Libya Coverage

Hard News Lede-

Libya's President Moammar Gadhafi is attempting to undermine tomorrow's planned protests in Tripoli this morning as midday prayers approached by having militiamen in his camp set up checkpoints around the city, as well as taking measures to cut off internet service and prevent journalists from leaving their hotels.

Comparison of Stories-

Because the events unfolding in Libya are the center of an ongoing and fast developing debate, there is a broad range of coverage of the issues. Many news items are brief and function as updates since the situation is constantly changing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/04/AR2011030400543.html

This post by the Washington Post succinctly explains the latest development in Libya- basically the information contained in my news lede above, but a bit more fleshed out. It's only about 100 words long and contains only the bare bones information. It assumes that its reader is following the story and only wants a slightly in depth understanding that keeps them aware of the situation up to the moment. It's an example of hard news, and it's in more of a blog style, signified by its brevity.

Actual bloggers are covering the issue in a variety of ways, often with more innovative angles than many of the more news oriented outlets. Even celebrities have entered the discourse on Gadhafi. Libya is a somewhat rare situation since many of these celebrities are musical performers who are publically giving away the money that the Gadhafi family paid them to perform. However, there are also more typical ways in which celebrities have been incorporated into the discussion.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2011/03/libya-protests-2.html

This LA Times blog post is an example of the inclusion of celebrity culture in the political struggles in the middle east. In this case, they are siting Angelina Jolie's stated concern for the people of Libya and the growing refugee situation that is arising out of the conflict. In this case, a media outlet is helping Jolie to possibly increase awareness of the issues by using her celebrity.

Another way that journalism deals with major news events is through opinion pieces, which probably play a large role in "sense making" despite being less exact in their timeliness.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/opinion/03asfar.html

This Op-Ed in the New York Times is from the perspective of a Libyan. This is typical of Op-Eds, since they often are written from the perspective of someone with authority or expertise on a particular subject. In this case, who better to represent the Libyan people than an actual Libyan?

This Opinion piece utilizes the luxury of a longer word count and has more speculative nature, as well as making a broader statement about the impact of the events going on. The writer takes the time to use anecdotes and contextualize the reader with her own personal situation by introducing her family into the piece. He also takes the time to give more history than a news article can at this stage of the conflict.

Another thing about this Op-Ed piece is its ability to philosophize about the events in Libya and explore their personal meaning as well as their broader impact.

One example of a softer news story is this one since rather than discussing events that have just transpired, it's more predictive in nature.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/01/libyan-refugee-food-crisis-looms

The main topic of this piece is that refugees are pushing at the borders of Tunisia and Egypt and that this could result in a food crisis. The length of this article is moderate since there are some details and speculations about the broader impact of the situation. There's only one evident source in this piece-- the executive director of an organisation called the World Food Programme who witnessed first hand the refugee situation building up. Therefore the emphasis of the article is on WFP's actions and the issues that they are directly involved in.