My chosen articles
https://www.canstar.com.au/home-loans/landlord-increase-rent/
The main content of the two selected articles is in the context of the skyrocketing rent prices in Australia, if the landlord wants to increase the rent, how the tenant can protect their legal rights, and whether the landlord’s behavior is illegal.
The first news is selected from SBS World News, SBS World News, operated by the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), provides users with news coverage and coverage of current affairs, including topics such as politics, business, sports, entertainment and international news. SBS was established by the Australian government in 1978. As early as 1980, SBS set up a news channel, SBS News launched on 12 June 2002. Although part of the funding of SBS is sponsored by the government, according to the Special Broadcasting Service Act 1991, ‘Except as otherwise provided by or under this or any other Act, the SBS and its Board are not subject to direction by or on behalf of the Commonwealth Government.’ This means that the government cannot interfere with any news published by SBS, and SBS has independent editorial rights. As one of the most influential TV stations in Australia, the commercial value of SBS world News is huge. SBS World News was founded to create a diverse community platform and news channel for people of all races in Australia. Therefore, its audience includes Australians of every cultural background, with high audience engagement. Secondly, whether it is on the homepage or the page of an independent article, there are often advertisements in the blank part next to the news, and the placement of advertisements has created huge revenue for SBS World News.
Educational advertisements on news pages
The second article is from Canstar, a Financial Comparison website in Australia. Canstar is Australia’s biggest financial comparison site. Founded in 1992, the site provides a series of comparison and calculation tools, collects data from a variety of products and compares them from the perspective of consumers. The fields involved include Banking, Insurance, Investing & Super, Business, etc. The homepage of the official website has also set up a separate unit for News. Most of the News here are reports and articles on Australian finance and business. Anyone can write for Canstar as long as they follow the site’s writing standards. The founder of Canstar is Andrew Willink, who transformed the retail finance industry in the 1990s in Australia and combined his experience in the banking industry to innovate in this field. According to data from its official website, about 2 million people visit the platform every year, and four out of five Australians know the Canstar brand. Canstar’s main way of gaining money is through sponsorship and promotion of products, and sometimes there are some paid advertisements. The greatest commercial value of Canstar is its popularity in the financial and commercial fields. The company is often interviewed by TV stations, and Canstar will also share the latest information on the Australian financial industry with TV stations and news channels.
Canstar’s business associates
As for the SBS world News article, it has a wide audience. SBS world News is a multicultural news platform with services in more than 60 languages. Anyone who can use a computer and a mobile phone can get the information they want from here. SBS world News usually provides translation options in different languages on the left side of the news page, and translated news is free. As of March 24, 2023, the news I selected has 5 languages to choose from. SBS world News has a complete media kit, which enables users and partners to understand them intuitively. If people google “SBS Media Kit”, there will be a very clear web page that introduces the impact of SBS on the audience, some statistics and contact information.
SBS Media Kit Page
In addition to SBS world News, the introductions of other SBS companies such as SBS Movie and SBS Audio will also appear clearly on this page. According to this website, 13 million Australians visit SBS media every month. The audience refers to the recipients of mass media information. The articles I selected are about the recent changes in the rental housing market in Australia and how tenants can protect their legal rights. People who read this article on SBS world News can be roughly divided into two types. The first type is those who read this article on the official website of SBS world News and are very interested in the topic, and the second is that people who have questions about it search for the topic in their browser and then see the news.Therefore, most of the people who read this article completely are landlords or tenants living in Australia.
Canstar does not have a separate website to introduce themselves, but Canstar has set up a section “About us” on the homepage to let audiences and potential partners know about them. In this unit, Canstar mentioned its sister company Star rating and introduced their working team. Canstar’s audience is mainly people in Australia and New Zealand who are interested in financial products, and they hope to manage their assets more wisely through Canstar. Although New is the last in the unit set up by Canstar, Canstar will also attach relevant news at the end of the pages of other units, which is undoubtedly a correct decision to increase the number of news views.
These two news articles have explained in detail about the restrictions on whether the landlord can increase the rent during the lease period in each state of Australia. Both of the two articles have completely sorted out the information released by the state government. They are two informative article. However, according to the knowledge points in the reading, these two articles still need to be improved. First of all, neither of these two articles has a reader comment or discussion area. Although they both have the function of sharing to social media, setting up a comment area is important for news web pages. Setting up a comment area can increase the interaction between the author and the audience, and the audience can also discuss news topics. For these two articles, if the policy changes, there will be audiences or authors in the comment area update the information in real time. If there are inappropriate remarks, the author or SBS world News, Canstar can delete them at any time. Second, Multimedia is missing in the Canstar published article. Journalism without photographs is like writing without verbs (Mark Briggs). Although these are two informative articles, adding multimedia can still allow the audience to understand the content of the article more intuitively and increase the interest of the article, making the layout of the text part look less compact. However, for this type of journalism, Autonomy is very important because writers need to understand government regulations and incorporate them into their articles. So if authors have team members to help them do a second review before publishing, their articles will be more perfect.
In the article published by SBS World News, the author added many hyperlinks, readers just click on these icons to browse another news related to this article. In online news, hyperlinks are often paste and combination of relevant news, providing readers with fast and comprehensive news products, enabling people to obtain information more comprehensively, understand relevant news, events and backgrounds, which provides the conditions for audience to obtain a large amount of relevant information quickly and simply. In the article published by Canstar, I personally like the ending part very much. The author attaches the appeal URL of each state. If any tenants think that their rights have been violated after reading the article, they can use the link provided by the author for the next step. I noticed that the author of this article, Nicola Field, is an independent writer who writes from a consumer/reader perspective, so her articles are very popular with those who browse the Canstar website regularly.
Overall both articles are informative and provide valuable insights into tenants’ rent increases during their tenancy, with the SBS article focusing more on the legal aspects of the issue and providing detailed information on tenants’ rights. Canstar’s article, on the other hand, gives a broader overview of the issue and gives tenants tips for negotiating rent increases. Audiences who encounter related problems can read both articles together to find the most suitable solution for them.
Bibliography
Special Broadcasting Service Act 1991. (n.d.). Retrieved March 21, 2023, from https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2014C00736
Www.sbs.com.au. (n.d.). Retrieved March 22, 2023, from https://www.sbs.com.au/aboutus/sites/sbs.com.au.aboutus/files/sbs_annual_report_2021-2022.pdf
Australia’s biggest financial comparison site. Canstar. (2023, March 22). Retrieved March 22, 2023, from https://www.canstar.com.au/?si=&gclid=CjwKCAjwzuqgBhAcEiwAdj5dRqUEkUzQMaDEB5kH6VHzLd1EZt1Sk8SCR0mLMmfqg5se6WvwnBoGMRoCvEsQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
Bradshaw. (2018). Writing for the web. In The Online Journalism Handbook (2nd ed., pp. 72–98). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315761428-4
Bradshaw P. Finding leads and sources online. In: The Online Journalism Handbook. 2nd ed. Routledge; 2018:51-71. doi:10.4324/9781315761428-3
Martin, F., & Murrell, C. (2021). Negotiating the conversation: How journalists learn to interact with audiences online. Journalism Practice, 15(6), 839–859. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2021.1907211
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