Blog 1 - First Steps

To start of with, I took a look at a couple of different sites (OnMilwaukee, Shepherd Express, and the Vulture) that looked at cultural news and explored some of how they are composed. For the most part, I focused on the formal construction of the pages. Taking a brief overview of some articles, I made notice that there is typically relevant imagery or video included throughout the piece, both giving visual context and splitting up the text. In many cases, there were also quotes highlighted outside of the main body text, such as one would typically find in traditional written articles. I also found that a lot of them are not particularly long; not saying they are particularly short either, though.
Then, looking more at the content itself, I found that much of the writing is not necessarily factual information but often opinionated. This may not be true for every article on these sites, but true for many. There are, of course, still factual statements given throughout the articles, but it is a mix of fact and opinion. In some cases, the article would also recount first person experiences (i.e., something watched – a movie for example – or something experienced – maybe a concert). So, overall, there were a few key points I found between the articles/sites I explored and a few points as to how they differ from typical news articles/sites.

https://onmilwaukee.com/
https://www.vulture.com/
https://shepherdexpress.com/