Do you read our news?

[Dani]

Do you read the DaniWeb news stories? If not ... what about them doesn't interest you?

[Ancient Dragon]

I used to read it, but have not seen the link with this new design. I posted a complaint about that but I suppose it got lost in the shuffle. There used to be a link at the bottom of each page, near the About Us line.

[Dani]

Hmm ... So you can't find news anymore, eh? It is on the homepage and also the 'Editorial' button in the top navigation menu. Also, when you are in any top-level category, there is a News tab. Thank you for the feedback :)

[Ancient Dragon]

I know what's wrong -- I had the DaniWeb newsletter in mind. Did you stop publishing it?

As for News -- rarely read those articles.

[~s.o.s~]

Unfortunately no. The simple reason being that for me a news aggregator site like reddit/digg/hackernews does a far better job at presenting <insert-your-interest-here> news story than a single site. Plus most of the news stories here are more "tech" oriented (gadgets, gizmos etc.) than being "developer" oriented (a new programming language, blog post about concurrency issues in Java etc.). Also, the lack of discussion on articles coupled with limited content doesn't make Daniweb a one-stop for a news story, at least for me. :-)

[Narue]

>Do you read the DaniWeb news stories?
No.

>If not ... what about them doesn't interest you?
There are better sites for news, in my opinion. I treat Daniweb as a forum, nothing more.

[Nick Evan]

>>Do you read the DaniWeb news stories?
Almost never..

>If not ... what about them doesn't interest you?
I'm not an overall Geek. I actually have hobbies and interests that aren't related to anything IT'ish. I just program C++ and play an occasional game, I don't really care for using computers for anything else :D

[jonsca]

I think a majority of them are interesting but I like the futurist type things (I guess I am an "overall geek" as Nick put it). I'm not as captivated by things about social media.

[Dani]

I think a majority of them are interesting but I like the futurist type things (I guess I am an "overall geek" as Nick put it). I'm not as captivated by things about social media.

Just click the 'News' tab from any of the forums you're interested in.

[WASDted]

Hey folks. Dani and I have been talkig about your valuable comments here. We want to involve the community in our news. We want the news section to be guided by ALL OF YOU, our community. Clearly we need to evolve our news to content that would interest you.

One of the things we're thinking of doing is to ask the community to suggest what we should write about. If there is something in the news that you would like more details and information on, let us know. If there is a topic you are interested in having us cover or perhaps a company or person we should interview or write about, let us know. Products you want reviewed? Suggest them, or even review them yourselves and [if it's done well] I'll promote it to an official DaniWeb review. We're willing to bring you news per your direction.

Please help me make this work by giving us suggestions and feedback. Please get involved and direct YOUR news section. Besides the forums here you have a chance to order our writers to dig up info and news about what you care about. Can you imagine how cool that would be? Will you give it a chance? Who knows what this can evolve into.

P.S. for those of you who don't know me, my name is Eyal, I'm the ed-in-chief of daniweb news :)

[Dani]

I'm going to reiterate what Eyal said. Essentially, we want to bring the News into the community fold. The same way that you come here for both Q&A threads, discussions, and code snippets, we want News to be an equal part of the overall DaniWeb community experience.

To that end, we want you to help us use the staff writers and resources we have at our disposal to make news and product reviews a community project.

We polled you awhile back asking what you wanted us to ask Bjorne Stroustrup, and we put a staff writer on it, and the interview is almost ready to go live.

We'll also have a presence at the upcoming Intel Developers Forum conference in California, where we'll be interviewing various Intel insiders and attending the launch for the new version of Intel Parallel Studio.

Let us know if you have any projects for us. Anything specific you want us to ask or attend on your behalf? We are here to work for you ... the community is our heart and soul.

We pledge to keep you -- the community -- involved and aware of everything we're doing on our end ... but in exchange we need feedback from you as far as what you think we're doing wrong, where we can improve, what types of things you want to see and read about that we're not currently covering, and what we can do to bring you the types of articles that you want to read.

If there's anyone you want us to interview, tell us.
If there's a product you want us to get our hands on to review, tell us. Even if it's a $5000 piece of electronics that you wish there was a great review on before you splurged, and you want us to get our hands on it first.
If there's software you want us to try out for you before you buy ... let us know what it is.
If you recently heard about something in the news, let us know. If there's an angle you want us to explore, let us know.

We have a whole team of staff writers behind us who are here to work for YOU! They just want to know what you want to read about, and we'll do all the legwork. If we need to attend an event, get a hold of a person, manage to get a piece of hardware or software ... you tell us what you want us to do, and we will do everything in our power to do it.

[Dani]

Oh ... and please use the 'Contribute Hot News Tips' forum (http://www.daniweb.com/forums/forum183.html) to make any suggestions on what we should write about. Feel free to post in there any news tips you stumble across, suggestions for interviews, suggestions for stories to cover, news angles, ... anything you want our staff writers to write about.

That forum actually serves as a ticket system for our team of staff writers on what they should write about. So anytime you want one of our staff writers to write about something, post in there what it is, and we'll do our best to get someone right on it!

[Ezzaral]

I read a few of them now and then, but it's not really something I keep an eye on.

[Dani]

Why not? Be blunt. We want to know what we need to do to change. If the answer is because there are a million other news sites out there, tell us what you want to read about that can't be found elsewhere.

