Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Breaking News Story Headlines

Miamiherald.com and SunSentinel.com covered a breaking news story about a Coconut Creek woman who died early Wednesday after losing control of her pick-up truck on I-95. Though both media outlets recount the accident in great detail, I preferred the Sun Sentinel's headline, "Woman killed in I-95 wreck south of Cypress Creek Road identified" vs. the Herald's "Coconut Creek woman dies in I-95 crash", as it is more detailed and establishes a sense of closure. The Sun Sentinel's lede is also more effective, since it is jam-packed with important information. I noticed, however, that neither the Sun Sentinel nor the Miami Herald placed the (police) attribute in the lede's opening sentence when describing the accident.

It was interesting that SunSentinel.com featured a related links package at the bottom of the page, which included a photo gallery of vivid/graphic I-95 accident scenes called, "What a Wreck." Though this photo gallery didn't exactly hurt this story, it didn't exactly add anything to it either. I got the distinct impression that the Sun Sentinel reuses it whenever there is a story regarding highway crashes.

1 comment:

Suzanne Levinson said...

You are right about the 'wreck' gallery... and the Alicia Silverstone video... both examples of websites trying to capitalize on things readers like (celebrity, crashes) to look at.