Online Writing Techniques. National Story

University of Kentucky loses freshman Noel for the rest of the season

The Kentucky Wildcats lost 69-52 to the No. 7 Florida Gators on Tuesday night.  Nevertheless, that wasn't their biggest loss of the night. 
Kentucky fans, as well as college basketball fans in general are sorrowing over fresman sensation Nerlens Noel's knee injury. The university officials informed that Noel would miss the rest of this season because he suffered a torn ACL.  
This story was covered by all the important news agencies, but for this analysis we are going to use only two articles; one published by The Chicago Tribune and another one by The Washington Post.

Interaction 

Both websites give their users the opportunity to post a comment about the news story. The Washington Post does not ask you for any identification. On the other hand, The Chicago Tribune only allows you to comment using your facebook username. 

Structure 

Both websites provide key facts at the beginning of the articles. Type of injury, consequences of it, estimated date the surgery would take place, time of recovery and where the information comes from are part of the first paragraphs of both publications. 

On the other hand, neither of the websites layered the articles. If a reader is only looking for a little detail, it might be difficult to find it right away. 

Style and Lenght

Both publications are pretty straightforward. The Washington Post, however, includes a lot more information, including coach John Calipari's opinion about the situation and a long analysis of how the Wildcats could react after the injury of their superstar. I think it could be helpful to the reader to add more subheadings or to shorten up the information and/or transform it into two different articles. 

Both sites offer links to access other stories that could be interesting to the users.

Visual Appeal

The two articles are complemented by powerful pictures of the athlete at the moment of the injury. The Washington Post allows you to see this picture, or other two pictures they put by this one, on a fullscreen mode. The Chicago Tribune doesn't. Neither of them used video 

Timeliness 

This injured happened only a couple nights ago. However, there have been some updates that have been made by the newspapers. At the moment of the injury, nobody knew how serious it was and how long he was going to be out. As the information came out, it was included in the reports. Within the next weeks, when Noel's surgery takes place, the newspapers will have to update their stories again, including how the surgery went and a more specific recovery plan.