Border Beat Review

For the multimedia commentary, I decided to look at the Border Beat site, because I wanted to compare the student work that was recognized. It was interesting to see the criteria for award-winning student categories.
The first thing I noticed is that the slideshow was created in Soundslides. I thought the slideshow was something that I could easily create on my own. I thought the photos of the barrio signs was a creative idea that wasn't implemented very well. The photos were just descriptive but not interesting or engaging. I think the photos could have had more of a creative angle to them to make the slideshow enhance the total package.
I liked that along the sidebar, the site had sections that reminded me of newspaper sections. I thought the stories in these sections were very personal and very much a representation of niche journalism of the barrio communities. I also liked how the site separated the Blog and Resources sections to show that those links involved another type of info-gathering from the journalism stories. I think that the Blog section adds a dimension of modernism to the site that you may not see in a veteran journalist site.
Lastly, I felt that the special reports section was the heart of the site's packaging. The stories show various angles of the topics of choice, and the slideshows are very impressive.