Journalism: USA TODAY v. NEW YORK TIMES

Journalism comes in many different forms. There are magazines, websites, blogsites, thousands of different newspapers that report local, state, national and world news. Out of all these mediums in which we (the consumer) find out what is going on in today’s world, I believe that the newspaper is the most important and most favored source of information. Every state has hundreds of different papers. New York City has the New York Times, The New York Post, The Daily News, The New York Observer, The New Press, the Wall Street Journal, The Chief Leader, the Villager, and many others. There are hundreds of different companies in which to receive information. The question comes into hand when reading online news sources and material paper newspapers. Some online sites can be biased on events worldwide or nationally based on their location. For example the New York Times may report that Michael Bloomberg is a great mayor of New York City, while the San Francisco Guardian may have reports that he isn’t a good mayor. Other cases exist in the mediums of Fox News and News 12 Buffalo. Fox news tends to be very right wing republican based, while a smaller news channel like the Buffalo News may be less biased because it is smaller and more focused on local situations. Point is, the consumer who reads a newspaper must be very careful on where they get there sources of information from; when you think about it, no matter what, no one can write about a topic without some opinion.

I chose to compare the newspaper USA Today and the New York Times.com. I found an article that both mediums decided to write about on October 31, 2008. In USA Today, the article is titled “Economy shrank last quarter: GDP; consumer spending fall; worst is yet to come.” In the NY Times, it is titled: “Economy Shrinks as Consumers Cut Back.” After reading the two articles I noticed some differences and some similarities. The first difference I noticed was the length of the article. The topic only received an eighth of a page in the USA Today while the article on the NY Times was probably about 2 pages long. Other differences included the sources of quotes. I noticed that the USA Today tended to get quotes from nationwide, but not very heard-of economists from around the country. The NY Times tended to get their sources from local NYC research and construction firms. These are pretty much the only differences I found.

The two articles were more similar than different. I did notice that all the statistics were exact in each source. The USA Today for example reported, “Consumer spending, two-thirds of economic activity, plummeted at a 3.1% rate—the steepest fall since 1980”. The NY Times reported: “Personal consumption fell at an annual rate of 3.1 percent in the third quarter of this year, its biggest drop since 1980, when the economy was in a deep recession.” As you can see the facts are almost replica, minus the fact that the NY Times is a bit more specific (they tell which quarter and what was going on in 1980 briefly). I did notice that the USA Today was published on October 31st, 2008 and the NY Times article was uploaded at 8 AM yesterday. Perhaps maybe the USA Today stole facts about the current situation.
Online news differs from print news in several ways. For one, online news gives you access to hundreds of more articles. This implies that online news sources have thousands of people working daily reporting tons of different topics. The other differences are in the ease of accessibility. As popular as online news is, people don’t always want to have to go online to read sites. In a world where everyone has some place to be or kids have 30 minutes before class starts to write a blog, paper printed newspapers are always going to be more valuable. People are constantly on the run, and constantly stopping in stores. Almost every store you go into sells newspapers for under a dollar. No matter how popular online journalism becomes, it will never void out hard copy newspapers.

Wikipedia says that journalism is “the profession of writing or communicating, formally employed by publications and broadcasters, for the benefit of a particular community of people. The writer or journalist is expected to use facts to describe events, ideas, or issues that are relevant to the public.” I agree with the first part. Newspapers are based on local demand. The New York Post contains information pertaining to New York and surrounding areas. The Washington Post is based on a more national level. There are several obvious differences. I do not think there were many differences with my articles because it has to do with money and statistics, and you can really bullshit that. I can see how other articles, perhaps pertaining to sports or politics can be somewhat one-sided. For example, the New York Post main page says: “Mets fired up. Philly’s win is motivation for the team” (being that the Mets and Philly’s are rivals. I went to USA TODAY and their main report in the sports section is “Drought over, Phillies seek refill: Core champs back for 2009.” So you can see the difference in reporting style based on the location.

Works Cited:
1) leonhardt, david (2008, October, 30). Economy Shrinks as Consumers Cut Back. New York Times, Retrieved October 31, 2008, from http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/economy-shrinks-as-consumers-cut-back/?scp=1&sq=gdp%20economy&st=cse

2) Kirchoff, Sue Economy Shrank last quarter. (2008, October 31). USA TODAY, p. B1

3) Wikipedia. October 28th 2008. “Journalism”. URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism