"Three dead in the first seven hours of the year"
The article was written by Jason Dowling in the holiday edition of the Age newspaper on the 2nd and 3rd of January in 2009. The article focuses on the shocking start to Victoria's overall road toll in just the first day on the new year. The author believes that this is a very bad thing and these types of incidents need to stop. To persuade the reader about his point of view the author uses a shocking but gripping headline, a realistic and horrifying visual and a stack of hair raising and awful statistics.
The headline "Three dead in the first seven hours of the year" is short, to the point and horrifying. This headline tells the reader that not only did this many people die in twenty-four hours but seven, just seven. This then leads the reader to 'Do the maths' and figure out that one person died on Victoria's roads almost every two hours.
The Reader (2008 film)
Ralph Fiennes as the older Michael
Michael (Kross) reads to Hanna (Winslet).This induces the reader to then think 'If this many people can die in three hours how many can die in a year, and will one of my closest loved ones be next?'. This headline once it gets the reader, they want to pick up this copy of the age just to see the back story that is behind this to-the-point headline. What makes this headline worse is if the reader knows that the road toll at the end of 2008 this headline should and would truly shock this particular person.
The author has used a visual from a recent road toll campaign. This visual also features that suggest that road safety Victoria wanted to lower the road toll below three hundred in this new year. The visual also features a sickening...