New York, New York

Numerous American cities are losing one or--in some cases--all of their daily newspapers. New York, on the other hand, has numerous papers vying for readership. The New York Times, New York Post, New York Daily News, and The Wall Street Journal work to carve out niches in the market for their special brand of reporting. Each of their websites displays the news in a manner that reflects their target demographics. Examining these different websites and their respective front pages allows readers to understand each papers’ framing techniques and appreciate the need for a ubiquitous press in every major city.

The New York Times is essentially a national newspaper, an authoritative voice of record, featuring a wide array of local, national, and international news stories produced by their own reporters. Long considered to be a bastion of liberal thought, the Times’ editorial page is consistently liberal, but they employ several conservative op-ed columnists. Displaying the classic moniker “All the news that’s fit to print” at the top of the front page, The New York Times works diligently to incorporate a collection of articles for people of varying interests. Whether it is politics, economics, or entertainment, the Times’ website features something for everyone.

The New York Daily News is a less authoritative publication that presents news geared towards people who take the subway to work in the morning. Because the paper features an extensive metro section, Mort Zuckerman, the publisher of the New York Daily News, unabashedly calls his daily “a transit paper.” There is nothing wrong with gearing news towards a particular audience, but it prevents the paper from achieving the same circulation as The New York Times.

As for Rupert Murdoch’s two newspapers, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post could not be more different. The Wall Street Journal has maintained its readership amongst businessmen while expanding into new territory since the paper was purchased by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. two years ago. Murdoch’s sensationalist brand of yellow journalism has yet to creep onto the pages of the Journal, whereas the Post is only a minor step above tabloids such as The National Enquirer.

Every newspaper--the Times, the Journal, the Post, and the Daily News--disseminate a different reality of the same events because every publication is constrained by its own professional standards and the viewpoints of the people working for the paper. What emerges from these multiple and diffuse viewpoints is a harsh rebuke of the press’s classic image as a pursuer of truth.

Print journalism is a very blunt narrative. Journalists strip the English language down to the bare necessities to prevent preconceived notions from entering their work. Disseminating the news is not the only job of the press, they are also obligated to pursue the truth of the subject with extreme haste and accuracy. But based on the articles published in mainstream New York newspapers, the coverage of national events can be promoted in a variety of ways.

Every communication medium--whether it be newspapers, magazines, government documents, photographs, or film--is capable of representing the same event in dramatically different ways. It is often said that history is written by the victors or the powerful. According to Noam Chomsky, through the selection of topics, the framing of issues, and the filtering of information, the press and the government are capable of keeping debate within the confines of acceptable premises. The varying representations of the world in New York’s major publication illustrate this phenomena and how the reporter’s role in the free press sometimes comes into conflict with their loyalties to the nation and their profession.

When evaluating information, the viewer has the responsibility to determine the validity of a message and decide how to interpret that message. Kenneth Burke, a philosopher and language theorist, believed humans were symbol using animals and that reality is constructed through the use of these symbols. Once a reader understands that language is the use of symbols to communicate concepts, they are more likely to recognize the motivating factors behind each newspaper’s representation of the same event. The Fourth Estate’s capacity to convey information in a variety of ways is on full display every morning in New York, where the differences in representation force the populace to look beyond the text and into the context of the stories they read. Once this occurs, the people of New York are more able to determine their own beliefs and actions in their daily lives.