News sources are a way for people around the world to gather and see what is happening throughout society on a daily basis. These are primarily done through news conferences, reports, press releases etc. It is here where a lot of our views about the world are influenced depending on the type of news we see and hear and who is giving it to us. One such news source is The New York Times. This specific source provides many different types of news stories, as well as different ways to find them. However, what I will be examining from this source is its very structure; how it operates when it comes to their written material and who they are targeting because of it.
To start off, The New York Times is a very big website that supplies a great deal of links to numerous news stories.
Additionally, these stories are typically diverse in the kind of topics they cover. From subjects such as health and tech to education and sports, The New York Times leaves little out of its domain when it comes to news diversity.
However, looking over the website, some story topics do tend to take precedent over others. For example, politics and business have the greater number of articles and links compared to all the others. This size difference between them can be attributed towards the type of audience the website is looking to adhere towards. Mainly, well-educated people with college degrees who can contribute thought provoking conversations on the world of today. Therefore, because of the targeted audience, the website is offering itself to any race, religion, gender etc, who fall into that educated category firsthand.
This is supported by the way each article is written and by whom it is written by. Generally, each article, when dealing with a highly debated subject, will write in a way that is more from an objective viewpoint as opposed to a subjective one. This leaves out as little favoritism as possible and thus, the possibility to upset their audience depending on where they fall on the topic themselves. The less bias there is, the less one of their readers will feel anger over the article’s pandering to another opposition. This keeps The New York Times, from losing as many readers as possible and serves for them to come up with their own opinions about a hot-button topic and thus, the target audience being that of well-educated people who can contribute well-thought-out conversations.
Moreover, The website also has a way of organizing who writes their stories. This can be mostly seen depending on the kind of topic a reader is looking at. For instance, the media section that deals with topics such as music, cooking, and dance are written by females a lot more compared to males. Furthermore, topics such as sports, and science are written mostly by males compared to females. We start to see that certain topics are regulated more to certain genders. This can be looked at in a number of ways. One, is a way to help bring in more of a specific gender by having an author who is as relatable to the reader as possible. If females flock to a certain topic compared to males, you can draw in more female traffic by having more female authors write for them. Another way is that one gender might be favored over another and therefore, putting authors of the “better” gender on more popular topics to draw in more traffic while leaving the inferior gender with the less popular topics since they won’t be as much of a draw. Either way, The New York Times has to deal with any good or bad consequences from their decisions if that is the way they intend to go.
Overall, The New York Times can be seen as one of the most influential news sources out in the world today. Their ability to stockpile as many news stories as possible, all-the-while providing well-written articles too, allows them to dominate the competition from other news sources as the top dog. We will continue to be influenced by this news source for years to come as it is not going anywhere if its great display of excellence has proven anything to me and many others as well.
Sources:
The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 18 Sept. 1851. Web. 16 June 2017.
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I enjoyed reading your post on The New York Times. I personally have not spent time time on their website so reading your post was eye-opening to me. Best I can tell, you are spot on regarding who the paper tries to attract. I bet if you had a look, you could find some statistics to verify your belief that the majority of their readers are middle/upper class well-educated people. Statistics are always a great way to add credibility. I think you showed good analytical skills to recognize the articles often are presented in an objective manner. This may serve other purposes as well – perhaps the paper wishes to not sway their audience and allow readers the opportunity to get debates and conversations going with information that remains as neutral, objective, and unemotional as possible. What do you think?
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Loved your blog, and your point of view of the New York Times. I loved that you had pictures and statistics in your post, which made it not just an opinion piece, but it actually had data to back it up. Your post said exactly what my opinion was in class, that the New York Times had a audience that it is trying to apeal to, and for that reason many other groups are left behind. If i had to give suggestion, it’d be that the the post was a little long, but overall i loved it!
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Reading this article I realize that there is a lot that goes into running a news source. A news source such as the New York Times that is widely influential and known probably has tactics and strategies by which it tries to keep and grow an audience. Since the news source maintains a reputation of a well renowned high class news source it has to be careful in how it presents its news and what audience it is appealing to. I don’t really catch the news often whether it’s an online newspaper or cable news but there are so many out there with various styles and perspectives. The New York Times I feel is one of those that has been able to withstand times as it has been able to adapt to the new technological online era where maybe even younger audiences can be targeted and of course educated.
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