Boston Globe Essay

After viewing the two pieces from 20/20 and The Boston Globe, I personally believe the 20/20 television piece to be more effective for a number of reasons. The main issue that I've noticed with visual news is the obvious time constraints that are put on various pieces throughout the broadcast, most often seen on local news stations. Context and nuance is often sacrificed for sensationalism and a preternatural urgency to get as much information across in as little time as possible. However, this wasn't the case in the 20/20 piece, which spent just over six minutes (as opposed to the usual 1.5-3) hashing out the tragic story of a UMass confidential informant who died as an indirect result of questionable school policies. They talked to a multitude
These UMass students were the first to truly blow the lid off this case, therefore paving the way for an internationally recognized news show like 20/20 to further expand upon it with a visual story. Although the 20/20 story was more evocative, the Boston Globe pieced went into far greater detail, as it parsed through the events, step by step, leading up to the fatal overdose of Logan. Including actual text messages, they were able to provide raw and unfiltered information that is often non-existant in mainstream tv news media. Although the 20/20 piece spoke with many sources, The Boston Globe story spoke with far more people, creating a story that appeared far more layered and detailed. Some of the drawbacks I noticed though were fairly obvious. The lack of multimedia resources in this piece left something to be desired in terms of emotionality. With the rise of social media and greater accesibility to a myriad of news sources and outlets, I believe a combination of text and corresponding audiovisual attachments can create a more complete news piece, in addition to broadening the audience who might possibly view the