Stuff.co.nz:
History and Production
Stuff.co.nz is a New Zealand website created by Independent Newspaper Ltd (INL) and published in 2000, the owner of the website is Stuff Limited. The name – www.stuff.co.nz- means “a copywriter’s dream” which described by the company’s internet manager, Mike Wierzbicki. (Karyn, 2000) The site currently sits sixth in the Alexa rank, it also won the Newspaper Publishers’ Association awards “Best News Website” for 2010 and 2011. It also has its own mobile phone news service and dedicated mobile site. As a news site, stuff.co.nz have more than 500 journalists to ceaselessly publish the news all aspects. The site also cooperates with some local and global news websites or broadcasting station to meet the requirement of all readers with more comprehensive news every day.
Target Audience Demographics
The target audience of stuff.co.nz are New Zealanders, the site would like to help them clearly and to reveal both their national imperfections and the features that deserve highlighting. (Stuff, 2018) For the news sections, stuff.co.nz divided all the news with National, World, Business, Opinion, Sport, Entertainment, Life & Style, Travel and Motoring. According to the data information, although there are some data different between different news section, people of 25-54 age groups are the most common users of this site, and 52% of them are females, 48% are males. It seems like people have a higher annual household income more likely to read the news. Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand, and 33% of the readers are living in there. They are the target audiences of stuff.co.nz. (Stuff Audience Statistics, 2018)
Nine.com.au
History and Production
Nine.com.au is an Australian news website created by Nine Entertainment Co. that launched in 1997, the original name is Ninemsn but has been changed in June 28th,2016. It is a venture combined with all the online assets of Microsoft and all the media assets of PBL (Now Nine Entertainment Co.), including the Nine Network, Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) and other PBL assets. Nine.com.au is a network of sites right now, it includes 9News, Nine’s Wide World of Sports and 9Honey. (Nineentertainmentco.com.au, 2016) A big change for the site is Microsoft sold its 50% stake of Mi9 to Nine Entertainment Company in 2013, at the same time, Mi9 changed its brand to Nine Digital. (Nine Entertainment Co. annual report 2014) It means all the stock of Nine.com.au belongs to Nine Entertainment Co., and Nine Entertainment Co. is a media industry. In December of 2018 Nine merged with Fairfax Media creating Australia’s largest locally owned media company with investments spanning television, video on demand, print, digital, radio, and real estate classifieds. Nine.com.au belongs to Nine’s assets. (Nineengtertainmentco.com.au,2019) According to the Alexa rank, the ranking of Nine.com.au is 2209. (Alexa,2019)
Target Audience Demographics
Nine.com.au aiming to cater to millions of Australians who visit the site and attract more new audiences. The major capital cities of Nine News are Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Looking at on average weekly audience and on average audience both the calendar and survey year, Nine’s east coast bulletins are No.1. (Terry, 2018) Nine.com.au looks forward to more younger audiences, the target audiences of most sections of the site are people who are 25 to 54. But programming on 9Gem is targeting at people aged 55 plus, as the newest channel, 9Life’s target audience is females aged from 18 to 54. Actually, because of the brand reorganized in November 2016, expect 9 Finance and 9Pickle, all the other sections are aiming to female audiences, including 9Coach, 9Elsewhere, 9TheFix, 9Homes, 9Honey, 9Kitchen, and 9Lifestyle. (Ward, 2016)
News: Top Facebook Executives Leave
Nine.com.au
Nine.com.au published a piece of news about Top Facebook Executives Leave on March 14th including a video and a hyperlinking. The main topic of the news is talking about the leave of two top executives and the global outage, but the video, in the beginning, is “Who is Mark Zuckerberg?” which introduce Mark Zuckerberg’s personal biography and a little story about how to establish Facebook. The video is an example of placing video for engagement metrics sake that may make readers stay longer on the site, it seems like people get more information from the news. But it is really confusing, and I don’t think the video is related to the news. The video is automatically played when people clicked and started to read the news, and people must be attracted by the story of Mark Zuckerberg. “Time on page” seems like a good measure of engagement than “reach”, perhaps it is not entirely. (Andrew, 2016) The video has little relationship with the news, it will be more helpful to add some public biographies of the two departing executives, even though a video to quickly describe the event. Because adding a brief introduction of two departing executives would help readers more clearly understand the story. Mark Zuckerberg’s video will be a distraction that makes readers focus on other things, but the writer should give more information that may help readers clearly and quickly understand the news content.
