Suggestions in telling the story of “Sole Survivor” in Ethiopian Airlines crash

online news suggestions

screenshot of the survivor's ticket in Ethiopian Airlines crash news.
Screenshot of the survivor's ticket in Ethiopian Airlines crash news. source: CBS

The Ethiopian Airlines crash dominates the headlines recently, I decided to choose a news story from Buzzfeed, a digital-born publication, to give some improvement suggestions.

NEWS RESOURCE:

Buzzfeed: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/maryanngeorgantopoulos/man-missed-ethiopian-airlines-flight-302

  • The content needs to be less repetitive and images have to achieve language-free

About content, the Buzzfeed headline is concise and detailed, but repeating the headline information in the first and second paragraphs may reduce the reader’s interest in continuing reading.

 

Screen shot of first paragraph in Ethiopian Airlines crash news.
Source: www.buzzfeednews.com/                                                                                                          

 

About the image, the feature Facebook post was captioned in Greek, which could not give the provide a smooth reading service for english-speaking readers, it could be translated into English (Click on the picture to see the translation).

Screen shot of the feature facebook post in Ethiopian Airlines crash news.
Source: www.buzzfeednews.com/

 

Moreover, the Buzzfeed lacks relevant news links because this is a personal account.

Screen shot of relevant news link in Ethiopian Airlines crash news.
Source: www.buzzfeednews.com/
  • Better advertising placement or less advertising insertion

In terms of advertising layout, The Buzzfeed, as a digital born service, has one of the major financial sources to support its operation. Therefore, advertisements are too much inserted (often appearing in the article) and very eye-catching (colorful and in the form of moving pictures), which could cause the reader’s attention to be easily distracted.

Screen shot of advertising in Ethiopian Airlines crash news
Source: www.buzzfeednews.com/

 

Regarding the reader’s participation, the Buzzfeed opened the reader review area which is good.

Screen shot of the comment area in Ethiopian Airlines crash news.
Source: www.buzzfeednews.com/

 

About Yahui Gong 5 Articles
major is the master of media practice in the university of Sydney. Contact me at Twitter @RikaGong

1 Comment

  1. Good observations Rika. If you read the assignment instructions you’ll see you only had to talk about one story in the first blog post, so I’ll just make comments on the Buzzfeed story. Yes it has few links, but as it’s a personal account there is not much to link to. I found it confusing that the feature Facebook post was captioned in Greek, which didn’t help readers of an English language service. I would have had that post translated, photoshopped it onto a screenshot and then linked to the original in the first paragraph or so, which the reporter did.

    In terms of your web-writing: please embed any links instead of spelling out the URL, and make your links open in new tabs. You needed to give your feature image a caption, copyright details and alt text. Try not to use bold text phrases, which can be confused with links. Don’t forget to use your precede (subheading field below post) to promote your post, rather than just alluding to its topic. Finally please upload an image of yourself to your blog bio to elicit trust from your readers.

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