Comparative online journalism analysis:
ABC Online News and Huffpost/Huffington post’s cover of Trump’s Tariff
Word count: 1461
ABC Online News:
Biography Survey
-Publishing conext
ABC is publicly owned (ABC, 2025). It is funded by the Australian Government (Australian Government, 2024). However, it is still considered as independent mainstream media because the government states that it would not intervene with ABC’s programming matters, but its funding does support ABC’s business operations (Australian Government, 2024). Updated news from ABC suggests that ABC revenue has an annual reduction of 150 million from the government (ABC, 2025). Suggesting its decreased reliance on government fundings.
ABC is established in 1932, it is established with the purpose “to deliver valued services that reflect and contribute Australian society, culture and identity” (ABC, 2025). Its headquaters are in Utlimo Centre, Sydney. ABC started as a radio service but now it has transitioned into multi-platform meida (ABC, 2025). For example, television, radio and online (eg. Social media platforms) (Australian Government, 2023). It has multi-media news stories, radio, podcasts, and video news.
-Target user group /User Analysis
ABC targets all Australians but it is experiencing issues in gaining younger audience’s attention. According to the Australian Financial Review, more than 80% of the audience for “ABC’s marquee news program” are over 55 years old (Stefano, 2023, para 1). ABC claims that lacking young audience ia an issue that is facing all mainstream media, but in comparison, ABC is still better than other channels because its digital news services attracted more young Australians than others (Di-Stefano, 2023). However, newest data (2025) demonstrates that ABC reaches 80% of Australians every month (ABC, 2025).
Story Comparison: Australia defends pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme as US companies urge Trump to impose reciprocal tariffs
Writing Analysis/Content analysis:
The tone and style of the narrative is formal and sounds objective. The reporters used third person point of view to narrate how Trump’s tariffs will not affect Australin Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) because the Labor Ministers will not allow it (Dalzell et al., 2025). However, the word choices of the news article might be too formal considering that the target audience of ABC is all Australians. Even though this is a political report, phrases such as “run with the grievances” or “much-touted trade deficit” or “lopsided” are not friendly to diverse users (Dalzell et al., 2025). Additionally, the setence structure is also complex, may be hard for lay readers.
Additionally, the sources of incormation are hard to verify. There is no reference or hyperlinks to allow readers to track if the information is legitmate. According to Son (2020), have sources cited could make news online-friendly because it’s easier to look them up if journalists done it (p.32). Thus, when sources are unidentified, the accuracy and clarity of information become hard to evaluate.
The structure of the story flows well, the subdeadings breaking chunks of the text and allow readers to access the gist of the paragraphs.
Online Delivery Analysis
The following analysis will be using the BASIC principle from Bradshaw (2023).
-Brevity:
The length of paragraph is short, and there is also a use of chunking longer pieces using subheadings as well as images (Dalzell et al., 2025). The subheadings are enlarged, which effectivelly provides more structures to the article (Dalzell et al.,2025).
However, the article’s headline “Australia defends Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme as US companies urge Trump to impose reciprocal tariffs” is more than 55 words, which accroding to Bradshaw (2023) would be too long and harder to adapt to mobile services (Bradshaw, 2023, p. 78). The article’s overall length is 1004 words, which considered to be long if using the standard of 500 words (Bradshaw, 2023, p. 79).
-Adaptability
The length of the article as well as its heading makes it difficult to adapt to other media platforms such as social media, or technologies such as mobile phones. However, the story is multimedia storytelling, however, it only included images and texts. The images are not very informative because they are simply pictures of medicines (one picture) and minister talking (one picture).
-Scannability
The scannability of the article is good. There is a summary of the entire article provided in the begining as well as an image of medicine that informs the big idea of the article (Bradshaw, 2023, p.83). Effective use of subheadings makes it easier for readers to track main information (Bradshaw, 2023, p.83).
-Interactivity
Interactivity is lacking in the article (Bradshaw, 2023, p.86). No hyperlinks of related information (except for reporter’s contact information) can be found on texts, but there is a related coverage put on the right side of the page so readers can see other reporter’s writings on similar topic.
Screenshot of Dalzell et al., 2025)’s ABC’s news page’s link to another ABC article on the same topic.
However, audience can contact the reporters (their social media accounts) by clicking on the reporters name, this might be the only interactivity element of the article.
-Community & Conversation.
There is a lacking of sense of community because there is a lack of interactivity. No place to “comment” and “listen” (Bradshaw, 2023, p.87).
Technical Delivery Analysis
The technical delivery of the article is good. The article is easy to navigate with support of zero advertisement in between the lines and effective use of subheadings. The related news article posted on the same page is accessible.
Biography Survey
-Publishing conext
Huffpost is now owned by Buzzfeed, another digital born service (Lee and Hsu, 2021). It is a private company funded by individual investors (Lee and Hsu, 2021). When Huffpost is still Huffington post, it was established on may 2005 by Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer (Sarno, 2011). The current Buzzfeed’s mission is to help everyone to navigate the world and know how news afftect them (Huffpost, n.d).
