Hugh McIntyre from Forbes magazine posted the article, “9 Ways Taylor Swift Made Hot 100 History with Her New Album ‘Lover’,” and if I had to rate this article I would give it a B; it has a lack of outside sources, as well as contains phrasing that can seem persuasive or leading.
One thing I noticed right away was that while he uses links consistently throughout the article, McIntyre chose to use links that only lead to other Forbes Magazine articles. Forbes covers a lot of well-known entertainers out there, but that doesn’t mean that Forbes should be the only website cited in his articles. I believe that in order to gain full credibility the author should have used sources other than the magazine they’re writing for. Something that McIntyre could have done to increase his credibility was use information that came from Billboard itself, since the majority of the article was spent being talked about her current standings on the billboard chart.
McIntyre also somewhat strayed from his main topic, which was “9 ways Taylor Swift made History with her new album. Towards the end, McIntyre was listing how she has “the Eighth Most Hot 100 Hits,” and “seventh-most Hot 100 Hits Among Soloists,” which are both impressive feats by themselves- however, since she’s not one of the top three in these categories, I believe he could have left standings like these out, since they are not the best representation of her making history, as the title claims. In order to gain more accurate information on his topic, he could have gone to other websites to get information on Taylor Swift, and he could have found a larger array of information that he could have used in his article. Incorporating outside sources strengthens articles in a very clear way, and I believe this article was lacking that one important piece.
The author uses phrasing that can make the reader lean more towards one way of thinking rather than staying neutral throughout the article. For example, McIntyre uses the sentence, “…this may be the best week of Swifts massive career on the Hot 100,” which is more of an opinion than a fact. She is doing very successfully right now, that’s evident base on how she is rising in the charts, but there is no sure way to say that this is going to be her best week she’s had yet.
McIntyre also uses suggestive phrasing in which he says something is going to happen, and is making more of an inference than a statement. For example, he mentions how, “Swift is now tied with Elvis Presley for the tenth-most smash hits, and she will likely beat him at some point in the next year or two,” and also mentions virtually the same thing when he compared Taylor Swift with Nicki Minaj. This could very well be the case, but in order to keep articles non-biased, it would be better if he left any guesses on what could potentially happen in the future out of writing that is reporting on certain topics.
