Print Media: The New York Times Analysis

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The New York Times

I have chosen to analyze The New York Times issue published on Tuesday, February 26, 2019. This article stuck out to me due to its depiction of a young boy going through some sort of turmoil. When I approached the article I noticed a title that mentioned diversity and one discussing the 2020 presidential election. Immediately, I purchased a copy and divulged into its contents. The title page contained eye-catching articles that ranged from finance to politics, and even included a piece on my hometown, Chicago. Upon reviewing the first page of this issue I noticed two key articles that seemed to be very one-sided. These articles seemed to be male-dominated and the subject matter of the articles has been notorious for gender inequality.

Description

In this particular issue of the New York Times, they immediately draw in their audience with use of color images accompanied by bolded and italicized headlines. This use of bolded headlines makes them stand out, distinguished from the rest of the text. The center image of focus is an image of a young boy with a shocked look on his face, underweight, emerging from water. There are also women in the background of the image but they are not the prominent focus. The image is accompanied by the headline “Millions in India Converge to Wash Away Sins”. Various other front page headlines include; “Different Paths for Democrats to Win in 2020”, “As Companies Buy Back Shares, A Sell-Off Wears a Bull’s Horns”, “Diversity Ruled at the Oscars. Then Came a Final Plot Twist”, and “Chinese Leader on Edge in Years Rife with Risks”. The author keeps their headlines relatively brief with words that catch the reader’s attention, and the news stories span over a range of topics. The headlines in this issue are all examples of conflict-oriented journalism. Conflict-oriented journalism focuses on news stories of events, issues, or experiences that deviate from social norms; journalists see their role as observers who monitor their city’s institutions and problems (Campbell, Martin, Fabos, p. 264). Unlike consensus-oriented journalism, which focuses on smaller scale stories and are careful not to offend local advertisers, the stories included in this issue discuss complex topics. They manage to discuss these topics without being bias. These topics allow for a lively news story (Campbell, Martin, Fabos, p. 264). The breaking news topics that The NYT includes is most likely due to wire services. Wire services are commercial organizations that share news stories and information by relaying them around the country and the world (Campbell, Martin, Fabos, p. 255). It is clear that the main focus of this paper is to discuss news and stories. The newshole (the space left over in a newspaper for news content after all ads are placed) in this issue is rather large. Out of the 24 pages that make up the first section, there is only 4 pages that make up ads. In comparison, most major daily papers devote one-half to two-thirds of their pages to advertisements (Campbell, Martin, Fabos, p.270). It is possible that their extensive newshole is due to low readership, as with low readership comes less money from advertisers. Or, it could simply be due to The New York Times being successful enough on their own that they don’t feel the need to fill their pages with advertisements, and rather have it focus on their stories. The types of ads that were included were of jewelers, high end fashion companies, furniture stores, travel services, and promotions to sign up for The NYT subscription program. Based off of these types of ads it is likely that their intended audience is the upper/middle class. This can be concluded because the items they advertised were all at a rather expensive price point. With all of these things in mind, their business practices tell us that they priority is to share as much news as possible. The mechanical operations choice they made to colorize a select amount of their pages keeps their readers engaged, and they use minimal advertising. They focus on a large circulation as this is a national edition.

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All of the headlining articles above the first fold on the first page were written by men. Once unfolded, out of the eight stories there is one female author. The rest of the first section is also written by mostly men. Throughout the entire first section there is 35 stories written by men, and only 10 stories written by women. The focus of these articles is predominatley spokespeople and interviewees, largely about men, with the exception of a few articles about women. Photos included throughout this issue are mainly of men and very few are of women. Men are more often quoted than women are. Yet, both genders are portrayed as leaders and intellects throughout the various stories. One thing I noticed however was that often times when stories were about women or minorities there was much more complex emotion involved. The article titled “Diversity Ruled at the Oscars. Then Came a Final Plot Twist.” discusses how the Academy Awards has long been criticised for its exclusion of women and minorities. Yet in this years ceremony, the film “Green Book” won best-picture. The film is about an African-American pianist, and uses African-American production design as well as costume virtuosos. There was blowback with greenbook winning this Academy Award. The movie was criticized for being a “simplistic take on race relations, both woefully retrograde and borderline bigoted.” All actors involved avoided commenting due to the sensitive topic of race. As it was later ruled, the film did not receive good reviews. The film did a poor job representing the Greenbook so

People thought that they had only won the award simply because it was about African Americans. The film itself was thought to be exceptionally racist. And thus, people were upset that an exceptionally racist film could win. It was only until later that people realized they won due to the quality of the film. Throughout these stories, I noticed a common theme. Women’s voices and other identities were largely unheard. The article titled “Different Paths for Democrats to Win in 2020”, written by two men, discusses presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris. The story opens with an interview not from Harris but from a male voter. The voter, Rahul Parsa discusses what he thinks she should do to win. There is no discussion of Senator Harris’ point of view. Although the article promotes gender equality by discussing having a female presidential candidate, it would have positively illustrated the story more had her voice been included.

Critical Argument

To better understand how the mass media interacts with the world we can look at the public sphere. The public sphere is defined as a space for critical debate (Campbell, Martin, Fabos, p. 499). As we saw in the Miss Representation film, women’s voices in the news are often underrepresented. It is crucial that women’s voices are heard in the news due to the fact that they make up half of the world’s population. It is important to utilize various perspectives, limiting the article to only a mans view creates a shallow and bias piece, and is an under developed argument lacking in depth analysis. A lack of women’s voices can prove harmful in regard to social awareness. It is important to include all sides when discussing current events as many biases and opinions are held in each viewpoint. When only one perspective is shared it can lead to misunderstandings and further tension generated among the sides. Each side and opinion on current events provide insight into why certain things are (important, pressing issues, harmful to society etc…) and why they may be the opposite. Gathering all of one’s opinions and thoughts from one source often spreads misinformation and misunderstandings. When forming a stance on such events, analyzing various articles, news outlets, opinions, and debates is important to form a well grounded ideology. Superficial views on political issues, current events, and stereotypes can often mislead readers into taking the work at face value while they ignore the true meaning and artistry of the work the writers and producers put into the work. People are quick to find the meaning and depth in things as they aspire to fit in or be ‘right’. Disregarding other pieces that hold a lot of emotion or depth and choosing basic pieces over them and applying these superficial labels to them. Defining the work by what is seen initially and not what it is saying. People are often eager to teach the film and not let the film teach them.

Sources

  1. Campbell, Richard, et al. Media & Culture: Mass Communication in a Digital Age. Bedford/St. Martins, 2017.

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