Look up one story from two different news websites, briefly discuss how the story is presented on its headline, lead, structure, sources and multimedia elements. Ask yourself whether the story is a complete piece and is there a room for improvement. Explain the reason for improvement.
News Story 1 (Reuters):
Headline
For readers who do not follow the context of this news, they might not understand what Nord Stream 2 is. But this could be a good way to attract readers into reading more in the news as well.
Lead
This news story uses summary lead as it is the best way to convey hard news. By including 5W1H in the lead, the reader is able to understand the main point of this news story just by reading the lead.
Structure
This news story uses inverted pyramid style as its structure. The story starts with most important points proceeding to least important points as it goes by. The structure also flows in a way that it follows the order of the news story, this helps keep a smooth reading experience for the readers, as the news story does not jump here and there randomly.
Sources
This news had strong direct primary sources which were government official, words from the leaders of the 3 countries (US, Russia, France) involved together with Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of Germany during their respective meetings or press conference. One additional source used to help provide context to this news was Steven Sokol, president of the American Council on Germany.
Multimedia elements
Only two photos of US President Joe Biden meeting Germany’s Chancellor and one short video of them speaking and answering questions together at a press conference are available as multimedia elements in this news story. It would be better if more multimedia elements of other related events were published as well, it would help bring more visual aid to its readers.
Improvement
The news story can emphasize more on how the meeting of other related country’s leaders went, this can help provide context on the standpoint of leaders from other countries based on this international affairs between two countries. So, increasing both sources and multimedia elements is needed in order to catch up with the amount of content to be conveyed to produce a more complete and good news piece.
News Story 2:
Headline
This headline is more straightforward and easy to understand compared to one by Reuters, it uses the word gas pipeline instead of its name Nord Stream 2. Because of its directness and strong words such as “threatens” used, it also adds a sense of seriousness to this headline that readers can feel.
Lead
This news story also uses summary leads to convey the hard news but AP added a follow up response sentence. This not only left the news lead with more information but added interest to the news story as this news story is about escalating pre-war tension between the two countries. Back of forth fightback response of the countries help hook readers into reading more about this news story.
Structure
This news story similarly uses inverted pyramid style as its structure as well. The story starts with most important points moving to least important points. This can help readers identify which are the points that they should care more about as they read through.
Sources
This news had strong direct primary sources as well which are government official, words from the leaders of the 3 countries (US, Russia, France) involved together with the Chancellor of Germany during their respective meetings or press conference. But compared to the news by Reuters, AP added more sources such as White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Britain and energy experts to provide their opinion on this news issue as well. This helps provide more information to the news for readers to read and have a wider perspective to the news issue.
Multimedia elements A mixture of 19 multimedia elements (6 videos, 13 photos) were used in this news story. From US President Joe Biden meeting with Germany’s Chancellor to Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting up with French President Emmanuel Macron to the military situation of both Ukraine and Russia, all are well covered with sufficient multimedia elements.
Improvement
It is good that they included a lot of news sources and quotations in this news story but on the bad side, this might be a bit overwhelming for certain readers. It is true that the readers are able to know more about the full story of this news issue, but this might cause fatigue more quickly for readers as there is a lot of information to follow and process. Readers might just give up and stop reading, and the news agency would not want this.
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