Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/UnNews:Australian Prime Minister Praises Citizens For Flood
UnNews:Australian PM praises citizens for flood[edit source]
Shabidoo 04:40, December 31, 2010 (UTC)
| Humour: | 6 | I should start by saying I don't know a whole lot about UnNews, and have only started writing them recently myself. They're difficult to review too because they tend to be short and simple, but let me see what I can do...
For the most part, the article is a decent idea, it just needs a tad more focus. There are a couple of places where what you're saying is contradictory, or misses an opportunity for humour. For instance, think of the joke where they ask how they aligned the water so precisely. The answer you provide to this is: "pure luck". If it was pure luck, why would the PM be so proud? It would make a hell of a lot more sense if she answered something like "through the sheer will and determination of Australian genius", or words to that effect. And rather than saying they couldn't do it again if they tried for a hundred years, try something like "we could do it again tomorrow... but we don't want to." Do you see how this would be more in line with the foundation you have laid out here? It's a good idea so you may as well get as many jokes out of it as you can. You could also do with a little more focus on why the flood was so impressive, as you only really get a glimpse of this and I missed it on the first read-through. The reason of course, is because of how impressive it was to look at/how precise it all was etc - that kind of thing. You need to go into more detail about this so the reader knows what you're talking about. For instance, you compare it favourably to the Pakistan floods, but don't say exactly what made it better. I'm not sure which was bigger, but I know for a fact the Rio ones were bigger than both, so it may be worth comparing it to those floods too. You could say something like "although the Rio floods were larger and more destructive, they just didn't have the artistry ours had". Not a hilarious line I know, but I'm sure you can come up with something better. My point is you need to explain exactly why the Aussie floods were better, in comparison to all the others. Looking at your dateline, I don't think the Rio floods had happened at the time you wrote this, but I'm sure you can work something out, even if you just stick to comparing it to the Pakistan flood. With the third paragraph you lost me a little. What do you mean she's using it for her own political agenda? I didn't really understand that. Nor could I figure out what you meant by "it's more related to the culture, tradition and mental reasoning of the Southern Hemisphere in general". I mean, I realise you're saying it's not specifically Australian, do you mean anyone in the Southern Hemisphere would have been capable of such a feat? If so, you should just make that a little clearer. Otherwise, it's actually quite a decent joke. Finally, the last paragraph is considerably weaker than the rest I'm afraid. The Prime Minister's mission to become the top "news-making" nation in the world seems a little out of place. To me, it just seems like a whole other headline altogether, a completely separate news story. It's one level of silliness too far, if you see what I mean there. A better ending would be something conclusive that stays in line with the article's core concept; so something about the floods themselves, and the praise from the PM. In fact, something that reveals how misguided the praise is might work, like if you suddenly brought up the seriousness of the flood, by quoting a death count or the repair costs. That would be truly satirical and would be a nice twist to end the article on. It's up to you of course, but I hope you can see my point: be consistent and try to end with a sort of "punchline", if you can. |
| Concept: | 7 | In terms of concept you've done ok here. The idea of the floods being intentional and even a good thing works well enough, you just need to make sure you stick to it throughout the whole article, and develop it a little more. Take the idea as far as you can. For instance, what did the Australians actually do to make sure the floods happened the way they did? Is there some satire you could get out of that? And as I mentioned above, how were these floods better than all the others that have happened recently? |
| Prose and formatting: | 6 | Your spelling and grammar are fine, the only issue I could find here is that at times your tone is a little less than professional, which is especially detrimental to a news article. Phrases like "more related" and "stated angrily" are a little clumsy and don't really sound journalistic. You should try to be as clear and simple as possible with your language, and don't get too creative. The UnNews style guide should be able to help you with things like this. Another sentence that could probably do with a revision is this one: "The recent news brings light to the Prime Minister's shaky start after a recent terrible election." Again, it's a little clumsy, I think there's a few too many words in there. And at one point you use the word "comprehensive", which I'm not sure is the word you mean. In any case it's a very strange choice of word. None of these present major problems to the article as a whole, but I thought I'd point it out as it may be something you'd be interested in reviewing. |
| Images: | 6.5 | Your images are ok. The first one in particular is good, and really demonstrates the point you're making. The second is more perplexing. What has the price of boats got to do with anything? The image itself is ok, but you may also want to resize it because it's too small to see what it actually is (and I have amazing eyesight). Also, it just looks weird because the first pic is huge and the second is tiny, you need to readdress this balance. |
| Miscellaneous: | 7 | My gut feeling. |
| Final Score: | 32.5 | Ok so overall not a bad news piece, I think a little more focus is the main thing you need. I'm sorry if it's not a terribly good review, but I'm no expert when it comes to UnNews. It may be worth consulting good old SPIKE if you haven't already, although of course I'll try to help too if you have any other questions. |
| Reviewer: | --Black Flamingo 14:39, January 22, 2011 (UTC) | |