Online Writing Exercise - Take 2

Because I was having such a hard time finding stories covered by multiple sources I decided to go with option #1, reviewing a news website. For this exercise I picked my homepage, CNN.com, which turns out to be everything a news website is supposed to be.

With the most recent story (the amount of time since the last update noted in small red print) posted on the upper left side of the page along with a photo and a bulleted column of the latest news on the right side, CNN gives readers a visually stimulating and quick first look at what they view as the most important news within the last 24 hours.

When one scrolls further down the page, they can find a listing of "popular" news. All of which are listed with a headline as well as a small photo.

As one continues down the page there is a section entitled "More News" where the viewer can choose to look at stories from 14 main categories: U.S., politics, entertainment, travel, funny news, law, business, world, health, tech, living, special coverage, science and sports.

Many of the stories listed above have a small graphic of a camera attached to them, which enables viewers, if they so choose, to watch the multimedia piece that correlates with the printed story and all of the stories have hyperlinks that allow readers to get more details on the topic highlighted.

Finally at the bottom of the page along with a listing of links to podcasts, emails, CNN Radio, RSS Feeds, and local news & weather, is a blog link, where viewers can go and write their own opinions on articles they've read.

CNN far exceeds all the criteria on the checklist. They have made me proud :o)