Analysis of the printed news article ‘No Saddam plea at genocide trial’

i. News Criteria

The printed news article, ‘No Saddam plea at genocide trial’ contained the necessary elements of news such as timeliness, proximity, prominence, consequence, human interest and conflict.

Timeliness as defined by the American Heritage Dictionary refers to the occurring of events or situations at a suitable or opportune time. Something that just happened tends to be more newsworthy than something that happened some time ago. It is the element that makes the story news NOW, as opposed to last week or next week. In fact, when you write a news story you make sure it has a news peg. The news peg is the element that you hang your story on (Web Quest/elements of news). ‘No Saddam plea at genocide trial’ had this element that is deemed to make it worthy of attention from the media and audiences as well. Timeliness is often the news peg.

Web Quest/elements of news stated that proximity refers to the nearness of a given event to your place of publication. If we are going to look at the place of ‘No Saddam plea at genocide trial’ article where the event happened, it was geographically far away but considering that we are e-globally connected it is just near. Furthermore, we are also involved in the story since we want to know the development of the trial and the entire happening as well. And lastly, since it dealt on genocide trial, it was already the concern of everyone advocating for the protection of human rights of every individual and the justice of the victims.

Prominence refers to the “newsworthiness” of an individual or organization. The article focused mainly to Saddam Hussein, a famous personality. He was the President of Iraq from 1979 until April 9, 2003, when he was deposed in the United States-led invasion of Iraq. This news could affect the global environment especially Hussien who is charged of genocide and crimes against humanity is concern.

The element of consequence refers simply to the importance of an event. (Journalism Today). The question related to the article, ‘No Saddam plea at genocide trial’, might be, what will be the result of the trial because Saddam did not plea, will he and the other accused be convicted?.

Human interest is something that is out of the ordinary. In the news ‘No Saddam plea at genocide trial’ catches the attention and interest of the people because they might wonder why Saddam did not plea. They might also be interested in whether Saddam will be convicted.

ii. Communication Quality

All W’s and H were answered in the article. However, the 5 W’s and H were separated, putting it to different paragraphs. The first paragraph or the lead paragraph was who lead. Then the other W’s and h followed.

iii .Quality of Construction

The lead paragraph was very clear, concise and can easily grabbed the attention of the reader. However, it did not answer all the information the reader might seek, so the reader has to go on to the next paragraphs because other questions were answered there.

Necessary statements were quoted to bring life to the story. The article’s paragraphs run one to two sentences in length only. It was in inverted pyramid style because it included the most important information first, followed in descending order by less-important information.

iv. Visual Elements

In print, a headline is tightly associated with photos, decks, subheads, and the full body of the article, all of which can be interpreted in a single glance. Online, a much smaller amount of information will be visible in the window, and even that information is harder and more unpleasant to read, so people often don't do so. Nielsen(1998)

However, in the article, ‘No Saddam plea at genocide trial’ there was no photograph of trial neither from Saddam Hussien and the suspects. The headline also was not stressed out because the font size was small and the font style was just ordinary.