Evaluation of New York Times Stories

The New York Times, hereafter the NYT, is and has been one of the most influential newspapers in the entire United States. People from across the country read the paper frequently and the paper is a source of knowledge and idea sharing across the nation. The paper covers everything from opinion articles to political and science news.

Each article in the NYT is formed around one topic and in general one series of events. I recently looked at two articles from the NYT, one in the political section, one in the opinion section. Both of these topics are considered to be "hot topics" for today's modern culture. One article focused around the history of gerrymandering, a political term for the reconstruction of voting district lines in order to give one party the statistical winning advantage.

Anonymous, "Redistricting" via Flickr
Public Domain

The opinion piece looked to emphasize the need to eliminate gerrymandering which is seen as a cause of congressional gridlock. In it the NYT focused on one man specifically, Elbridge Gerry was one of the original drafters of the constitution and according to the NYT he was a true patriot who just was looking to give his party the advantage. Without the background information of the "main character" the history of gerrymandering would not be complete. Meanwhile the opinion article about the poisoning of the water supply of Flint, Michigan focuses around the governor of Michigan and the hyper-conservative politicians like him. This character focus makes the article an opinion piece, without the personalized character focus the story would only be a news article.

Each article has a specific setting to set the importance of the article. For the political piece about gerrymandering, there isn't a specific place but rather a general place of each voting district in the United States. The opinion piece is specifically focused around a certain city and state, ie Flint, Michigan. The piece also recalls similar dangerous political measures taken by mayors in London, England in the 1850's that would throw public safety to the wind in favor of saving a little money. Location enforces the reality of the situation, almost every writer can use location and personalizing the story in order to get the their audience to respond.

Many articles feature balances between two different sides of an argument however both of the articles I chose to analyze did not feature the other side of an argument. For instance, the article about gerrymandering did not try to show any support for gerrymandering and the article on the water crisis in Flint, Michigan did not feature any arguments for small government and trying to cut the budget while still maintaining the safety of the public.