One for Fun: Predict Who Wins the White House
While election coverage may be on hiatus, speculation on who will be our next president is about to run wild.
Sean Connelley of the Los Angeles Times created an interactive, embeddable map that lets you test different electoral vote scenarios.
Think Wisconsin will go to McCain? Click and the state turns red. Believe the die-hard Democrats and progressives will come out in force? Click again and the state turns blue.
Assign a color based on which way you think each state will go, then click “share” and embed the map anywhere to trumpet your predictive prowess or just show what it will take for Obama or McCain to get into the Oval Office.
Politics may be serious business, but as the jockeying during primaries has proven, it’s also a bit of a game.
Is This What Cable News Has Been Reduced To?
A friend who loves news but isn’t in the news business forwarded this to me. It’s a pretty dead-on, yet sad commentary on the state of cable news.
Who Wants to be the Next Media Mogul?
(Photo by TheMacDiva/Flickr)
The Yahoo takeover fund.
Hed Games: We Have a Winner
Ricochet’s hed-to-hed competition went neck and neck, with a near photo-finish between two entrants. In the end, the headlines by Jenny Cromie took the tape.
Contest judge Matthew Crowley had some funny, instructive advice in his assessment:
All of Jenny’s were complete and accurate and summarized their stories.
The Marriott headline used all of those p’s to sonic use (not to be confused with Sonic Youth, which is a band). I realize Inga Hensen’s head for this is almost the same, but Jenny’s referenced pay-per-view, which I think is a key detail….
I liked the following in the footsteps one for the kite skier. What’s also important is that Jenny’s head uses “great-grandfather” and not the name. This is important because, for the general reader, “Hurley” probably isn’t an instant “I-know-who-he-is” name….
And Jenny’s marathon head mentions the race and the song and dance, putting key elements together. I don’t think you could leave the race out, although I did like Inga’s reference to awareness-raising.
Crowley also gave honorable mentions “for style and snap” to individual entries by Lizz Westman (“Marriott Hotels May Say ‘Kiss Off’ To Adult Movies”) and Anna Curtis (“Arctic Kite-Skier Prepares To Walk South Until She Gloats”).
Thanks to everyone who entered. And Jenny, your Threadless gift certificate will be arriving in your emailbox shortly.
ACES Winner to Judge Hed to Hed Competition
Las Vegas Review-Journal copy editor Matthew Crowley has graciously agreed to judge Ricochet’s headline writing competition.
Crowley won the American Copy Editors Society “Best Headlines of the Year” contest in the newspapers with circulations between 100,001 and 250,000 category.
Judges gave his work special citation, saying:
In a time when newspapers need more than ever to shake off the stiff, stentorian conventions of the past and work harder to connect with readers, Crowley’s heads make the reader feel as if he or she is dropping into the middle of a coffee-shop conversation. And they make the reader want to dive into the stories and continue the conversation.
See Crowley’s winning portfolio and take your own crack and headline writing in the Hed to Hed competition.
