Online News Writing Exercise 1: Mercury News

Online News Writing Exercise 1

I am surveying the Mercury’s website.

a) Do the news items reflect immediacy?
They do for the most part. The stories on the homepage are up to date. There is one about a wildfire going on in Santa Barbara and of course a couple pieces on the upcoming Star Trek movie. Sadly, the latter may actually be a top news story at the moment.

b) Does the site try to help readers save time?
The sections are all immediately available at the top of the page as well as many direct links to top stories throughout the rest of the page. This would be very convenient for readers to find what they want to read about even with a limited amount of time.

c) Is it quick and easy to get information?
Yes, I explained it in the previous answer.

d) Does it provide both visual and verbal information?
I believe it is slightly lacking with the visuals, but the ratio between text and illustration on the website is about the same as the actual newspaper, except they shrink the photos for the web.

e) Do the stories contain lists and bullets to make them easier to scan?
Yes. Under the lead story and the other two or three main stories there are sub-sections for the links to the top stories of every news section in the paper. The coolest part about the homepage is the box on the right side that has the top five most viewed stories in the past 12 hours. I think it is a great way for people who aren’t looking for a particular subject to find news that matters.

f) Are the stories broken into "chunks"?
Yes. I checked three stories and none of them have more than a two sentence paragraph. They is a paragraph break after each chunk, and not a single paragraph ran over four lines.

g) Do stories provide hyperlinks to additional information?
Yup. There are occasional in-text links to other sites or past articles, but most of the related links appear in the sidebar or at the end of the article.

h) Are there opportunities for readers to "talk back"?
They have a contact section, but I did not find an obviously available link to reader response.

i) Does the site use multimedia to enhance understanding and add appeal?
Honestly, the site is quite primitive compared to other websites. But I have heard many Mercury News guest speakers and I believe that they are very conservative toward using the internet as their main communication vehicle, so I am not surprised.