The Opinion Section and Blogs at the Daily Telegraph Australia

Nowadays at the press media it's very useful to create controversy, opinions and debate, a section where the readers and especialized bloggers give their opinion. The daily telegraph australia as the most importante newspaper in Australia gives a lot of importance to this ideas. At the internet website there is an special section called "Opinion".


This section is subdivided in "Blogs", "Your say" and "Readers comments". 

The blog section consists in weekly writers, journalists and bussines men who write columns with different topics. The Daily have 18 bloggers who write weekly or monthly and also there are some bloggers that are specialized and once in a while write when there are specific topics going on. This week the most read blogger is Piers Akerman who wrote a column about Julia Gillard's government, that received 185 comments from the readers. Akerman is one of The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph's best-read columnists since 1993. One of the australian most respected journalists and has worked in New York, London, Washington and Los Angeles. This column is about how Gilliard is going to "awake" the economy and solve the bank issues that are going on at Australia. She is the Prime Minister of this country and Akerman from a very critic point of view analyzed her weak work with the economy, taxes and prices.


The Your Say is a section where the readers can start a new topic of their interest expecting responses from other readers. Is an open space that lets the people create their columns. This is very useful because, this way the newspaper's editors can realize which are the topics that the readers are most interested on. To use this section, you have to be registered at the website and you don't need to use your entire name, you can choose a nickname and start writing.


The Readers coments section is different that the Your Say because, this space is used to comment about news that the paper has published. You don't creat your own column, you can comment about if you liked the news, your personal opinion or ideas related to the publication. The most comented news of the week is one related to the australian model Lara Bingle who sold some nide pictures last year to a magazine and now she regrets her decision and tells the newspaper that she is now a new woman.


If the reader doesn't like any of this ways to comunicate his opinion. There is also the option of writing a letter to the editor, if the letter is good and expresses something interested, it can be published at the paper edition and also online. 

Coverage of the Qantas ariplane accident at Singapore

In the Daily Telegraph Australia, there has been a huge coverage about a Qantas airplane, A380 which suffered an accident in their way to Singapore.  After five minutes de plane was over Indonesian island, and suddenly one of the engines started to fail. Some Indonesian locals heard the explosion and the smoke from the engine. The passengers were in panic and saw fire in one of the engines and a hole in the left wing. The pilot decided to shut off the non functional engine, and quickly return to the airport in Singapore. The Qantas airline has suspended all their flights around the world.

The Daily Telegraph has done a very balanced coverage of this news. Every article is based on clear, easy to read information, appropriate writing for web, it has some charts besides the written parts, which summarize and point out the most relevant facts.
On the other hand, this media did a visual development of the accident too. They published a flash animation, with clear pictures of the airplane so it´s easier to understand how the accident occurred. The flash has several numbers in which the audience moves on, receiving the sequential information on the steps of the accident. Also, throughout the articles there are links in which people can go to see pictures of what they are reading, and also there are videos to watch. So, the news about Qantas airplane, has a good display for web, making it easy to get well informed thanks to the balanced proportion between the writing and the visual aspect.

The Indonesian Tsunami coverage

The Daily is covering this news with a lot of importance because, the damnified island is very close to Australia.

The most important news related to the earthquake and tsunami is about a group of australian surfers that were missing. Nine australians were not found for almost 24 hours after the powerful earthquake triggered the tsunami. They were aboard a surf charter when the earthquake started. They were not comunicated for several hours, until they reached a safe place near Padang and could make a call. Now they are safe and are waiting that the Surf Aid International Foundation rescue them and give them the help needed.


The 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck near the Mentawai Island on Monday night. This generated massive waves that swept ashore, killing at least 23 people and washing away hundreds of homes.

Disaster management officials in Jakarta on Tuesday put the number of missing at 167 but local officials said it was 380. Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire and is very prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity.

The media used to give more information to the readers consist in photograps, but not in an extensive way. The newspaper only uploaded a image of the charter that the surfers were aboard. 

The charter is called "Southern Cross" and it was run by the denominated Sumatran Surfuriis. 

The Sunday Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph Australia, as we have developed in this blog, is a conservative newspaper which is mostly dedicated to important news coverage. But in dispite of that, it also has a section that is dedicated to entertainment and tips. This section is published every Sunday at paper and also in the web.