The headquarters of Huffpost is in New York, United States.
-Target user group /User Analysis
Huffpost states in the mission that “Regardless of who you are, where you live or what you believe, you can count on HuffPost” (Huffpost, n.d). This indicates that the target user group is everyone around the globe. However, this specific article on Trump’s Tariff mainly discusses how Americans would be affected.
According to newest analysis by Similarweb (2025), the main age group of huffpost is between 55-64 years old. There are also more female audience (51.68%) than male audience (48.32%).
Writing Analysis/Content analysis: Fed Chair Blames Trump’s Tariffs For Pushing Up Inflation Again
The tone and writing style of the article is less formal, but still has a reporter tone. The use of words and sentence structure it employ makes the piece more accessible than ABC’s article. Additionally, the sources of the article is easy to check and are from credible sites. For example, it references AP news several times using hyperlinks. Other times the hyperlinks link to articles of related huffpost articles on the same topic, but there are one article that is unfunctional.
There is one video placed above the text, but it’s unfunctional and display “error loading” (Rugaber, 2025). Thus, readers cannot access such content. Other than the video, there is no additional image that could inform readers further about Trumps’ Tariffs.
Online Delivery Analysis
The following analysis will be using the BASIC principle from Bradshaw (2023).
-Brevity
The the length of paragraph is short, but a lack of subheadings make the information seem packed together. The article is more than 500 words, and thus, could be considerd as long based on Bradshaw’s (2023) standard (p.79). The heading is 51 words, which can be considered brieve (Bradshaw, p.78)
-Adaptablity:
The adpatablity of the article is manifested in its’ multimedia storytelling (Bradshaw, 2023, p.81). The problem is however, the video is not functional.
-Scannability
The scannability of the article is not good. Lack of subheadings, error in video, lack of bullet lists, and too much advertisments make the article harder to scann (Bradshaw, 2023, pp. 82-83). This makes the article very inaccessible to visually impaired audience (Bradshaw, 2023, p.83).
Screenshot of Rugaber( 2025)’s HuffPost page that includes advertisments
-Interactivity
The effective use of links or hyper links increase interactivity in this article (Bradshaw, 2023). Not only does these links lead to related news articles within Huffpost, but also other news sites such as AP news. Additionally, a link to Trump’s social media platform and his post is added.
-Community & Conversation.
The links provide a sense of community and conversation (Bradshaw, 2023, p.87). Especially the links to other Huffpost on the same topic (Trump’s Tariff) provides multiple perspectives and details of the story.
Technical Delivery Analysis
The technical delivery of the article is not good. The functionality such as working links to some news articles is bad. The media is not playable either. The abundant advertisments makes the navigation very hard.
References:
ABC. (2025). About the ABC: ABC History. ABC. https://www.abc.net.au/about/history
ABC. (2025). About the ABC: Who We Are. ABC. https://www.abc.net.au/about/who-we-are
ABC. (2025, Febuary 17). Response from ABC Chair Kim Williams to today’s News Corporation
article. ABC. https://www.abc.net.au/about/media-centre/correcting-the-record/response-from-abc-chair/104938140
Australian Government. (2024). Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). https://
Australian Government. (2023). Audience reach. Transparency Portal .https://
www.transparency.gov.au/publications/communications-and-the-arts/australian-broadcasting-corporation/australian-broadcasting-corporation-annual-report-2022-23/audience-data-%26-analysis-/audience-reach-
Bradshaw, P. (2023). The online journalism handbook : skills to survive and thrive in the digital
age (Third edition.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429321566
Dalzell et al. (2025, March 19). Australia defends Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme as US
companies urge Trump to impose reciprocal tariffs. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-19/australia-defends-pbs-us-pharma-urges-reciprocal-tariffs/105072750
Huffpost. (n.d) .About Us: OUR MISSION. Huffpost. https://www.huffpost.com/static/about-us
Lee, E.,& Hsu, T. (2020, November 19). BuzzFeed to Acquire HuffPost From Verizon Media. The
New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/business/media/buzzfeed-huffpost.html
Rugaber, C. (2025, March 19). Fed Chair Blames Trump’s Tariffs For Pushing Up Inflation Again.
Huffpost.https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bc-us-federal-reserve_n_67db564fe4b03fb9aaaa68b8
Sarno, D. (2011, Feburary 7). A brief history of the Huffington Post. Los Andeles Times.https://
www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2011-feb-07-la-fi-huffington-post-timeline-20110207-story.html
Similarweb. (2025, Feburary 2). Huffingtonpost. Similarweb.https://www.similarweb.com/website/
huffingtonpost.com/.
Stefano, D. M. (2023, July 16). Less than 8pc of the ABC’s flagship news viewers are under 40.
Financial Review. https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-marketing/less-than-8pc-of-the-abc-s-flagship-news-viewers-are-under-40-20230714-p5doc7
Son, J. (2020). ONLINE Journalism and Storytelling A Training and Learning Kit.
https://fojo.se/onlinejournalismkit.
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