I first became introduced to Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service when Herbert Lowe, then my News Media Writing professor, brought its founder, Sharon McGowan, to speak to our class. To prepare for the class I read a few of the longer pieces and did some skimming. 

Looking at the site for the first time in months, my impression was that education had taken over. After all, two of the four featured stories are related to neighborhood schools. But if you look at every link on the page, the proportion becomes closer to what you'd expect. My other impression — that the quality remained as high as when I first saw it — turned out to be correct.

Looking at the mission statement, the outlet's main interest is "education, public safety, economic development, health and wellness, recreation, employment, youth development and housing." From what I can tell, they stay true to that. The picture above is from a story that covers a local school. A short brief on Halloween covers both recreation and safety. At the bottom, special reports tackle health and wellness, economic development and employment and (again) education. Neither is housing left out: one news item features a talk about neighborhoods.

Like many of my colleagues, I got to experience the strange beast that is Weebly especially as the finishing touches were applied to our second class project. I also had the experience of doing this on very little sleep.

I learned a lot about what makes a good photo by doing going out and taking pictures and then going back to apply what Professor Lowe and Berford Gammon taught us in the week's classes.

The person I profiled was Anwar Ali, my RA. It was interesting to learn about him, as up until now I didn't know much about him or where he worked (besides RAing).

Producing it on deadline was sometimes difficult and stressful. But it's an experience I'd love to have again. Given all that I know now, I would do many things differently.

The web is a very visual medium, and MSNBC uses this to great effect. They regularly feature photos on the homepage, have a PhotoBlog featuring photos, have an @msnbc_pictures Twitter and have a photo section. 

Their PhotoBlog is interesting. The posts are sometimes basic: a photo with a caption, like these photos about BASE jumpers. Sometimes they pair an AP photo with a wire story, like this post on the Lions' victory against the Cowboys. Occasionally, the photographer will comment on his photos, like on this Sept. 9th post. Many of the photos are from AP or Getty, but MSNBC's own photographers have photos featured too.

MSNBC also promotes its photos via a Twitter account, which has a smallish following of 9,000. While this isn't is only a fraction of the follower count of flagship accounts like @msnbc or @todayshow, it's a pretty healthy amount, considering MSNBC isn't known for its photos. (Image twitter accounts for National Geographic, the New York Times and the LA Times are all over 100,000 followers.) 

They also have a photo section on their site, which is a more visual version of their already photo-heavy home page:

From here visitors can look at some of their many slideshows, including this one on Afghanistan. That slideshow looks at Afghanistan in 172 pictures, each with a caption. It is much longer than the New York Times' "One in 8 Million" piece, especially when you count the separate slideshows for 2010 and 2009. That means it shares a lot more, but risks losing the viewer midway through. That may not be unintentional: the slideshow seems as though you could end at any point and get something out of it.

While MSNBC works hard to feature the photos themselves, its sections that feature only photography seem to be forgotten, leaving some of their efforts easily missed.