Feature Article Analysis

The feature that I chose was "Is the 'Wild Things' Movie Too Scary for Kids," written by Andrew Romano. The story is set up more like an essay rather then a news story, addressing a particular question rather than reporting on a news event. Unlike traditional news stories we don't get the main point of the piece at the beginning of Romano's article. It's not until the end of the second paragraph and the beginning of the third that we find out what Ramon is writing about. There is really no lead paragraph, instead Romano starts his story off by telling about Spike Jonze the director of the film and his interaction with a stranger. Romano uses this story which he took from an interview that Jonze did with Newsweek earlier to set up the idea of the film being too controversial or more importantly too difficult for children to understand. Romano eases the reader into the topic by using Jonze's story with the stranger, which is unlike a regular news story that want's to get right to the point in the first sentence. It's more laid back and it's trying to come to an answer rather than trying to preach the truth. One of the other bigger differences between this story and a regular news story is that Romano quotes from other written sources rather than from a source he interviewed himself. He takes quotes from interviews that people have given to Newsweek, quotes from journals and other articles that people have written, and he even takes a quote from a 1963 review of the "Where the Wild Things Are" book. This is where it seems to be more like an essay because he takes ideas from other people to help get his own point across to the reader. Romano has the entire article written out like an essay with a beginning paragraph, a body, and a closing paragraph to end the story. Regular news stories usually have an opening and a middle but rarely does it have a concluding paragraph that leaves the reader thinking about the main idea of the story they just read, and Romano's last paragraph does just that.

Response to Newspaper Bailout

Not being a big fan of any of the other bailouts that the government has done already, I have to say I'm not too sure if bailing out print media is the best idea right now if ever. I do think that print media is important, but the issue I have with Nichols and McChesney, and the argument for a bailout for print media in general, is the fact that they act like there will be no news reported at all if newsprint dies out. Personally I don't feel that the newsprint media has any basis of being superior to the other forms of media. The only thing it has going for it is that it has been around longer then any other type of news outlet. With so many more important issues that the Government is being faced with right now, like health care reform, I think the future of newsprint media should be at the bottom of their list of concerns.

I think that the two authors of this article have made good arguments towards why the newspaper industry deserve a bailout, but I think that the only argument that is worth thinking about is the possibility that 50,000 reporters would be without jobs if the industry crashed. But I would have to say that there have been that many jobs and more that have been lost in the past months. I don't feel that the newspaper business is big enough to stabilize our economy, and if it were to crash losing all those jobs it would be no different then all of the other industries that have been losing the same amount of jobs. We need to fix the economy first and foremost and I don't see bailing out the newspapers would fix our economic problems that we now face.

They bring up another good point that a lot of television news outlets focus on less important things like celebrity life, but I would argue that the paper still reports on these types of stories, just not as much. A few times in the article it seems to be implying that the new media is trying to destroy the old media. There seems to be a big comparison and blame put on news that is distributed online. My major question is what is the difference of reading a story in a newspaper and reading the same story online? The story is still the same it is only being presented to us in a different format.

The idea that a bailout could even save the newspaper is unknown. We think that because the car industry is doing a little bit better then it was, that must mean that the bailout worked. Same goes for the banks and the housing market, but what happens if these systems go back down to they way they were. We are just assuming that they are working, but only time will tell. What if we decided to throw sixty billion dollars into a bailout over the next three years to save the newspaper and nothing happens, all the papers still go out of business. I think we were too fast to jump into the previous bailouts without taking the time to decide if it would work over time or if it was just enough of a hit to limp us on for another few years. And I think it would be stupid for the government to just rush in and bailout something else. We need a permanent solution that will created sustainable jobs not a crutch to get us by and just dump it on the next generation. Maybe it will work and we will have newspapers for 1oo more years, but with the way technology is getting smaller and more complex with what it can access how much longer can papers last. This problem started before the rescission and I think we would be having the same problem even if our economy was booming at it's highest.

The newspaper has been in trouble for a long time and I think that it is time to just let it go. I think the two authors have put their hearts into this campaign to try and save the paper, but that may be what is hurting them the most. I think the argument comes more from a sense of nostalgia that the two authors wished the papers could return to. If there should be any type of government funding it should be put into a way to make online news media stronger. I think that the new media can do the same thing that the old has been able to do for so long, but I think it can become something greater and move us ahead in our news reporting capability. Whatever happens in the next couple of years there will always be those out there dedicated to finding the truth and reporting on it, no matter what form they use to report it.