Blog Post | ‘Harvey Weinstein Was Just Found Guilty of Rape and Sexual Assault’ on digital news born site VICE.
Scannability: easy enough
The article begins with a bulleted list, providing the reader with an important overview of Weinstein’s charges in an easy-to-read format.
Overall, the article’s text was broken up well, but it was difficult to scan due to the lack of subheadings.
Multimediality: more advertising than relevant images
Larger chunks of text were broken up with advertisements, however, it would have been more effective to include relevant images, videos or even tweets around this highly discussed issue. Not only would this engage the reader better, but it would also convey useful information in a different way.
Hypertextuality: needs more work
There was only one link included in the entire article, which opens an article by the New York Times in a new tab. I would have embedded links to relevant articles previously written by VICE that would provide background information. For example, in this phrase: ‘Harvey Weinstein, the fallen Hollywood producer who sparked a cultural reckoning about sexual assault and harassment, was found guilty of rape and a criminal sexual act Monday’.
However, related articles do appear and stay on the right-hand side even while scrolling, nudging the audience to read on the issue further if interested.
Consider SEO in your analysis of the story. How SEO-friendly is VICE’s headline?
Could you suggest another key word tag or two VICE could use (e.g. Weinstein)?
When I first visited the page there was a post about UTIs (!) tagged ‘partner content’, or native advertising at the bottom of the story; today I get an almost infinite scroll of related Weinstein stories. How do you think those elements affect users’ experiences – do they detract or distract from the main news story?
For part 2 of the assignment be sure to refer to Bradshaw and other readings in your analysis.
Great use of links – they are embedded in text and open in new tabs; you have used relevant images to break up your text and have attributed them correctly and according to best practice; good use of subheadings, shorter paragraphs, and white space to make your post scannable; you have used relevant, SEO-friendly key word tags, and your own post title also uses appropriate key words. Good post.