Breaking Story: New Media Content and Form

We will spend time in class discussing Fast Company's ongoing coverage of the "leaked iPHone" story.  (You don't need to read or blog about this in advance.)

The backstory... a prototype of the next iPhone was recently found in a bar.  Somehow that prototype ended up being purchased by a popular technology publication (variously described as a blog, an online tabloid, or some variety of online journalism).

Was the phone lost or stolen? Should the website have paid for the phone? Does it make a difference that this was a huge scoop, and there would have been no other way to get this story (since Apple doesn't let anyone preview its products)?  Cops raided the office of the blogger who posted an analysis of the prototype... yet journalists are supposed to be exempt from this kind of intrusion, since it would have a chilling effect on the coverage of police and political corruption. (Is Apple using the cops as thugs-for-hire, to control the free press? Who decides when a blogger is a journalist?)

The situation is still unfolding, and there are so many unanswered questions that Fast Company has published an infographic (by Sheryl Sulistawan and Tyler Gray) and a series of hyperlinked blog entries by Dan Nasowitz.

For this activity, I'd like you to spend a few minutes exploring the issue in class. Then, I will ask you to comment on

• the substance of the story (as you interpret it based on the infographic and the blog entries) and
  
• the form of the story (both visual and hypertextual, with special reference to Aarseth's Cybertext).

If you prefer, here is a more traditional layout of the same story.