Media for the World

Juandy Campos
Introduction to Multilingual Media
9/15/2014

Media for the World

New York City is one of the most diverse cities across the world. Here you can find residents that come from the farthest and smallest cities ever imagined. Since it is compromised of mostly immigrants it is important for them to connect to what’s happening back in their home country. When we talk about diversity in NYC ethnicity is definitely a big part of it, but another great thing that separates all New Yorkers is their individuality. The great thing about media is that it is able to cater to all of these different ethnicities and individuals in the world.
Media has become a very powerful voice in all parts of the world. It’s ability to connect people and an event from different parts is astounding. With the use of the Internet, Television, and Print media there is a way to satisfy everyone. Even though the Internet is the fastest growing source for information, Newspapers are still very popular amongst the scholars, professionals, and the older generation. In this essay we will review three local NYC Newspaper (New York Amsterdam News, El Especialito, and The Wall Street Journal) to see who is there target consumers and how they cover their news.
New York Amsterdam News is a weekly NYC newspaper that primarily caters to the African American community, “The Black View.” From glancing through the newspaper and reading some of the articles it is completely focused on African Americans news both locally and around the world. It has its standards section to inform its readers about international, state, local, and sports news amongst many others. It was very interesting to see that they cover international news, such as events in Syria, and Caribbean news separately. For Caribbean news they really focus on Black populated countries, like the article discussing the fuel war going on in Trinidad. Two other sections that really caught my attention because it is not often seen in newspapers are a religion and spiritual section, and a separate newspaper within AMNews called “Public School Press.” In a general sense I think it’s a safe to say that African Americans are very spiritual, so it made sense when I saw this section in the AMNews. Before reading through the article I believed this section would more about their gods and beliefs; surprisingly it was more subtle than I thought. One of the articles was about a local couple’s wedding but barely touched on the subjects of values, morals and beliefs. Public School Press is a very short separate newspaper within AMNews. It discusses different issues as well as African American student and staff achievements in elementary, middle, and high schools in the city. All in all, I think that Amsterdam News has an overall on the empowerment of African Americans. The majority of the articles are celebrating the success of their people in all different settings including business, politics, education, and the arts. It celebrates and lifts up their whole community.
Very contrasting from the Amsterdam News we have a daily, New York based, international newspaper, The Wall Street Journal. WSJ is one of the largest circulating newspapers, which emphasizes on business and economics. Right of the bat you can see a huge difference in the construction of the newspapers. As opposed to the AMNews, WSJ is of broken up into separate, individual sub-newspapers. The first part is a more general section that focuses on different issues in both the United States and international affairs. Here you can find the major issues talked about in the majority of the newspaper no matter whom the audience is. Some of the major topics going on today, that a couple of the articles focused on, are the growing support for the U.S led campaign against Islamic state and other articles covering the situation there. If you want to read about major news you can go straight to this sub-newspaper. For the ones interested in more local news the following sub-newspaper, “Greater New York,” as the title tells us focuses on what’s going on in our beloved city and the surrounding states. In this section I was able to read an article about the opinion of the residents of Iowa and their uncertainty of supporting Hilary Clinton if she runs for president. Although, all of the sections have different articles on business and economics, which is the purpose of the entire newspaper, the third section is solely on “Business and Finance.” There is a huge range of articles that touch on different topics from corporate news, to market, and stocks, the perfect section for an economics and business junky. Of course, for those of us who enjoy the more cultural articles in newspapers there are two entire sections focused on “Reviews,” arts, and everyday living, the latter found in the “Off Duty” section. In terms of audience I definitely believed it is more for scholars and professionals. The writing style is not very hard to follow but I give credit to the writers and editors because the articles are well formatted and sound very professional and unbiased on any given topic.
The last newspaper we are going to review, El Especialito, completely shocked me. Firstly, it is a Bronx based newspaper written in Spanish, so of course its target audience is Hispanics and Latinos. The amount of ads in this newspaper was astonishing to me. Clearly the majority of the funds for this paper are literally printed on every single page, sometimes even taking full pages just for ads. In regards to the content of the newspaper it was purely filled with lifestyle and pop culture articles. You can find anything from beauty and style tips to advice on how to raise you children. Not one article touched based on major issues going in the world, the country, or even the borough in which it’s printed. There was one short article, towards the end of the newspaper that talked about the current elections going on. I think this newspaper can be compared more to a magazine than an actual newspaper in terms on content. When a person picks up a newspaper generally they are trying to read news about what’s going on around them and in the world. The articles that it did have were very short and very biased, and focused on a superficial and materialistic society. Even the AMNews, which I believed would be the most narrowed view of the newspaper had a wider, range of articles that didn’t just focus on lifestyle. As a whole the newspaper is not very cultured.
We have now reviewed three completely contrasting newspaper formatted to capture different readers’ attentions. Between these three AMNews seems to be the middle ground between the very strict businesses focused The Wall Street Journal, and the more lenient El Especialito. One thing that I noticed is that as the price of the newspaper decreases there is a negative relationship, and the number of ads increases, as we can see with the free newspaper El Especialito. Also, more renowned newspapers such as WSJ will be richer in content and is more relevant to the news today.
No matter your taste in topic, there will be a newspaper out there to satisfy your craving. Of course some will have more validity than others and reach larger audiences, but every newspaper has its target audience for whom they write their articles for; and if the one that you desire is not in your reach you can always find your news from many different media sources such as TV or the internet.
 
Works Cited
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Tatum, Elinor. New York Amsterdam News: The New Black View. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2014. .

The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, n.d. Web. 11 Oct. 2014. .

Wessler, Hartmut. “Comparing Media Systems and Media Content.”

Academia.edu. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2014. .