Analyzing News Genres
Purpose
This exercise is designed to help you become familiar with the two main news genres, reporting and opinion articles. This is important for helping you sort through news sources that you will encounter in both your day-to-day news reading and when searching for news sources for academic projects.
Step 1 - Find a Reporting Article and an Opinion Article on the Same Topic
Continue with your topic that you wrote about for Project A (see Phil if you want to change it). Your goal here is to find (1) factual reporting article and (1) opinion article.
What's the difference? A reporting article is mostly objective, non-biased factual reporting where no argument or analysis is made by the writer. An opinion piece usually called "editorials," "op-eds," "opinion," "commentary," or "analysis" are pieces that are still factually-based and rely on reporting, but seek to persuade their audience of the writer's views. (Here's an example: reporting article v. opinion article.)
How do you find the articles? You should choose reliable, in-depth, original reporting from sources that you trust. Not sure what sources to trust? Decide based on these two infographics: popularity of media sources (Wired) and news bias/quality (Otero). It's better to go directly to a publication's website, but if you can't find anything, try Google News.
Step 2 - Compare the Formal Elements of a Reporting Article v. Opinion Article
Each genre has a set of formal conventions (writer and reader expectations). However, many news websites don't label whether an article is reporting or opinion. So how can we tell as readers? The best way is to examine the formal elements of each. Write 500-750 words on a compare/contrast on how the reporting article you chose is different than and similar to the opinion piece you chose. Pay attention to:
• The rhetoric of reporting v. the use of persuasive strategies (ethos, pathos, logos, kairos)
• The organization and structure of the piece
• The language used
• The type of sources of information used and where they come from
• The tone and voice
• The context - where is it on the publication's website? how is it promoted? Etc.
• The title and author's byline of the piece