Long-Form Story Analysis

A Family Separated by The California Sunday Magazine

The feature ‘ A family separated” is published by The California Sunday Magazine. This feature focused more on photos and the audio recording with less text contents. This feature includes with 3 audio record and 10 photos. This feature is about an immigrant father who was forced to separate with his son due to the US’s “Zero Tolerance” policy towards immigrants.

The elements that worked for this feature will be the audio recording and the photos. The journalist recorded the interview with the father which lets the readers to experience about the helpless of the father. The journalist lets the father to describe about his experience in Spanish and the journalist repeated the content being shared by the father in English. The photos of the feature focused on the broken house the family live in which increases the feeling of presence of the readers.

The elements that did not worked for this feature will be the lacking of videos. The feature should be included with videos which can let the readers to have a direct understand towards the life of the family. Also, this feature is lack with the interactive elements such as hyperlinks towards the background of the “Zero Tolerance” policy or the incident of other families such as the reporting of kids being separated from their family staying in the US government’s care. To increase the readability of this feature, the shortcomings mentioned above should be overcome by adding these mentioned elements.

The news website can also develop a timeline of the journey of the family following the sequence in time. This can simplify the efforts for the reader to understand the story. Also, the news website can also develop a comparison table between the tighten up of the “Zero Tolerance” policy and the story of the family which gives a direct impression for the readers to understand the impact of the policy.

Link: https://story.californiasunday.com/a-family-separated

Storyboard of "A Seperated Family"

Storychart of "A Seperated Family"