Tuesday, April 27, 2010

"Learning About U.S. Immigration With The New York Times" - The Learning Network Blog - NYTimes.com

You know, there is something very impressive about this, and something sorely missing.

It is an impressive collection of useful resources. Those who want to poke and prod specific issues and individual news stories can do so. That's all well and good.

What's absent, tho, is something that no newspaper of which I am aware actually does. It is a wiki-style (meaning only that it is subject to easy editing on the "fly") piece that is like a news story that might appear as an encyclopedia entry. In other words, take the immigration issue and all of its tentacles and put them together into about 1,000 words that sums up the state of immigration issues at this moment, making editorial judgments about what's important enough to include and what is not. I tend to think that the Arizona law would appear in any such piece, but the piece I envision would not lead with it, most likely. Instead, it would be placed in the context of the bigger picture of US immigration issues.

Most importantly, this 1,000 word piece would be kept up to date by the Times and would be a place to which any of us could turn for the most current complete picture instead of as now, the breaking news only for the most part plus lots of resources through which information diggers can dig!

Why is no one doing this? Sure, resources. But, sure - too, value!

No comments: