Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Good story on Jersey quake, bad graphic and spelling

I enjoy poking around the web to see how events are reported. It's interesting that the small quakes in New Jersey got some play on the news in Tampa. Maybe it's because of all the snowbirds in Florida. The story is quite sound, but the graphic, well, it's a little over the top, and DEFINITELY not from the Ramapo fault zone in New Jersey. The words are sober, but does the image confuse and scare people? Is this journalism, or Hollywood? (Ok, I've looked again, and I think it is their generic earthquake pic, but this is still not a generic earthquake feature.)


From Tampa Bay 10:

Another eatthquake [sic] rattles New Jersey

Another minor earthquake occured [sic] Wednesday morning in New Jersey. This is the fourth earthquake measured in north central New Jersey since February 14, 2009.

The latest earthquake occured [sic] on February 17, 2009 at 1:42 a.m. EST and measured a 2.3 on the Richter scale. It was centered roughly 3.1 miles below the town of Victory Gardens, NJ. No damage or injuries were reported.

Earthquakes in the eastern U.S. typically occur less frequently than the west coast, but because of the geomorphic make up of east coast, those earthquakes can be felt further away. East of the Rockies, an earthquake can be felt over an area as much as ten times larger than a similar magnitude earthquake on the west coast.

The northeast U.S. urban corridor is laced with known faults, but numerous smaller or deeply buried faults remain undetected. As a result, it is even more difficult to determine what faults east coast earthquakes originate from.

2 comments:

  1. Yes, the story is O.K. (probably from the AP or some other news service), but the graphic is ridiculous.

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  2. That graphic is AWESOME. All it needs is a big "ZOMG ONOZ!!1!" in the middle, in outlined Impact font. And maybe, since this is the Web, they should make it blinky - a 2 or 3-frame animation should do.

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