Bush mailboxes inspired by Aussie backyard items, and each with a story to tell
Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-12/australian-outback-mailboxes-australia-post-toilet/12043874
The title is inaccurate and not completely consistent with the content.
- The headline says that each mailbox has a story to tell, but the news doesn’t mention the mailbox’s story. Stories about mailboxes should be included to make the article more interesting.
Poor interactivity, no place for reader’s comments.
- There is no place under the news for readers to interact with the article, and readers are not allowed to comment on the content of the article. Poor interactivity may lead to a decline in future readership.
The media form is single, the content is a little monotonous.
- The media form of the whole article is single, with only photos beside each paragraph. Now more and more people will watch the news more likely to browse photos and videos, dynamic and vivid content will be more able to stimulate the reader’s interest in reading.
There are few links throughout the content, making it difficult to provide readers with relevant backstory.
- There are no links in the article that are sufficient to explain the back story of the current content. In order for an article to be more credible, it needs to have sufficient background so that the reader can grasp the context of the whole article more clearly
Amori I think you have already realised that this is not a news story – it’s a human interest story. The “stories” referred to in the headline are told in some of the photos, and also by mailbox creators in the text.
Stories on the ABC News website don’t offer readers the ability to comment. They use other engagement devices, such as online forms for asking questions, or sharing buttons.
When analysing online journalism, refer to the readings for relevant naming conventions. For example, when discussing links, use the term hypertextuality. You might also consider other features and techniques of good online journalism, including multimediality, brevity, ‘chunking’ for scannability, etc. Also consider the SEO of both the ABC story and your own blog post: you use two key word tags, but could use more (e.g. Western Australia).
The link you provide to your story isn’t a link – it’s simply the URL in text form, which means I needed to copy and paste it into a tab. The link should be embedded in a phrase that indicates where the reader is being taken, not spelled out as a full URL. The link should also open in a new tab.
I agree that video could have made the story a lot more engaging – Ray Savage looks like he’s probably great talent. Hearing the voices of the storytellers in this feature would bring it alive, and save it from being (as you describe it) ‘monotonous’.