Samantha Rozenblum
JOUR 225-001
Due: Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Local News Critique Blog Post
7News WSVN.com Miami/Fort Lauderdale – local branch of Fox News
To complete this assignment, I
streamed the local channel 7 news for Miami and Fort Lauderdale live on the
internet while stuck in the airport on a layover in Charlotte, North Carolina. Right
away, this exemplifies the strong and wide-ranging impact of video broadcasting
compared to other forms of newswriting. I watched the WSVN Channel 7 news,
which is Fox news on the local level, on Saturday, November 29 at 11 p.m.
To compare video broadcasting with
the style of print writing, I found that the news I watched gave very brief
blips of a story. I recognized the dramatic unity and the climax, cause and
effect structure of the stories mentioned. However, I also recognized that
there must not have been a multitude of local stories for that day because the
broadcasters spent about a minute giving extra details and statistics to their
stories, mentioned national news topics such as the Ferguson case and the Pope’s
activities in Istanbul, and also repeated the weather report three times.
Audio or Video Impact: The audio and video impact of this
news broadcast enabled the broadcaster to use fewer descriptions and allowed
the images and video clips to speak for themselves. The first story told for
the night was a local apartment fire, and I was kept entertained and intrigued
as the story transitioned from the reporter, to images of the fire, to an
interview with a man living in the apartments, back to the fire, and then to an
interview with a fire fighter. I thought this had a great audio and video
impact because, in less than two minutes, I saw the apartment before, during,
and after the fire, heard the details of how it started, and listened and
empathized with the inhabitants of the apartment who are all uninjured but are now
homeless.
Timeliness: The weather report excellently exemplified the
timeliness of this news story. In south Florida, the weather is extremely
variable around this time of year and often dramatically changes from a clear,
sunny day to a torrential downpour that can definitely ruin a person’s
afternoon plans. The weather reporter broadcasted the weather for the day and
for the week and was surprisingly thorough – again indicating that it may have
been a slower news day – and repeated his report three times throughout the 30
minute show. He utilized the phrase “breaking news” when discussing what must
have been a change in the weather report and also the phrase “more on this in a
moment” to transition back to the next news story.
Information, not Explanation: Like many local and national
news stations this weekend, WSVN reported on the busy travel of Thanksgiving
weekend. This story is logical and easy to report on, and the news anchor showed
a couple of interviews with individuals from the Miami International Airport,
commenting on how the airport was busy, but not as busy as they had expected it
to be. The reporter also gave several statistics to move the story along and
fill time, reporting that 1.5 million people will pass through the “FLL” and “MIA”
airports this weekend. He simply listed the facts and did not belabor the
point.
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