Close Reading of New Articles- Oona Kelly

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/28/egypt-protesters-tanks-cairo

This article from The Guardian is an example of coverage of an ongoing event, in this case the protests that have been going on in Egypt the past few days. In many places, the reporter assumes that the reader has some previous background and understanding of the issues. A few quotes are included that are not attributed, but are assumed to be taken from statements by the Egyptian government, which the reader has enough context to figure out.

At the same time, the most essential details to understanding the events are included.

The article includes a hard news lede, which does a good job of succinctly explaining the main events going on in Egypt.

 The coverage of the issue comes from many different standpoints- the reporter explains the reactions of the British Foreign Secretary, of the Unites States as represented by Hillary Clinton, and of a United Nations representative.

To make the story more well-rounded, a quote is included by an Egyptian partaking in the protests.

This piece draws out the conflict between the Egyptian people and the government they are protesting. Without stating any explicit bias, there is a distinct sense that the reporter is more sympathetic to the protestors, since most of the information included is framed from their side. Also, there are statistics about the number of deaths and much of the information included is about what police did to protestors.

This article also provides context by mentioning the link between the protests in Egypt and the conflicts going on in Tunisia.


http://www.economist.com/node/18010573


This piece in The Economist comes from a different style of writing since it’s a magazine rather than a newspaper. It is about the same issues as the previous articles, but it covers the situation in Egypt very differently. While The Guardian hinges their story on a new development—in this case, the disobedience of the president’s attempt to instate a curfew—in keeping with the style of a news article, The Economist takes a different tack and focuses the article on an in depth analysis of the protests in the Middle East.

There is a lot of detail in this article to situate the reader. This article, unlike the previous one, explains background rather than leaving that to the reader. It also spends more time discussing Tunisia and giving a comparison between Egypt and Tunisia and the significance of the push for democracy in the Middle East. This article posits that Egypt has a more significant political impact than Tunisia, which the other neglects to mention.

Also, there are no quotes in this article, instead the information presented is assumed to have been researched by the reporter, whose main purpose is to give broader context for a major current event.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/central-heating-may-be-making-us-fat/?src=me&ref=health

This Health blog post from The New York Times reports on a recently published medical study that indicates that indoor heating contributes to obesity. The reporter explains that the researchers argue that, “rising indoor temperatures are contributing to obesity.”

What is missing from this article is any counter argument to the findings of the study. There are no quotes from researchers that dispute this claim. It seemed to me that the reporter should have been more critical, and looked for this opposition. Especially with a topic like reasons for obesity, there is a lot of research supporting different claims about how to lose weight.

When the reporter writes, “that is not to say exposure to cold is a major driver of obesity: overeating and lack of exercise are the main causes,” this is the only time the significance of the findings is actually questioned.

Instead, the article focuses on explaining the findings of the study and quotes the researchers supporting it.