the boss.
One thing I’ve noticed with my style OND diaries is that they are big. If posted entirely above the fold they would hijack the Front Page just as sure as lolligolli (whom I’m relieved turned out to be a troll). Also they take a long time to scroll from bottom to top.
Magnifico’s summary presentation is clearly far superior in this regard, but it also makes the diary harder to write. Original summaries are more time consuming than cut and paste, at least for me.
Along the same lines, melvin has suggested that we categorize the news for easy access. This is very good for readers but also makes the diary more difficult to write and can make story selection harder. Some days there aren’t any good Godzilla rampages for your ‘Pacific Rim’ section.
I also quite like the idea of including a list of the day’s scheduled Front Page posters and time slots. Can’t tell what time to tune in without a TV Guide.
This is about as far as I’ve gotten in my thinking about it and now I need to eat and maintain my secret identity as a mild mannered kossack by day. Your thoughts and contributions are welcome below.
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If you won’t stand behind your words, what will you stand for?
so the meat is below the fold, but you can anchor tag down to it.
over at SC (not that this should be taken as a model or anything) is post a few quick links with no more than a sentence blurb each, all above the fold. Here’s a good recent example. If we want to go into more detail with any of them, or discuss a different story in more detail, we put it below the fold.
The benefit there is that it’s a great conversation starter, and usually sparks the first few comment threads, giving the site a nice, chatty atmosphere. The drawback is that it also makes for a boring news roundup – I forget anything I read there if I don’t follow the links, unlike in OND, which I can read and absorb pretty well.
Meanwhile, EuroTrib has general open threads in the morning, and news roundups at night. The news articles there go in the comments section rather than the diary, so that the threads can keep separate.
So, lots of different approaches we can take.
do we have good headline writers on board? then it makes it viable… and i like that i returned to the origin of the link; at dKos, i just ended up back in the story and lost my place in the thread, which is a bummer if it’s a long thread and you want to get back to that conversation
maybe it was my own glitch… don’t know
but it makes a difference to me… and this is soooo much better
we’d occasionally have head-explosions trying to figure out if the other person was presenting his/her opinion, or snarkily parodying the other side. That can be a lot of fun, but it also made some conversations surreal. Naturally, the second we started categorizing (you’re red, we’re blue), we got into sub-categorizations (purple moderates? black anarchists? yellow libertarians?), and now we’re just a rainbow of confusion. I love it, naturally.
Agreed on the little-more-elaborate idea. SC is more of a cool hangout spot than a thought-provoking-essay site. When our people do write excellent essays, they rarely garner as many comments as the day’s open thread. That works great for our particular vibe, but for this site’s purposes, something meatier would be nice.
I have e-mailed Magnifico at the addy on his page but have yet to hear back.
Any follow up by you would be greatly appreciated!
I also love the idea of including the days line up!