[mars83]

I am interested. The existence of this community or place or whatever this space is intrigues me. Not sure why I was compelled to quote this :)

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[mars83]

Must be some fixation on the English language.

[jonsca]

The interviews are a great idea. I'm looking forward to the Stroustrup one.

It's hard to create a niche when there are so many other outlets. Insider stuff is always good but I don't know how hard that is to obtain in some cases.

I applaud your efforts but I'm personally at a creative loss as to how to see your vision through.

[Ezzaral]

>Why not?
I just don't follow tech news that closely. I fell in here because of the technical forums.

[Dani]

What about tutorials such as http://www.daniweb.com/tutorials/tutorial299557.html

Along the lines of the types of articles any of you might be inclined to read?

What about news stories such as http://www.daniweb.com/news/story307226.html ??

[genericuser2341]

I noticed that almost all of the news on this site are basically a rewrites of the same stories available on bigger tech sites like Tech Crunch, Mashable, and alike. Just monitoring other sites and then rewriting their stories is not journalism if you ask me. I know, nobody asked me :)

I like HappyGeek's stuff, but I can take or leave the rest of it. So much of it is outside my sphere of interest.

I second the above comment...

However, having said that, I do read some articles which catch my attention. I liked the addition of the pictures etc.

[happygeek]

For the record, news story sources are varied and plentiful. I write stories based on press releases that are sent to me, information that gets slipped out on Twitter, information that is provided by individual sources via email/phone and even through my own journalistic investigations.

Sure, the same stories get covered on multiple sites but that is the nature of news: only one person/site/publication gets to break a story. DaniWeb has broken stories in the past, stories that have even gone on to become headline pieces for major TV news channels and picked up by the likes of Mashable and Tech Crunch (see what I mean about recycling) but a story can only be broken the once - does that mean it should not be covered by anyone else? Of course not, as long as there is something new to add by way of how the story is written up, analysis of the facts, opinion of the writer and so on.

Speaking with 20 years of experience as a professional, full-time journalist, card-carrying member of the National Union of Journalists and winner of awards including 'Technology Journalist of the Year' and 'IT Security Journalist of the Year' in the UK where I am based, I can categorically state that the first to publish is not only not always the best version of a story but that later 'rewrites' as you would call them often provide a better depth and insight into the same story as the reporter has had more time to work on and develop it.

I noticed that almost all of the news on this site are basically a rewrites of the same stories available on bigger tech sites like Tech Crunch, Mashable, and alike. Just monitoring other sites and then rewriting their stories is not journalism if you ask me. I know, nobody asked me :)

[happygeek]

Thanks to ardav and iamthwee for the vote of confidence. I guess the question that follows on is why do you like my stuff? Is it the subject matter or the writing style, or a combination of both?

@HG
You seem to have a knack for choosing interesting topics. You also write in a very accessible manner - nothing too technical (sorry, that's not a jibe) - or I suspect, that you have the clever knack of presenting technical topics in non-ultrageek.

It seems that anyone can write a news article/blog entry, but that doesn't mean that they're any good at it. I know I'd be useless (too many brackets, hyphens and asides)! It takes ability, education, training and experience to write engaging pieces - that's why you stand out from the crowd.

OK, enough of the fawning, I've embarrassed myself enough, I'm going back to being a cantankerous, so-and-so now.

[Dani]

I guess what I'm getting at is ... what would be the best way to put our staff writers to best use for the benefit of the community?

[Lusiphur]

Just tossing this out there...

My personal areas of interest are predominantly focused within the games industry. Info about new game releases, company expansions/mergers/splits/closures, new tech being used by the game industry... these are things that *I* would be interested in reading about.

As an example I recently read a product review about Starcraft II (and for those who wonder why my post count dropped dramatically lately, you can blame that game) and I enjoyed it, even if it was a bit heavily biased in favour of the game. Not saying one can't be in favour of the product one's reviewing but the article did come off a bit fanboi'ish :twisted:

[jonsca]

Maybe (and I know this creates more work) try a SurveyMonkey thing with questions about "Which of the following group is most important to you as a reader of news on Daniweb" Raffle off some piece of Daniweb memorabilia to a random participant.

Or you could publish all of the articles under a byline of HappyGeek :)

>I guess what I'm getting at is ... what would be the best way to put our staff writers to best use for the benefit of the community?

How do you even KNOW the majority of the community even cares what your staff writers write? How do you KNOW the majority of the community frequents this site for the forums, and forums only?

Are you trying to supply a solution for a demand that doesn't really exist? Hmm

[Sodabread]

Just tossing this out there...

My personal areas of interest are predominantly focused within the games industry. Info about new game releases, company expansions/mergers/splits/closures, new tech being used by the game industry... these are things that *I* would be interested in reading about.

I'm compelled to agree with Lusi here. I'm big into game industry news, but I do notice that a lot of reviews are very biased, where the comments are the only non-fanboy opinions lie, and most often they're just hate.

I realize that this isn't a gaming site and even the game development forum is rather.. *insert crickets sound here*, but a good unbiased pro/con style review (see classic EGM) would be cool for some of the bigger releases like Starcraft 2, Call of Duty, etc... or even an occasional under the radar/indie title would be nice.

The internet's a wonderful invention, but I like to get as much info from a single source as possible, rather than having a bajillion sites for a few different topics.