Hachette Book Group Cancels Woody Allen’s Memoir is written by Carla Herreria Russo for the Huffington Post. The article is 360~ words and is labelled a developing story. It opens with a two-minute summary video from The Hollywood Reporter. Not an appropriate source, and the video automatically plays and floats around the screen as users scroll which is off-putting. A header image of Woody Allen and/or Ronan and Dylan Farrow would be more suitable.
Only two hyperlinks, excluding Dylan Farrow’s Twitter statement shared in-text, lead to other Huffington Post articles about the situation. As advantageous as it is to link readers to these articles to keep engagement up, it would be more credible to link to the ‘primary’ sources, e.g. Ronan’s and Hachette’s statements.
When the text is highlighted, a small menu opens that allows for users to share the article on social media. Not needed as accessible sharing options are next to the article title. Sponsored ads with little to no relevancy to the story surround the article; the ads should be more curated and relative. It seems this article was published in a rush just to compete with other news outlets—the story, and its gravity, is not important.
Good choice of story and great suggestions for linking to primary sources instead of related stories on the same site.
Why do you think The Hollywood Reporter is an unreliable or inappropriate source of information?
You use some of the techniques for good online writing, e.g. simple language and the inclusion of links, but could also use shorter paragraphs, bullet points, and subheadings to enhance scannability, even in a short post. Your links should open in new tabs.
You have chosen to use the HuffPo headline, which makes your post title SEO-friendly, and you’ve assigned appropriate key word tags to enhance the SEO.
In your analysis of online journalism, use some of the naming conventions outlined in Bradshaw and the other readings.
All images – even screenshots – should be captioned, with attribution for the copyright holder/source (ideally in a hyperlink).