Disclaimer : The articles used below are just for examples, and nothing else. Please do not read this post if you are offended by the articles.
What is a straight news article?
A straight news article is usually found in broadsheet newspapers. It is news that has much less scandal and gossip, and usually has much less sensational headlines. They are serious in tone, and the articles are objective, strictly for the reader to know more about what is happening in the world. They tends to have less pictures but longer and better written articles, with dense information packed in a single article.
What is a featured article?
A featured article is usually found in tabloid newspapers. Tabloids usually deal with news that include sleaze, corruption, sex scandals and other things that their traditionally working and new middle class readership apparently enjoyed. A Featured article is written with the main aim to entertain, and to a certain extent, inform the reader. It does contain some elements of the short story but it is written with a lead to get the reader's attention and then uses conversational tone to present the reader with information to evoke an emotional response. These type of articles normally contains more pictures and sentences are less dense with less information.
(See more in my previous post at http://nichtey.blogspot.com/2011/03/blog-prompt-newspapers.html)
How has this knowledge of the two sections affect the way I read newspaper?
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| (Above) Article posted in the new paper |
Just recently, an article was published pertaining to the issue of "Only ACS(I) Boys are worth Dating". To me, this a quite a good example of a featured article.
Before I had the prior knowledge of what constitutes a featured article, or any other article for that matter, I would believe it for word for word. However, ever since I have been given the knowledge of what a featured article aims to do, and how it gets its information from, together with blowing it up with a sensational tone, I have became more discreet and filtered out information which I feel is inappropriate. I no longer believe the article whole heartedly, and usually if I want to confirm a fact, I would check back with other sources, including the straights news article, which is more serious in tone. For articles which I find is untrue, or overly blown up, I would just scan through the text with a pinch of salt.
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| (Above) Article in the Straits Times |
Not too long ago, an article was published in The Straits Times that Lim Hwee Hua will not contest next election. I find this a good straight news article.
Since young, I have always noticed much statistics in this type of articles that are used to back up their claim. For example, they usually consider the whole event from more than one person's perspective. Now that I know that these types of newspaper articles have the aim of providing accurate information to readers, I will start taking most things that is mentioned in strait news articles to be true. I can be assured of this because this is what a strait news article suppose to present : relevant facts and figures. Nonetheless, if I read any suspicious articles, I can still check back with other more reliable sources.
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