Presidential Debate

I don’t follow the rest of the world much which is probably a bad thing. I have a vague sense about what is happening around me. Banks are failing (something having to do with subprime mortgages). There is an election coming up soon (of which I’ve only followed via Colbert, Hardball, and random YouTube videos). Recently, I’ve been trying to remedy my lack of knowledge of the world away from my monitor and textbooks. I read an article from the New York Times about the financial crisis. And today, I was set on watching the first Presidential debate.

One thing I learned for sure, is that there is a reason the New York Times is the US news source. They get it.

A google video search was my first attempt to find the presidential debate. It brought up a few YouTube videos that segmented the video into 11 parts. I didn’t want to watch it like that. I next searched google for ‘presidential debate video’. There was a page with a video from msnbc embedded in the page. For some reason, I wanted to watch it on msnbc, not that blog entry’s page. Clicking on the embed too kme to msnbc’s home page, but the video is nowhere to be found. Searching msnbc for the presidential debate videos also gives nothing.

Contrast this to New York Times website. During the actual debate, the New York Times had a live web broadcast of the debate, right on the front page. For some reason, I find that amazing. It’s something that should have been done long ago, yet, it feels like the first time I’ve seen something like this happen.

Anyhow, back to the New York Times page today. Although the story about Paul Newman is the main story, the link to the presidential debates video is still visible without scrolling. The page itself has all the fat trimmed. Aside from one ad on top, the New York Times page is all content and most of all, useful content. You can search for terms. There are two color coded timelines for the speech, letting you quickly see the topics they are debating and quickly skip to the relevant sections. There is a video, with the transcript along side. And, it automatically scrolls for you.