Las Vegas strip construction deaths
After examining the Las Vegas Sun’s web package of the construction deaths that occurred in 2008, on the Las Vegas Strip, is an absolute tribute to the 12 workers who passed away in 18 months of work. Any other type of package would not have given this story justice. The 3 main mediums used to present this story were a slideshow, video, and interactive map.
- Slideshow– very emotional because each photo seemed to be a true testimonial to each of deceased lives. Captions give a great description of each photo, but still tells a great story without the captions
- Video– again very emotional because it not only has some of the same photos on the slideshow but with grieving family members talking about the hazardous working conditions that the worker were working in and how OSHA needs to be more proactive in protecting the steel workers.
- Interactive Map– This was by far the most interesting of the 3 mediums because anyone can hover their mouse pointer over each of the buildings where the accidents happened then shows a picture of each person who died and how each accident happened. The interactive map also gives a brief biography of each person.
Alexandra Berzon, reporter, Wall Street Journal gives more in depth details on what had happened throughout the investigation of OSHA and the accidents. Her articles really show how OSHA really dropped the ball concerning the safety of each worker. She had received a Pulitzer Prize for her contribution to this amazing piece.
Peace in the new peril showed the most tribute to the workers because it highlighted some of the accidents and testimonials from safety experts that said there were too many safety hazards overlooked and too many unexcused deaths took place at this construction site. Granted, it was one of the first articles written concerning the deaths. The article explained how 7 out of the 12 deaths happened.
CityCenter Workers Strike was very powerful because it was a video of workers with picket signs that read, “Unsafe work site.” No one was interviewed but was moving non the less because showing the workers stick up for their own safety shows a lot of courage because it could cost them money for being on strike.
This web package follows the 8 main aspects of Foust’s explanation with the advantages of online journalism such as:
- Audience Control– This seems to be the main advantage here because of the variety of ways users can access the construction site accident information via pictures, videos and interactivity.
- Time place and access– Fits this perfectly because anyone with web access can interact with this package, but the main issue was trying to access this with a mobile device. I tried and it was very difficult because there is so much information for the mobile device to upload.
- Storage and retrieval– Wow! This package must have a lot of storage with the vast amount of information on it.
- Unlimited space– This is definitely covered because in traditional print media this package could not have given this web package justice because they can’t add video or audio, which, is a huge advantage of online journalism.
- Immediacy– After seeing the date of the casualties and comparing them to the dates of the articles written are spot on.
- Multimedia capability– The Las Vegas Sun knew exactly what they were doing when they put all of this together because it flows so well with the with all of the graphics, audio, video and all of the other links that support the main page of the package.
- Audience participation– Each archived article and blog have the capability to add comments to each post; however, the user has to be logged in to post a comment.
- Nonlinearity- Is the BIGGEST advantage of this package because anyone can bounce from a video to a blog post to a slide show. It gives the page viewer a huge amount of options to view this story.
Overall, this package is great and would not change a thing because if there were anything missing like a slideshow or video it would take away from this package. The blog posting links that are on the main page definitely adds to the story because it gives so much validation that there were so many safety hazards overlooked that could have prevented these unnecessary deaths. It is such a shame for the lack of compensation that the grieving families received following the deaths of their loved ones.
joebarden34 