Introduction
Magazines and newspapers use different language styles to convey messages. This essay will compare two articles from the New York Times: Still strong, Economy in China cools slightly and Following troops, Kenyan officials go to Somalia with an article from the Jakarta Post titled The rise of discontented Americans.
Analyzing the Three Articles
The article on Jakarta Post was posted on 17th October, 2011. The first sentence of the article is a sarcastic phrase: “The land of plenty, the birth place of the revered Forbes list of richest men in the world” (Mariani 1). This is in contrast with what the article is all about. The article outlines how Americans are known to be rich.
The article highlights some of the challenges that the American are facing, for instance, citizens are having problems at their places of work and unemployment is on the rise. On the article is a photo of a man holding out a flyer that is written “99% too big to fail!!” (Mariani 1). The article goes on to talk about how citizens have suffered from injustice and environmental destruction. According to the article, many citizens are dissatisfied with what the government has done to improve their welfare states (Mariani 1).
One of the New York Times article is titled “Following Troops, Kenyan Officials go to Somalia”. This article was posted on 19th October 2011; the article examined how Kenyans took action to safeguard their security which was being threatened by terrorists from Somalia. The article highlighted the relationship between Kenya and Somalia especially on political grounds.
In the article, there is an argument that Kenya is supposed to defend its citizens from within their country and not when they are in Somalia (Gettleman 1). The second article in New York Times featured the economic status of China. In the article on China, there is a deep analysis of the economic growth in China which had almost been constant compared to most countries in the world (Wines 1).
By engaging in a deep analysis of the three articles, it is clear that they all started with headlines which were almost of the same sizes. The New York Times articles had seven characters in their headlines while the Jakarta Post article had five words in the headline. They all included the authors of the articles and social sites such as Facebook and Twitter to share their information. The Jakarta Post article indicated the posting date and time while the New York Times articles only showed the date.
The articles from the two newspapers were characterized by photographs which gave the reader a quick understanding and interpretation of ideas explained before reading the words. The New York Times articles had photographs which took larger spaces and were placed at the beginning of the articles.
They were then followed by relatively smaller photographs than the first ones. The Jakarta Post article started with one big photograph and then two smaller ones for emphasis of their message. The use of photographs in these articles is appropriate. The Jakarta Post article was more detailed because it gave even the names of the persons who appeared on the photographs while the New York Times articles generalized the photographs.
All the articles had a political link. The Jakarta post article pointed a finger at the United States government and the president for the current situation in the US. One of the articles in the New York Times explained how Kenyans had used their government to fight the Al-Shabab, a terrorist group in Somalia.
The other New York Times article explained how the government had controlled the economy by “raising interest rates five times, restricted the number of homes a purchaser can buy and curbed bank lending in an effort to brake growth”(Wines 1).
The Jakarta Post article on Americans was systemically biased towards the citizens. Americans are favored and the government is blamed for the current situation. The article in the Jakarta Post attracted attention as it discussed a super power. On the other hand, the New York Times shaded some light on the Chinese economy showing that though most of the places were economically slowing down China had tried to sustain its economic growth.
The article about Chinese economy was very detailed compared with the others. It explained the topic using figures and gave percentages of growth in various economic sectors in China. The article on discontented Americans and Kenya and Somalia were not as detailed as the one on China’s economy. Lastly, the article on Jakarta Post was more of an attack than informative unlike the articles in New York Times.
Conclusion
The three articles differed in the way they were expressed by their authors. This was in terms of photographs, details, size and topic. There were also some similarities which include the headline, photograph use, political link and bias. Differences in writing styles do affect the way a message is passed across and therefore the way that the general public views the issues being tackled.
Works Cited
Gettleman, Jeffrey. “Following Troops, Kenyan Officials go to Somalia.” The New York Times. 2011. Web.
Mariani, Evi. “The rise of discontented Americans.” The Jakarta post. 2011. Web.
Wines, Michael. “Still strong, economy in China cools slightly.” The New York Times. 2011. Web.