The Guardian’s new Zeitgeist website is a new approach to being fed the daily news by the world wide web. And I for one think it is brilliant. Zeitgeist, meaning spirit of the times, shows the most popular news stories from the Guardian and advertises them using wonderful colourful boxes with titles, because everyone has a childish attraction to colours.
The appeal of this idea comes from knowing and trusting that what Guardian readers believe has newsworthiness is generally right. As well as this, if you disagree with what areas of the news they deem as important, then you can easily just look at the pretty little colour key and find where on the grid your interests lie.
This is a pretty special advantage the guardian has over its competing websites as it gives them an opportunity to see what their users are interested in and, to a certain extent, make the news how they want. As well as this, it takes a cyber stab at the tedious print-esque layout most newspapers assign to their websites.
This experimental way of advertising the news works well to make the news seem more attractive (and not just by adding colour), it puts all the important stuff in one place and cuts out the smaller issues. Thus making it quick and to the point which, in media terms, means sexy.
However the best attribute for me is reading the comments. Some people just love being opinionated and most of these people loves forcing their opinions down peoples throats. So were better to do it than on a news website! Reading through the arguments people have over the likes of David Cameron and Alister Darling or celebrities ruling the world is very satisfying. It also made me realise that people can get nasty and demeaning behind the safety of their computer screen and online alias.
However, this experimental media product gets a good old fashioned two thumbs up from me…
SamBlog 