I analyzed an article on BuzzFeed which is about air cabin crew being arrested because of bringing $21 million-worth drugs into Australia.
There is only one hyperlink in this article, which linked to an ABC News article that reported more details on the arresting. However, the BuzzFeed article was more like a summary of the ABC News one, rather than had its own viewpoint of the story.
In the article, it mentioned that police had seen a re-emergence of heroin use in Victoria. I expected a link here to give evidences of the actual number of heroin use and reports about fatal overdoses of heroin. I suggested using “re-emergence” and “fatal overdoses” as link phrases.
The image in this article lacked a caption to explain who the person was in the image. Although it cited that the image came from abc.net.au, it was just a screenshot of a video that Victoria Police saying the drug syndicate has been operating for over five years. It would be better if BuzzFeed linked to the original video, not a screenshot without caption that confused readers.
Overall, this article needed to improve the choice of images and links. Also, besides social media share buttons, there is no other user interaction on the website page. I would like to create a comment area under the article that let readers discuss the story.
Interesting observations Ariel. This story does look like a rewrite of the ABC story, and the feature image certainly does need a caption. I agree some strategic links could be useful too, although the link phrase I’d use for background on heroin use in Victoria is “heroin use in Victoria”. And yes- the press conference video would have been more engaging than the video – but perhaps Buzzfeed didn’t have access to it because they didn’t attend? Crime stories are never opened to comments, because readers discussion could prejudice prosecutions, commit defamation or contempt of court.
To improve your online delivery for Assignment 1, you need to set a feature image and give it a title, a caption with copyright details and alt text label. You also need to ensure keyword tags are used for external Google discovery – so are relevant to the story, not the same as the category tag. Assignment 1 is not the phrase people would use to discover content about this topic. Try drug smuggling, Malindo Air, Operation Sunrise, drug syndicate. Also you needs a headline which includes the keywords in your story e.g. Malindo Air drug syndicate story needs improvement.
For this next assignment post don’t forget to:
– Use your precede (subheading field below post) to promote your post, rather than saying what is already in the category tag.