In the topic News of this paper, you can find a subtopic named Sunday Telegraph. The space covers up different story news with interviews to different famous australian personalities.
For example, the central topic of this edition with a large picture in it, is named “Counting the Cost”, which tells about the story of a couple´s divortion and the millionaire economic arrangements they are arguing for.
Another main topic called “Brand Hawko” is about a model´s business in the fashion industry. Besides that, this section has a subtopic known as Top Stories, which consists of a selection that interest people, regarding themes as police or criminal news, stories of the sports sections, or about businessmen.
After that, there is a special section named Sidney Socials, where there is the detail of the spring parties happening in Australia. You can click on the party or event you are interested in, and get into a photo gallery about it, with pictures of most of the attendants, there are between 25 to 30 pictures for each event.
Also in the Sunday Telegraph, there is the section Body&Soul, which is about different trends happening in the world, such as food, fashion and health. At the right they have a video section. One of topics of these videos are gossips about celebrities, what is happening in fashion and movies.
The horoscope is included in the Body&Soul section, and there are two more little sections in it, one called Sex+relashionships and other about Diet+exercise.
Finally, “Insider” is another space in this section, dedicated to attractive news about what is happening with different actors, musicians or famous people.

Coverage of the chilean miners news at The Daily Telegraph Australia

This news is covered in the News section, "World" subsection.

The use of the multimedia is great, they use a photo gallery with cronologic serie of pictures from the first day to all the advances and techniques used for the rescue. This photo gallery is provided by The Herald Sun Australia, and you can watch it by clicking this link.

 The also posted videos, the last one uploaded shows the way the capsule will rescue the miners and the celebration of the workers and ministers, pressing this link you can watch it.

The way the news is covered is optimistic and reflects the support and the preocupation of all the people around the world. To give more information to the readers, the Daily uploads a map that shows the mine ubication, this is uploaded using, a great aplication of the search engine website Google, "Google Maps".

The topics they gave to the readers in the news talk about in the first place, the technique part of the rescue. They explain the way "Plan B" is going to work, the distance of the miners underground, the capsule that will transport them and the duration of the rescue.

Then, they go to a more sentimental part were they recolected testimonies of the miners and their families, their hopes, wishes and plan for the future after the rescue.

And finally they close the news covering the health part of the rescue and the publicity blaze that the miners will have to affront. They also inform the readers that the Chilean media suggested the miners to write a book and make film deals to show the world how it was living underground for such a long period of time.

Comparison between Emol (chilean media) and The Daily Telegraph

Emol is El Mercurio newspaper website. This is considered as one of the most important media of Chile. It is mostly a conservative paper that informs the public about breaking news, national news, international news, business, culture, arts, sports, technology and a little about gossip and celebrities.

Comparing Emol with the Daily Telegraph there are lots of similarities. In the first place both medias are considered conservative and informs mainly about the same stuff. A diference will be that Emol gives more importance to South America news than The Daily, this is obvious but territorily speaking the Daily don't give much importance about near countries like New Zealand.

The way both websites use multimedia is in part equal and in part different. The video section of the Daily Telegraph is all of it related to news that are happening right now, meanwhile Emol uses the video section to creat their own videos about different topics at "Emol TV". Another use of media are the photographs. On one hand, the Daily uses well these and uploads great pictures about different stuff such as beautiful places to travel. In the other hand, Emol has an special section called "Mundo Grafico" updated daily, with celebrities, around the world breaking news and fun stuff to learn about.

Both websites like to know how their readers feel, so they use polls to evaluate the decisions of their readers. We think it is important nowadays to use the new multimedia techniques, Emol an the Daily give importance to relevant characters of the nation to express their opinion by blogs.

Emol is more serious than The Daily, comparing today their main webpage, Emol informs about relevant economy and politic breaking news such as the political crisis on Ecuador. Meanwhile, the Daily's most important news that are in big letters and bright colors are about a traffic accident produced by the hotel heirreses Paris Hilton and the grand final of a australian football league.

The Video Section on the Telegraph's website

Nowadays the use of multimedia is neccesary for an extensive understanding of the news. On the Daily Telegraph site there is a complete section dedicated to the videos. Those are edited and published with the help of a local Tv channel called SkyNews.

The length of the videos are maximum 2 minutes, therefore the information given is accurate and precise. The reproduction system used is very fast and isn't a problem with the internet connection speed. The buffering wait is short and this is very important because sometimes this can be a problem.

The section is sub divided in diferent topics such as:

1. News
2. 2010 Federal Elections
3. Entertainment
4. Travel
5. Business and Money
6. Technology
7. Sport
8. Sponsered Content

Here I leave you a link with an example of a Daily Telegraph Australia video:

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