While perusing The Atlantic this morning I had what I would consider my best experience with online journalism to date. I read the article "Tim Tebow, Messiah: Why Do NFL Fans Love Backup Quarterbacks So Much?" which I found to be absolutely fantastic for multiple reasons.
The first of such reasons is that the content is something I've found myself pondering a lot lately. It seems every time Pitt loses a football game, my Facebook news-feed is fraught with demands for the head of quarterback Tino Sunserri on a silver platter. Moreover, everyone seems to be in favor of starting his backup, Trey Anderson. While the college mentality is clearly different from the NFL mentality, a deeper look of what's really going on here was appreciated.
In addition to it being a topic I was incredibly interested in, I very much appreciated the structure of the piece. Giving each writer a page in which to discuss his/her views on this phenomena both made for an interesting and quick way to read the piece (and in online journalism quick is king) and added some feelings of credibility. If they're willing to go through four writers, they can't all be wrong, can they?
I also really appreciated the way each of the writers acknowledged what was before their piece by referencing the other contributors by first name. This conversation feeling was enhanced by each writing ending their section of the piece with some sort of request for input from the next writer.
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