Compare and Contrast

When I examined three news sites, I found it very interesting to see how the front page stories differ depending on the region and primary audience the newspapers and sites are created for.

I first looked at the New York Times website. This website adheres to the “Murrow Standard” as it addresses multiple topics such as politics, international news, sports, and personal interest stories. The New York Times picks stories for the front page that they feel the majority of the public could find a story that they would be interested in. It mostly covers national news as their primary audience is everyone from both sides of the nation. The stories are all written towards and older readership than the other sites. I was, however, a bit surprised that the most prominent story with a large picture at the top of the site was about the U.S. Open. Other prominent pieces included stories on Iraqi refugees and plummeting stock prices. Unlike the other 2 sites I visited, the story on Idaho Senator Larry E. Craig was very small and did not have a distinctive headline that told you exactly what the story was about.

I also looked at the Seattle Times website because I live close to Seattle and it is the newspaper I generally read. The judgment that this paper uses for choosing which stories to feature first is more based on the region that the paper is based than the New York Times which is a national paper. The Seattle Times does include many of the same stories as The New York Times, however, there are also many articles pertaining to the west side of Washington. The primary audience of this site is people from Western Washington who want to know what is going on in their area as well as important events happening across the world.

The last site I looked at was Fox News. Fox does not hold up to the “Murrow Standard” as well as the other two sites. At first the site looks as though they are covering important news stories that affect Americans but directly below the small column of headlining stories there is a similarly sized section on celebrities. They did place “important” stories at the top of the website but there are far less of these stories than on the other two websites. The primary audience for the Fox News website is people who want a general understanding of the major news stories of the day, but are also interested in celebrity life and social aspects of America.

Of the three website, I would most commonly visit The Seattle Times site. I have been reading the newspaper for many years and I enjoy that many of the stories tell me information about people and events in the area I live. I also like how it has a good balance between national news as well as interesting personal stories that people enjoy reading.

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