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JO304 Huffington Post Beat

This is the post excerpt.

I’m not quite familiar with The Huffington Post, but they seem to post somewhat slanted news. However, they have an easy to use website with leading titles, and interactive media.

When The Huffington Post rebranded to Huffpost, editor-in-chief, Lydia Polgreen stated the new mission:

“We have big and ambitious plans to reset the conversation about news and make it, once again, an essential and trusted part of any citizen’s life.”

 

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This is the post I enjoyed the most: Hemingway’s Cats Rode Out Hurricane Irma In A Limestone Fortress. It seemed the most neutral. The rest in the “what’s hot?” category just seemed like Hollywood tabloids about actors and the inordinate amount of labias during fashion week 2017. 

 

As far as current events, most journalists are drawing their attention to the issues facing DACA and potential destruction of impending hurricanes.

 

I wish they covered more of the markets performance, music journalism, and photojournalism.

 

Huff Post Pro’s and Con’s

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I have been following HuffPost for the past semester to fulfill my newstrack assignment. After a full semester of having to read the articles posted on the site I feel Huffpost is a slight slanted site that balances out their reporting with generic, dominant culture click-bait.

I’ve have outlined some of the pro’s and con’s I discovered during this semester.

 

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The site is entirely too concerned about quoting Trump directly, and oftentimes creates headlines that lean right. It was incredibly frustrating at times to see the type of diction used when breaking headlines when considering controversial political topics.

 

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The entertainment section is the lowest common denominator of popular culture. I wanted to figuratively gouge my eyes out, reading about who’s dating who, who’s pregnant and the latest twitter beef between millionaire celebrities. People are still begging for the lives in Aleppo, right? Cool. Please tell me more about Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s new baby.

 

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HOW THE F*CK is this the spin on the California wildfires. There is so much about this site that frustrates me, but I have to admit their use of multi-media in presenting their stories is top-notch. Most articles are embedded with Tweets, and are supproted by videos made for a post-literate snackable society to be shared across multiple social media platforms.

 

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All in all, I didn’t particularly enjoy covering HuffPost, the organization appeals to the sheep of society and often slants their pieces in favor of their political beliefs. That being said, everyone enjoys specific aspects of pop culture and can find pieces that suit their interests. I don’t plan to ever return to the site, but recommend it to anyone who enjoys popular culture.

 

Addressing DACA Issues Using Visual Art

French street artist, JR, has built a young portrait of a boy playing on the Mexican side of the border. Huff Post’s, Lee Miller embeds visual tweets, videos, and hyperlinked quotes into his article that seems to be standard across most Huff reporters.

 

Although the Artist has published few statements on his own, a linked representative spoke for the artist saying he didn’t know “exactly what it means.”

 

Eye-witness, Sean Connelly, took the above photo stating a possible explanation to the piece.

JR’s art almost seems altruistic in purpose. His art is creating stronger interactions between US/Mexican border-neighbors, and hopefully adding a lighter note to the conversation surrounding Trump’s topical decision to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA,) an American immigration policy that allows individuals who entered the country as minors to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and to be eligible for a work visas.

 

The post has since gone viral on Reddit, with sixty-five thousand points on the site.

HuffPost’s Coverage of the Emmys

It seemed quite optimistic reading this piece from Huffpost titled “Women Rocked The 2017 Emmys.”

Since the controversy surrounding the rivalry between Moonlight and La La Land during last years Oscars, Hollywood paints a bright light in equalizing the gender disparity in contemporary film and television.

Similarly, Huffpost had a dedicated page for all Emmy-related articles:

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For those in the know about the Emmys, Huffpost seems like the ideal spot to be up to date with what’s happening, who’s wearing who, and all the bitter reactions of who didn’t and didn’t kiss Sean Spicer.