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| The Washington Post in D.C. |
The Washington Post is one of the most popular news outlets in the
United States and across the world.
The Miami Herald and the Seattle Times are both very popular and well respected news outlets within their respective cities but they fail to achieve the
same type of acclaim and popularity nationally and internationally that the
Washington Post receives. This lack of broader appeal is due to the online newspapers' focus on local news. While the Washington Posts' local news revolves around politics and other national concerns, the Miami Herald's and the Seattle Times' local news is just that, local news.
The Washington Post covers local news, like the other two websites, but
since the city they report in happens to be the capital, the news is of
national importance. The Washington Post
covers politics extensively, with stories about Republicans, government
policies, and reforms. The Miami Herald
on the other hand puts emphasis on their entertainment. The stories or articles that have the biggest
fonts and use pictures are stories about “laughs via twitter” or “Dwayne Wade’s Fashion Event.” The Seattle Times
appears to be your regular local newspaper with top stories like “Giraffe babygets his official name” and “Carnation murder trials in limbo as costs soar.”
Despite their massive differences they do cover similar stories. All three homepages covered the agreement in
the U.N. over Syria’s chemical weapons.
There was however, a huge difference in the way they promoted the story.
In the Washington Post, their story on the U.N.’s agreement was found to
the left in medium sized font with a small abstract underneath, and right above
another story about Syria’s weapon situation. In the Miami Herald, their U.N.’s agreement story was found underneath the
breaking news section in small font next to a big picture of a Miami Dolphins
player celebrating. The Seattle Times' story was second in the breaking news section behind a 1 million dollar theft story.
What I found to be very interesting was that at the bottom of the Seattle Times’
story on the U.N.’s agreement they acknowledge that they used material from The
Washington Post, while the Miami Herald credits Vladimir Isachenkov and Mike
Corder from the Associated Press for being contributors to the article. This must be due to number of skilled writers
in the field of politics in the Washington Post staff. The three online newspapers displayed where
there focus is with the stories they try to get you to read the most. For the Washington Post it’s politics, for
the Miami Herald it is entertainment, and for the Seattle Times it’s the regular
all around local news.
The headline for this post is clear and direct. The writer immediately tells the reader which newspapers he chooses to talk about and gives a little bit of background of each. It is also well structured. As I was reading the post, it was easy for me to understand and follow the main ideas for each paragraph. Having good diction was also a bonus. The main idea that I took from this post is that all three news sites: The Washington Post, Miami Herald, and Seattle Times are similar yet the way they specifically choose their topics and talk about their local news is what differentiates them from each other. He continues to explain that the Washington Post gives a “broader appeal” to readers because they cover national and international news than the other two giving more importance to their local entertainment news.
ReplyDeleteThe writer pointed out what he thought was interesting was how certain news sites use material from other news sites and I would suggest saying why/how it interests him instead of guessing for the reason. The links were very helpful in supporting the writer’s points. Hyperlinking the links made the post flow nicely as a whole. The post looks neat and clean with the arrangement of paragraphs with logos of each news site although images/video from news stories would also be neat. I would suggest elaborating on what main points are related to the readings. All in all, this post I think, is well written.
Reading the post, it was very clear and smoothly flowing. The headline of the post was structured around the main point of the post, mentioning the three newspapers that were going to be discussed, including the issue of reporting local news among all three newspapers. The main point in this post was how, unlike the Washington Post, newspapers such as the Miami Herald and the Seattle Times focus more on local news as opposed to broader national news. One of the reasons for that was attributed to the fact that the Washington Post is situated in the nation’s capital, so their “local” news is technically national news. It was nice that the author mentioned the similarity between the three newspapers, when he discusses the example of how they each covered the U.N.’s agreement over Syria’s chemical weapons. Yet even though all three reported the story, the author quickly points out the fact that the news was situated differently on each of the three different newspaper websites, based on their perceived relevance for the newspaper. He also mentioned how the Miami Herald and the Seattle Times both used other newspaper resources to come up with their Syria story.
ReplyDeleteOverall, I believe this post was well written and structured. The author supported his main point throughout the story, never diverging from it. The only suggestion I would have would be in maybe rewriting the headline. I would suggest making the headline of the post more specific, giving the reader exactly what will be discussed. For example, it could directly state in the headline something along the lines of: More popularity exists for the Washington Post, who focus on national news as opposed to the Miami Herald and the Seattle Times who focus more on entertainment and local news.