Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Zephyrus analysis

After reading the features section of Zephyrus, I realized that there were many errors that would not have been made if the writers had gone through this journalism class. The article Perfect taste never goes out of style had a few significant errors that were easy to catch. First, one of people she interviewed was her sister. That doesn't look like they went out of their way to interview different people, and it also doesn't look to creditable. Also it is started of with a question, and that is not a good idea. People could respond no to it and stop reading. i liked the idea of the story, the follow through was the part that needed work. there were facts that helped the reader gain information about the topic that helped to understand what the writer was talking about.
The article Say bye bye bye to boy bands was also on the features page. It had a good lead, no questions or quotes, and overall was fairly entertaining and interesting to read. what i would criticize about it is that there is a lot of unnecessary information towards the top of the story. it should have been in the inverted pyramid formation, but there were still key details in the last paragraphs. i also know that the people that were interviewed were the writers friends, so it wouldn't be too hard to ask them a question, or just make it up and put their name next to the quote. Also one of the quotes was from an anonymous source. this is not reliable or trustworthy, for all we know the writer just wanted to make a point and put that quote in.
i (Still) choose you was the other article on the features page. This one appeals to the reader right away. They remember what toys they had when they were younger and are interested in it. What this article is lacking is organization. the quotes are towards the end, and that normally is not how professional articles are written. quotes intrigue readers and they give the story a face which makes people continue to read. If the quote is at the end, they might just stop reading the article all together. One good part of organization in this article was that the bottom part could have been cut off if necessary.
Overall i did enjoy reading Zephyrus because it informs you of what is going on in your school. Sure it may not be the best journalistic articles, but they get the message across, and that is what the people want.