Initial Observations of Al Jazeera
- Feb 9, 2021
- 2 min read
Al Jazeera is an International Arabic news channel that is based in Doha, Qatar. They were primarily watched by citizens of the Middle East when first launched in the 1990s, but they quickly caught the attention of the rest of the world after their extensive coverage of the War in Afghanistan, where they were one of the only ones to publish live material from the conflict.
When I first visited the homepage, I saw a large portion of the page dedicated to the trial of President Trump's impeachment. They were streaming live from Capitol Hill with a reporter narrating every second of the occurring trial. Below that video, there were other articles available that had even more coverage of the impeachment.
When I continued scrolling down, there was a long stream of recent articles covering global topics from many different countries. Throughout this stream of articles, there were blocks of different sections such as features and opinions where the reader could explore those options more. I like the fact that they sprinkle in other types of news within their recent hard news coverage because it allows the viewer multiple perspectives and stories on the topics.
They also had some photo galleries and long-form videos within this stream of news on their home page. They seem to break up a lot of their print pieces with other multimedia pieces.
At the top of the website, they have a banner with more options. The first one is news broken out by different regions such as the Middle East, US & Canada, and Africa. I think it is great that they have a section dedicated to coverage for each region of the world which is not something often seen in traditional American news sites. They then have a tab for Coronavirus, Features, Economy, Opinions, Videos, a drop-down for More, and a button for Livestreams.

These are interesting sections to highlight, and I like the entire section dedicated to Video because it emphasizes that all-important multimedia aspect. They also seem dedicated to their live streams to deliver the most up-to-date 24/7 news.
Overall, it seems to be a very global site where someone can news on many countries and regions. They have tons of coverage all over the world which I think is fantastic. They also tend to have visuals with most articles to keep their audience engaged, as well as utilizing many forms of multimedia journalism around their print articles.



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