Case Study: USA Today

What is your first impression of the site? Think of the “3 second rule.” (pg 31)

• User friendly, easy to navigate
• Interesting how the home page’s main topic of news is politics
• A lot of information being shared in a rather small space, forcing users to scroll down constantly to look at more articles

How does this site establish credibility? How does it establish trust? Or does it? (pg 28-29) Authentic voice? Genuine? Transparency?

Credibility is established through providing the audience with the author’s name of the specific news article being published. It also allows interactive media tools to interact with the author on a more personal, one-to-one level. These media tools are Facebook, Twitter, comment, and email.

Influential figures of social, economic, or political importance, are also sited quite a bit throughout the website. Many of the people covered are known Democrats, showing that there’s a bias.

What is the general writing style?

The writing style is objective. There is no use of personal pronouns and when talking about a person there are direct quotes from the person involved in the event. The writer uses adjectives to his or her liking in order to make the news report more entertaining, and less dry and to the point.

There is bias towards the democratic party due to the political figures highlighted in the news stories as well as the colors and word choice.

Does the writer IDENTIFY with his or her readers, or not? How (or why not)?

The writing style that the writers for USA Today use seems to be more of a template. The main way that this news source distinguishes itself from other news sources is the heavy use of adjectives in writing articles.

The information being reported on is done so with a bias, towards democrats, with in turn allows users that are of the same political party to identify with the news articles.

Does the writing style get to the point?

The writing style gets right to the point in a few specific ways.

• The persons involved are names at the beginning of the article
• The location of the news event is reported within the article
• Majority of the time, visual and/or media supplements are provided

How is it arranged? Is it arranged in reverse pyramid style?

Most of the information presented is done so in a top-down arrangement. Meaning the most important stories and “breaking news” are seen at the top of the homepage, and usually have a larger picture supplementing the news story.

Is content shaped for scanning? How is the content layered? (p 32)

The content within USA today is shaped for scanning. The articles themselves have paragraphs that contain one to two sentences, making it easy for the user to quickly scan through the page.

There are quick links and economic indicators on the left side of the page, breaking news and important stories in the center, and current news topics on the right.  Most, if not all, article titles are brief and get to the point of what the article will report on.

Within the articles, there is a section on the left hand side that highlights the main themes and important facts within the entire article. This makes it more feasible to understand the concepts and know what’s happening without spending too much time reading the entire article.

Is the tone or rhythm of the site consistent throughout?

The rhythm of the site is consistent throughout. A few factors that remained constant throughout all the webpages linked to the main website are…

• Navigation in the left column
• Current news in the right column
• Set up of page: highlighted article with a picture in the center and headlines underneath the top news.

How does the site use headlines?

Headlines are short and use common words, getting straight to the point This allows for USA Today to broaden their foreign audience of non-native, English speakers. If the titles aren’t descriptive enough, there are also images and videos with almost every article that allows for a clearer image/message.

How does it use links? Effectively or not?

Links are used on the website to direct users to articles, photos, videos within the site (interlinks). There are also hyperlinks on the homepage that direct the user to social media websites, particularly Twitter, that host more information on a specific topic.

The use of links on USA Today are effective because they allow the user to navigate around the website and obtain information on a topic in many different ways (articles, videos, and photographs), as well as directing the user to further information outside of USA Today.

How is multimedia used? Is it distracting? How is it displayed on the site? Does the multimedia tell the same story as the text, or a different side of the story?

The site is distractive since the website has a lot of information being provided in such a limited amount of space. Due to the large amount of information, there is a lot of downward scrolling in order to look through headlines in specific categories.

How does the site “package” stories? (pg 36)

The site “packages” stories by

• Providing the user with the highlights of the article in the left hand column
• Displaying a photograph, or video, supplement the article
• Providing the user with quantitative information such as graphs and charts
• Incorporating hyperlinks to outside sources related to the topic

How are graphics used? Too cluttered? Are the graphics consistent through out the site, and consistent to the brand? Do they encourage or discourage use, and how?

The graphics are well done, nicely choreographed, and relate to each of the articles; however, they do provide a subconscious bias (color presentation, political commentators and candidates, et cetera). I feel that the sight could be more helpful and more easily navigated if the layout of the site was more minimalistic.

Can each page stand on its own?

Each page on USA Today can stand on it’s own. There are seven categories that the news station is reporting on: News, Politics, Money, Tech, Life, Travel, and Opinion. Each individual website hosts articles that contain multimedia and hyperlinks about the topics being reported on. All of these categories together form a well-rounded news station, but alone they still contain important information related to the individual category.

How is the navigation? Do you get lost? Do you always know where you are? How (or why not)?

One thing which does seem to work very well is the navigational bar. Each article is divided into a specific category which is further disseminated into niche articles about specific events, sports, activities, and so on.

How does the site incorporate/interact with its audience? How does it embody the social aspect of the internet (or does it)?

The site interacts with its audience by having an “Opinions” category on the navigation bar. This page on the website allows the users to see USA Today’s personal views on the news stories, this allows for the user to feel more connected, or more disconnected from the company. It allows users to have an opportunity to identify with USA Today.

USA Today also embodies the social aspect of the Internet by allowing users to comment on published articles, follow on Twitter, email, post on Facebook, and share in other ways over the Internet. These social aspects that USA Today enables allows for more effective feedback from the user to the source.