BuzzFeed News about the coverage of China hotel collapse needs improvements

BuzzFeed News Headquarters (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty)

I have read the news from BuzzFeed about the event of China quarantined hotel collapse. This coverage is good overall, however, there are some problems it needs to be improved.

The first problem I found is the caption of this coverage.

The caption of this BuzzFeed news is too long, so it is hard for some people to understand what happened quickly. (Screencap Source: BuzzFeed News)

As you can see, this title is too long, which is not concise and clear. Some readers may not know what happened at the beginning unless they read the long caption carefully. Compared with a short, clear caption, the long title is not absorbing and attractive. If the caption is ‘At least 10 dead in China quarantine hotel collapse’, readers may easily understand what the whole coverage is about.

Another problem is the videos referred in this news. There are two videos from Twitter of People’s Daily, China. This is a bit repetitive. The second video is not that clear and does not show the details of rescue work.

This video is not clear and a bit repetitive with the first one. (Screencap Source: BuzzFeed News)

Therefore, the second video can be deleted or substituted by another one focusing on the rescue reported by South China Morning Post.

Moreover, the coverage should add descriptions of videos, like the descriptions of images.

Descriptions should be added in order to make it clear for readers to know what the video is about. (Screencap Source: BuzzFeed News)

‘The moment of hotel collapsing’ should be added under this video. Thus, readers can clearly and easily know what this video is about.

 

About Saiji Sun 6 Articles
Postgraduate student of Digital Communication and Culture in Sydney University; Interested in journalism and communication and wanna engage in a relevant career; Photograph lover Twitter: @isagesun Instagram: isagesun

1 Comment

  1. Your first point is that the ‘caption’ is too long – I think you mean the headline (the caption is the text under a photo). Yes, it is too long, and the headline you suggest is easier to understand and still contains the important key words.
    Your links are correctly embedded in text and open in new tabs, and even better, you link to an example of a video that would add to the story instead of repeating information already presented.
    You have used appropriate photos and they are correctly captioned and attribute the source of each.
    Regarding the description of what’s going on in the video, there is a sentence in the text preceding the embedded tweet that explains: Security video of the moment of collapse shows a huge cloud of dust and flashes of light as the building falls”, and a description is also in the text of the tweet, which would make a caption redundant.
    Your key word tags should be no more than 1-2 words long, so the ‘improvement of buzzfeed news about china hotel collapse’ might become #buzzfeed #china #hotel collapse, for example.
    Overall a good analysis and a well written post – you use online writing conventions well (i.e. short paragraphs, breaking up text with visual elements, lots of white space). In your next assignment use some of the appropriate naming conventions for the features and functions of online journalism (hypertextuality, multimediality, etc.)

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