The editors of Florida Today have made it clear on a number of occasions that they believe the state government should do more to support the state’s space industry. They are at it again in Thursday’s edition with an editorial once again calling on the legislature to approve a $500-million investment fund for the space industry:
They’ll either show vision and move ahead with an innovative $500 million investment fund that would help bring 21st century space business to the state.
Or they’ll dump the plan and repeat their failed policies of the past that are making Florida a loser in this rapidly-changing arena.
Florida Today could step up to the plate itself and recreate its Space Online website.
There was a time when Space Online was the FIRST place that people looked to for information on the American human space program. It was also the only subject that gave that newspaper national visbility. They abandoned that focus for a couple of reasons: Space.com absorbed them, and they made an editorial decision to devote more attention to local sports. It’s a shame really, because they were once a serious player.
Dwayne, ahh, the good old days…
Your history is essentially correct. Space Online was made part of the deal in which Florida Today and Gannett formed a marketing partnership with SPACE.com and the “brand” was turned over to SPACE.com.
At the time, Florida Today’s space team was rebuilding and its space news was “just another” news section on the Web site.
Following the Columbia tragedy, Florida Today ramped up its coverage again, and its space presence on the Web site has since grown back to the point where they are once again worthy of being the first stop for space folks each day.
But die hard Space Online fans take note of this: The little blue circle with the “whoosh” around it that is part of the floridatoday.com logo is from the original Space Online design.
Look hard and you’ll see that it is an “S” and an “O” for Space Online.
That symbol — first designed by Julian Bennett — survived, I believe, thanks to Gina Kaiser.
BTW, Space Online went live on the Web 10 years ago this past February. Keith’s NASA Watch soon followed, with Bill Harwood’s CBS site mixed in there somewhere, followed not too long after by Justin’s and Steven’s SpaceflightNow.com.
And good times were had by all…
I’ll confess to not being familiar with Florida Today’s current space coverage. I gave up on them long ago.
However, my perception of them is also forged by what I _don’t_ see, and what I don’t see is them being cited elsewhere for breaking a story about space. It used to be that other websites and news publications would run a story and acknowledge that Forida Today had been first to report the information. I don’t see that anymore. So if Florida Today really has “recovered,” they don’t seem to be widely recognized for it. Maybe that great reputation, once lost, will be impossible, or at least very hard, to regain.
In contrast, NASASpaceflight.com has shown the tendency to break the kinds of stories that Florida Today used to do. How they do it, I have no idea.
Finally, a number of things regarding space media have changed since then, although not as much, or positively as one would have hoped. Space.com became more of what it should have been from the start, a real space news website (although it still has too much flashy graphics obscurring the content). There have also been numerous space blogs, the vast majority of which provide little useful commentary but are valuable because they provide links to articles and other news, and occasionally near-real-time reporting from conferences and symposia.
And I’d also list The Space Review as another positive development, because it provides thoughtful commentary on space subjects, and includes real news of things that nobody else really covers (like Sam Dinkins’ interviews with alt-space entrepreneurs and Jeff Foust’s reports from DC-based lectures and symposia).
Mr. Day, you forgot Spaceflight, where a significant part of your own work is published and, even with The Space Review, still one of the premere sources for deep semi-popular analysis — especially on human spaceflight, which is largely ignored elsewhere.
— Donald
Mr. Donaldson wrote:
“you forgot Spaceflight, where a significant part of your own work is published and, even with The Space Review, still one of the premere sources for deep semi-popular analysis — especially on human spaceflight, which is largely ignored elsewhere.”
No, I didn’t forget it. I just consider it to be in a different category. Spaceflight is not a near-real-time news source. By the time it reaches the U.S. the information is 2-3 months old. Now for some subjects, such as activities aboard the space station, or in-depth coverage of individual space missions (or space history), it may be the only semi-popular source. And it provides information on current space programs that often does not show up in obvious places, like Aviation Week. But Spaceflight has its limitations, such as the fact that it is a non-profit and does not have “reporters” per se. I would put Novosti in a similar category, except for the serious limitation that it is in Russian. Anybody who has seen Novosti realizes, even without being able to read it, that its coverage of certain subjects is outstanding. That’s a result of both their access to Russian projects and the quality of their staff. Several years ago I was leafing through an issue and saw an entire article dedicated to describing the American military space organizational hierarchy. That’s the kind of article that I’ve never seen in an English-language publication.
In general, probably the best near-real-time news source that makes a good compromise between timeliness and depth is Space News. Medium-size articles by knowledgeable reporters published once a week. If you want daily information, however, you have to resort to the web, and there the options are also limited. Space.com does a pretty decent job, and it trades off of its connection to Space News (a good and bad thing–it includes some SN articles online, but clearly not all of them; as a sidenote, the SN article archive search function is lousy). But if you want to be very well informed, you have to read multiple sites and always be looking for information. There’s no single publication that can satisfy a substantial amount of the need for high quality space reporting. Then again, Space Online could not do that in its heyday either.
Dwayne, in its heyday Space Online tended to focus on launch and human spaceflight operations, and specifically Cape/KSC launch operations. Although we did a good job of giving Ariane some exposure it wasn’t otherwise getting in the US at the time. But you’re right, given the breadth of space topics out there no one site ideally collected it all in terms of original reporting, then or now.
That said, with a nod to Jeff, I don’t know what I would do without spacetoday.net, both now and in my reporting days.
Mr. Banke wrote:
“in its heyday Space Online tended to focus on launch and human spaceflight operations, and specifically Cape/KSC launch operations.”
That’s true, and I don’t think that this subject is covered as well as it should be. Spaceflightnow.com does a pretty good job, but they tend to focus on launches, not really _operations._ So you won’t find much information there on what is going on between launches. NASAspaceflight.com has managed to score a few scoops about shuttle return to flight that nobody else seems to have gotten.