Here’s a little something we noticed recently, though we’re not sure how long it’s been going on.
When MSNBC touts it First Person citizen journalism initiative, it, like other networks with similar offerings, displays a full-screen graphic with the various ways to send material in.
However, MSNBC’s been listing the e-mail address as FIRST PERSON@MSNBC.COM (with a space between “first” and person”). Unfortunately, that address won’t work. Many e-mail programs and services flag this error and prevent the user from sending off the message, but it seems strange that MSNBC would chose to space out the words instead of running it either as “firstperson” or “FirstPerson.” Sure, many users are probably smart enough to figure out there’s no space, but it just seems unnecessarily confusing.
The channel has gone a step farther by also spelling out the word “at,” as shown in this screen grab. It is neat how the MSNBC.com logo is integrated into the e-mail address visually, but it’s still a strange choice to not use the “@” symbol.
