For this assignment, you will need to pick one current news story. Follow coverage of this story in a print newspaper, a television news program, and an online news site. In a blog entry, critique each medium's coverage and offer a summary of the strengths and weaknesses.
I've decided to talk about the Gulf oil spill since it is so easy to find news about it. I personally haven't followed much of the disaster since it's so frustrating to me. It has been like month and still nothing is getting done. I noticed on cnn.com there is a whole front page section that leads to various news stories about the subject. People want to know about the spill and know about it right away. CNN is cleary smart by placing this area on their home page. Other obvious front page articles were about the World Cup. On tv I've noticed that it is still major talk but doesn't take the leading story as I feel it shouldn't. More current events should take the first story. For an online news site I decided to go against the grain and search google for 'online news' instead of like abc.com or foxnews.com or something. On the second page I found http://breakingnewsonline.net/ which might be the most bogus site I've been on since like 2004. It has a horrible layout and terrible pictures. I honestly couldn't even find anything about the spill on the front page which has like 50 articles about current news. I then decided to check the world page and nothing came up. Also, you can only search for something on the homepage as well which is a bad layout decision. This is page it gave me when I finally did do a search for 'gulf oil spill'... http://www.google.com/custom?domains=www.breakingnewsonline.net&q=gulf+oil+spill&sa=Search&sitesearch=www.breakingnewsonline.net&client=pub-6677911189251509&forid=1&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&safe=active&cof=GALT%3A%23008000%3BGL%3A1%3BDIV%3A%23336699%3BVLC%3A663399%3BAH%3Acenter%3BBGC%3AFFFFFF%3BLBGC%3A336699%3BALC%3A0000FF%3BLC%3A0000FF%3BT%3AF8FAFB%3BGFNT%3A0000FF%3BGIMP%3A0000FF%3BFORID%3A1&hl=en
See for yourself how lousy this site is. It is amzing that this site even exists and there is definately a reason people stick to the more common news sites. Till tommorow, Adios!
hey Nick
ReplyDeleteI too wrote about the Gulf Oil Spill. Probably the most common news article out there. I also agree with you on CNN. There are some many links you can click on to get more in depth coverage, pictures, videos, interviews etc. to get the whole story. Not just one journalists story