Sunday, January 16, 2011

Strat5: News Judgment


For this exercise, I will be comparing my favorite print newspaper The Independent Florida Alligator, and my favorite online news source ESPN.com. I like the Alligator because it reminds me of my first days here at UF when everything was so surreal and I was still in disbelief about being in college. I also like it because I feel like I know what’s going on around campus with every flip of the page. As for ESPN.com, sports is my first love. And now that their Web site has stories paired up with video content, it’s hard moving onto another Web site. 

Their new judgments are very similar as in all new organizations with an obvious hierarchy of importance. The Alligator does a great job of choosing one or two important stories to run on the cover. It also publishes a wacky story at the bottom of every page which is a big hit with readers, because you don’t have to go far for a great read. For human interest stories and events that are not as important find their way on the inside with no problem. ESPN.com flag and adjacent list of important headlines gives me all the news I need at one glance. If I choose to watch video or read more, I can just click away. And when you do view more content, similar content is also a click away which makes visiting ESPN.com such a pleasure. 

As for differences, addressing audiences is the most obvious as the Alligator addresses the Gainesville and UF communities while ESPN caters for sports all over the world. ESPN has also created Web sites for certain US markets like New York, Boston and Dallas/Fort Worth to cater to smaller audiences. These new ventures are creating localized content for readers in these areas of the country and also giving readers more options on where to get their news from.

1 comment:

  1. check out AP style on website
    Fairly superficial / you need to elaborate. Show me some deep thinking like an editor.

    ReplyDelete