NPR has been called (right or wrong) the "New York Times" of the radio...for many reasons, including the depth of the coverage, and the quality of the writing. For a sense of how two journalistic organizations - with very similar styles and missions - approach things from a print and broadcast point of view, here are some examples. They use a sad current story - the death of movie star Heath Ledger.
The Times' A.O. Scott writes about Ledger's career in today's paper. Scott is one of their film critics, and he takes it from a critic's point of view. The paper also ran several same-day news stories, including this one by James Barron.
NPR's online package includes two stories. One is by Kim Masters, who is "reporting" on the death - the other is by film critic Bob Mondello.
So, in reading (and listening) - what do you hear that's different? Can you tell the "broadcast" approach versus the "print" approach? Do you see the way they're using language differently?
Leave a comment for us to discuss...
7 comments:
The difference between the print and broadcast approach is clear. NPR recounted the news in a chronological fashion like a story. Bob Modello and Kim Masters touch on Ledger’s early beginnings in Australia and work their way up to his famous role in Brokeback Mountain. Masters doesn’t even mention his breakthrough role until half-way through her piece. Yet the New York Times articles both refer to Brokeback in their first sentences.
The language also differs. The New York Times uses big words with complex sentence structure while the NPR people told their stories in a straightforward and conversational style. (Rules number one and two in “The basic rules of broadcast writing”) “Heath Ledger was a handsome young man and a serious actor.” That’s how Masters began her piece, just 11 words versus almost five times the number in James Barron’s story.
NPR also fills their stories with a variety of voices. Masters tosses the story to a film critic within a few breaths of beginning. Barron, however, only throws in a short quote at three paragraphs and only uses a few short quotes after that. AO Scott, on the other hand, doesn’t let any quotes interrupt his observations. Masters and Modello also tell the story with sound clips from Ledger movies. Masters even includes clips from an interview with Leger himself.
Overall… some stark differences between the print and radio stories. -Gina
The title used by Bob Mondello is more emotional than that of Kim Masters: Actor Heath Ledger, 28, found dead in N.Y. home vs. Ledger’s Death is Film World’s Loss, putting the accent on the age of the actor.
The news presented by Masters begins and ends with a sad music expressing the passing of Ledger. The music is very well chosen for this kind of subject. The audio discourse is animated by different inserts. The news is organized after the inverted pyramid. At the beginning the listeners find out about the death of the actor and after that they can remember and recall important different successes recorded by Ledger in the movie world.
The beginning of the material presented by Mondello is more direct than the other one. Here we can observe very clearly the presence of the 5 Ws in the lead. The cause of Ledger’s death is mentioned from the beginning of the news and the accent is put on the age of the actor. Two times it is mentioned, the author desiring to reveal the fact that the actor was very young.
The inserts about the successes of Ledge are alternated by different passages from the movies where he played. In this way it is assured the dynamicity of the radio discourse and the attention of listeners is captured. The end of the news is represented, also, by a musical sequence.
The biggest difference between the written and the listen version of the news is observable at the language level. The radio speech is more concise and direct while the print version supposes more complex sentences, with words which help the reader “to visualize” the event.
Maria Iova
I'm going to agree a lot with Gina and Maria: the biggest difference I found between the Times and NPR was the brevity of the words used in each type of story. The print version, even the basic coverage of Ledger's death, used more descriptive and bulky words in order to illustrate the full story of his life and death. The radio pieces came off smoother, likely in order to keep the listeners engaged in the story. And NPR's coverage included audible quotes from sources and sound bytes from Ledger's movies: these elements tell the story for the radio journalists, while print reporters have to rely mainly on their construction of the story to tell it well.
Though the Times and NPR told the story two different ways, I left with the feeling that each medium told the story to the same extent.
Well, you guys certainly covered the technical angles of comparing NPR to The New York Times. I will say this then, I have always found television and radio news packages more entertaining than print. NPR is very good about adding audio files (interviews, clips, etc...) to enrich the piece. We get to hear Ledger talk and act which brings us closer to him. The addition of other people talking about the tragedy made the NPR pieces more emotional. Also, I found the NPR pieces to be more conversational. Much like a friend telling me what happened and reminding me of the work Ledger did.
That being said, The New York Times pieces had more angles and detail. We learned more about what he has been doing lately, where he lived, more details about his death (the housekeeper letting in the masseuse), several details about his career, etc... We even heard from several people in the community and fans.
The bottom line is that the two organizations more or less told the same story in different ways. I prefer the NPR style but an avid fan would probably prefer the print stories. It is an interesting topic though.
Cory
I really did not enjoy the New York Times article. I thought it went on far too long. The writer did not use any quotes from Heath Ledger, and he assumed I had seen the movies that he mentioned. He lost my interest after his lead when he mentioned "Rebel without a Cause."I have never seen that movie with James Dean - so I felt excluded before the article even began. He uses Brokeback Mountain as the basis for this article to show who Heath Ledger was, but I thought it would have been better to talk to his family, other actors, and people who knew him.
I enjoyed the NPR clips much more. I did not know who Heath was by name until he died, so the soundbites of people telling me who he was were very helpful. I liked that they talked to his father. The language was more direct, I liked the play on words, the music, and the police facts which answered the 5Ws for me.
Stacy Graham-Hunt
First off, I find it interesting that Heath Ledger is being compared with James Dean. And I can't help but feel like the inclusion of this assertion makes the Time's article a little bit of an oppinion piece, mixed with a news story. But, as a side note, I do find it interesting that the defining movie of Dean's career, Devil Without a Cause, had a possable homosexual angle involving Sal Mineo's character, as well as possibly Dean's.
But back to the subject at hand, I got the story better from the NPR story mostly because they stayed on the topic of just presenting the news and did not try to make any historical assertions about him.
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