CMJ 236 Assignment 2.1
To critique a news article using story components discussed in ‘News Reporting and Writing’ by Melvin Mencher can be a good start to fully understanding an article and what the journalist is trying to report on. Doing this for every article you read can get tedious but it’s a great start to learning how to write a well balanced article.
Sarah Perez wrote ‘The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now’, seen in the New York Times, is an article that most young Americans will want to read. Facebook is an online social networking website that has over 350 million active users all over the globe. Millions of people sharing information with each other, but how much personal information are they really sharing? The article talks about a few daring and controversial changes in December of 2009 relating to Facebook user’s privacy settings.
After reading the article anyone using Facebook since December can agree that the article is pretty accurate because when we logged on in December we remember a text book that explained the new changes and wanted us as users to confirm our privacy settings. Perez writes step by step on how to check your Facebook settings proving that she has had first had experience with Facebook and the general public can even go through the steps to check her knowledge of the subject.
The only thing I would give thumbs down to this article is that I feel some part of the story is incomplete. Why did Facebook prompt every one of its users new privacy settings? Perez just writes that Facebook “wants to compete with more open social networks like the microblogging media darling Twitter”. Maybe if you use Facebook and Twitter religiously you can make an abstract link as to why Facebook made this change, otherwise this article leaves you in the dark. Answering the why, would really bring more balance to this article.
The article is very knowledge based with easy steps that even a first time Facebook user can follow. Perez does a good job at keeping her opinions out and wrote a nice focused article about Facebook privacy settings. As a reader I found it very interesting and to be well informed about the workings of Facebook.
Getting the facts you need to protect your privacy is very important especially on the internet. There are people out there that could care less about your privacy and it’s your job to protect yourself because you never know who’s out there looking at your information.
Link to Article on New York Times Website:
http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2010/01/20/20readwriteweb-the-3-facebook-settings-every-user-should-c-29287.html?em
Good article critique, Alysha. Seems like the story was to-the-point and filled with relevant, helpful information. The reasons for Facebook's new privacy settings probably have to do with the growing concern amongst Facebook users about how much of their personal information is made public on the website. There is also a growing concern about advertisers tracking individuals down on Facebook and trying to cater products to their tastes.
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