There are some sharing icons of Facebook, Twitter, Mail and More under the video. It is a good way for readers to do a media interactivity with follow, share, retweet, like and comments. (Bradshaw, 2018) It may encourage more people to pay attention to the news and share their thoughts.
There also has a link to the data of Facebook problems with “DownDetector”. I think it will be better if the article just shows a picture of data rather than a link to another website. Because the data graph is more directly and quickly showed the information people need, and the linking website has many others’ comments that are more attractive. The structure of the news is the classic inverted pyramid – from most to least important. (Alysen, 2012) People get used to getting the information online because it is convenient and fast, they can choose to read the information they need from the news. Put the important points in front of the whole article is a good way for people quickly getting information.
To sum up, the article should delete the video about Mark Zuckerberg which isn’t relevant to the news and add a link to public biographies for the two departing executives or write a brief related introduction. Directly showing the data graph of Facebook problems rather than a link will be more effective. Inverted pyramid structure is good using in the article.
Stuff.co.nz
Stuff.co.nz also have a piece of news about the two top Facebook executives, but it is clearer and easier to understand. In the first part of the news, the writer states the event with the terse style of writing. For web writing, writers should ensure the writing demonstrates brevity unless it is a longform piece of journalism. (Brafshaw,2018) People get used to gaining the information online, and most people don’t have time or patience to read a long report, a concise article contains all the important points will be helpful.
The links of three related stories in the news. (Screenshot source: stuff.co.nz.)
The writer puts three links in the middle part of the article which is attractive but unsuitable. The links are related to the stories of the event which are helpful for people to understand. But there’s more information after the links, people may be attracted by the links before they finish reading the article. It would be better to put the links at the end of the article. But there also has a picture in the middle of the article. It is a good example of Scannability principle by breaking up text with images that will engage readers to stay longer on the article. (Bradshaw,2018)
A good link should be succinct and unambiguous. (Bradshaw, 2018) The hyperlinking should link with a short link phrase, maybe linking with “privacy-focused” mission would be better.
Conclusion
Stuff.co.nz shows people a good piece of news which is succinct and practical, even though it has some small inadequacies, the readers can roundly realize the whole event, they can also selectively read more related information. Compared with stuff.co.nz, the news of nine.com.au is a little confusing. The article is good, but the video shows in the beginning is really annoying.
References
About Stuff (2018), Retrieved from:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/about-stuff/100920263/about-stuff
About us Nine, Retrieved from:
https://www.nineentertainmentco.com.au/about-us
Alysen, B. (2012). The news story structure. In Reporting in a Multimedia World : An introduction to core journalism skills (2nd ed., pp. 173–191).
Bradshaw, P. (2018). Writing for the Web. In The Online Journalism Handbook: Skills to survive and thrive in the digital age (pp. 72–98). Routledge.
Scherer, K. (2000), Online launch for INL ‘stuff’, Retrieved from: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=141822
Hayes, A. (2016), Mumbrella.com.au: Ninemsn brand set to disappear as Nine renames site,Retrieved from: https://mumbrella.com.au/nine-rebrand-digital-news-assets-ninemsn-banner-366340
Stuff media kit 2018, Retrieved from:
https://advertise.stuff.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Stuff-Media-Kit-Jan-2018.pdf
Terry Stuart, Nine Network 2016 Ratings Report, Retrieved from:
https://www.nineentertainmentco.com.au/2016/11/28/09/28/nine-network-2016-ratings-report
Nineentertainmentco.com.au, (2016) Nine Drives A Deeper Connection With Two New Audience Data Products
https://www.nineentertainmentco.com.au/2016/09/12/11/24/media-release-two-new-data-
Nine Entertainment co. annual report 2014,Retrieved from:https://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20141007/pdf/42sqt724zt5g78.pdf
Raso, A. (2016) How to Measure Engagement the Right Way, Retrieved from:
https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2016/03/measure-engagement-right/
Ward,M. (2016) Mumbrella.com:Nine unites verticals under 9Honey network umbrella as Helen McCabe seeks better TV and digital integration, , Retrieved from:
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