Escamilla | 1 UNITEC INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Gerardo Alonso Escamilla Garca 1409009 New Zealand Culture & Society I Pascal

l Brown

NZ Herald

I chose the web site <www.nzherald.co.nz> because of its practicality and usefulness. I enjoy learning and researching, so it would not be so curious of me to be inclined to visit web sites that relate news with different features of the New Zealand lifestyle and everyday issues. NZ Herald has a name that is easy to remember and finding information in its archives is a pretty simple and easy process. The first thing to notice is the minimalistic design of the title and the buttons. It has a selective array of colours throughout the main page that work together with the intriguing titles and strategically chosen pictures on to lure the visitor to click on the headlines. The general distribution of the headlines is symmetric, which makes easier for the eyes to rapidly absorb information. Besides, when the mouse is hovered over one of the several topics arranged as a row in the initial part of the main page, a breakdown appears and gives more detail to the visitor about the aforementioned topic. Whilst travelling around New Zealand or speaking to other Kiwis, I regularly find myself in the vanguard of several cultural, social or political aspects that invigorate my inner flame of curiosity. If I cannot find the answer to the questions that arise about such topics in the next few minutes, I usually make a mind note about it and after getting home I open my laptop. When this happens, there are usually two web sites that I like to visit. The first one is Wikipedia and the second one is NZ Herald. Wikipedia gives me a wide abstract of what I want to know and NZ Herald informs me about real life events that relate to what I am searching for. Perhaps that is why I enjoy it, because of how simple it is to find evidence of something that has happened before. It has a friendly user interface as well, so it is common for me to have at least three tabs open at the same time with different news. Nonetheless, there is one thing that could be improved. In Mxico there is a similar web site called El Norte. El Norte really has a strategic user interface as it quickly relates news with videos and audio files that could keep the visitor clicking away on the links for hours.

Escamilla | 2 Perhaps NZ Herald could have a more intuitive navigation system and a wiser localisation for the scarce videos that it presents at the bottom of the main page. Notwithstanding that, there is a small but very important difference between these web sites: accessing NZ Herald online is free. To access El Norte it is required an annual membership that costs around $20. Following this further, maybe the membership is more important than it sounds. Whilst NZ Herald gives away free information (which I abide), El Norte takes advantage of its advanced user interface and personal considerations to create a costly membership. Now, this should not be a problem, but what if it is? Organizations that provide public services such as the press could be better focused on their main objective: to inform. Perhaps having a membership helps out the organization to improve their infrastructure, get more cameras, bigger check to press members and what not. However, there is still a question that comes up. Why is it pursuing financial income from its members? There are several thoughts in my head about this, but my hypothesis resolves that the New Zealand government is more accessible for companies than the Mexican government. If Mxico had a more dynamic and adaptable way of doing things as New Zealand, maybe things that seem unrelated (such as a membership to an online newspaper) would be positively affected. It is remarkable that most of the pieces that I have written relate to political reforms in Mxico. I guess that the impact of being inside a country that is efficient and liberal for more than a few weeks has obligated me to subconsciously contrast it with the Mexican way of doing things, which is often the wrong way. NZ Herald is important and relevant to everyone, not only kiwis or international exchange students. It is fundamental for someone that tries to look into another country to involve himself/herself into their own point of view, their own web sites and traditions. That is what NZ Herald means to me, it is not just one web site about news; it is the symbol of a continuous informative revolution.