USA Today tech writer Kim Komando helps AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and TMobile users learn tricks to navigate more cost efficiently through their cell phones. In the article titled "Save time, money with cellular secrets," Komando provides a long list rather than a well-written article. The only traditionally structured part of the article is the lede, which in my opinion is to the point but rather unexciting. Also, Komando uses sentence beginnings that I was taught growing up never to use. They are "and" and "so". For simplistic, journalistic purposes, however, they may work. From reading the article, I don't think Komando was trying to write in an impressive matter, as it appeared that the facts in a understandable manner were more important.
As very recently new member of an AT&T IPhone, this weekend in fact, I found this article conveniently helpful. Tricks such as the following were provided in the article: how to text in an e-mail format, how to block certain types of text messages or specific phone numbers, how to skip over the voicemail greeting of the person you're calling, how to check for balance, remaining text messages & remaining minutes, how to text a landline, and also provides shortcuts for navigating through your own voicemail. There are no exterior sources and no citations, but it can be assumed that all of the information was either discovered through use of the phones or thorough research.
There is no proper ending to the article, as the entire body is primarily in list format. While not being the conventional type of article that USA Today publishes, Komando still did an adequate job of delivering the content that was intended to be delivered. While to mode was different, the information was not made any less helpful.
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Some articles just work better as lists or pictures or charts or whatever. Most readers don't feel like sitting through and reading blocks of texts. They are in a hurry and they want something that catches their eye and gives them the info they need in the most convenient, easy-to-digest manner. I think this article did a good job with that.
ReplyDeleteIf this article ran in a newspaper format, I feel like splitting it up by cell phone carrier instead of by feature would have made it easier to read. That way readers could just find their company and get all of the tips in one place. I felt like this was more compiling data than it was writing an article.
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