![[Home]](img/home.gif){kind=small}
![[Comments]](img/comments2.gif){kind=small}
During the last year, a number of political events and natural disasters caused not only long discussion threads in the Penguin Cafe, but a considerable enlargement of existing categories and the creation of some new. In September 11, 2001, in Floods in Europe and Russia 2002, in several subcategories of Specific Conflicts and in the parallel categories in other languages, interested editors collected not only websites, but lots of special reports and single news articles, and developed methods for selecting and categorizing them.
This article offers a summary of the methods used, an evaluation of the effectivity and some suggestions that might prove helpful to editors who build a category on a "hot topic" in future. It is based on several discussions on a range of "News and Media" subcategories, and on experiences made while working in Specific Conflicts. The examples used are taken from that category, but the results can be applied not only to categories dedicated to wars and conflicts, but to categories for natural disasters and non-violent political events like elections, too.
The most extensive archive built during the last year is the News and Media category on 9/11. Its subcategories contain hundreds of links to news articles, sorted by region, source and date. A lot of energy was invested in the collection during the first weeks after the attacks, and more energy is needed to maintain it. But the advantage of the archive for the user can be disputed. First, one can find links from a particular source but searching for articles from various sources on a specific topic is almost impossible. And second, it was impossible to keep the archive up to date after the first weeks.
In contrast, the special reports collected in the main category offer the possibility either to scan the latest headlines all over the international media, or to start an in-depth research in selected resources.
In consequence of this experience, the efforts to collect large numbers of news articles were reduced: In War on Terrorism, Afghan Civil War and Iraq, single news articles reporting on daily events are not listed at all. Instead, the surfer can find lots of special reports from the international media in the "News and Media" subcategories, providing not only daily updated news, but archives, in-depth analysis and multimedia.
Still, single articles are deeplinked in these categories - not in "News and Media", but in the topical subcategories - if the articles meet one of the following criteria:
Listing analysis and commentary creates a lot of problems. Consider, for example, the flood of articles with general commentary on the Israel-Palestine Conflict or on the War on Terrorism published every day. Efforts to list them will always end up offering only a selection -- restricted by the number of articles editors can read every day, and by the news sources and commentators they're interested in. In the best case, the result is a waste of editor energy -- the special reports in the "News and Media" subcategories provide more commentary in better order. In the worst case, one might even end up with politically unbalanced link collections.
Therefore I'd recommend to be very careful when deeplinking editorials, analysis and commentary. According to my experience, broad overall commentary for example on the Middle East in general or on US foreign policy in general should not be listed -- as stated above, there's too much of it and listing even a small part of it wastes too much editor energy.
Useful is commentary that focuses on a specific problem or topic - especially if one wants to build a subcategory. To give an example, there are a number of small subcategories for special events of high importance: a landmark meeting of political leaders, the signing of a peace treaty, a terrorist attack or a military event. In these categories, a number of articles from various news sources offering in-depth-analysis and commentary can be useful [examples: Bonn conference on Afghanistan 2001, specific military events in the Afghan War].
And when building a personality subcategory, it might be a good idea to deeplink an interview with that person, or portraits and biographies [example: Ahmed Shah Massoud].
Last but not least, scientific analysis and commentary by renowned political scientists or think tanks can be worth deeplinking, too.
Information on how the media cover a specific topic, media watch sites and reports on censoring are very important, because easy access to this sort of information offers the users the possibility to evaluate the daily news themselves. Therefore editors should try to provide it, especially in categories dedicated to political issues [examples: September 11, 2001, War on Terrorism]. For some topics, special media watch sites exist. But if a conflict stays outside the daily headlines, if news on a specific event are censored, or if journalists are victims of violence while doing their work, single articles can be listed, too.
When creating a category on a "hot topic", the most valuable sites -- and often the first sites dedicated to the new topic that appear in the web, too -- are special reports provided by the media. Topics important enough for an ODP category of their own usually cause at least half a dozen of them. Therefore, do not waste your energy with listing news articles reporting on the daily events, or with working through every analysis and comment available. Instead, try to find the special reports, and store them in a News_and_Media subcategory which can be @linked from News. If it is a political topic, special media watch sites and reports on restrictions for journalistic work are very important, too. But be very careful with listing single articles - keep in mind that most of them will not be up-to-date any more the next morning.