Specific Dimension of Language Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Specific Dimension of Language - Essay Example It is the aim of the current discourse to compare and contrast samples of newspaper articles from that which was written in the 1920s, as to one which was written in contemporary times (2012). The points of comparison would be on characteristics of style and approach of the paper. Based on the comparison, the current essay would hereby address the following concerns, to wit: (1) how are journalistic standards declining, improving, or otherwise changing? The newspaper to the used as a source of the articles and the format of journalistic presentation is The New York Times. Cover Page, The New York Times, Monday, October 28, 1929 From the cover page of The New York Times of the issue dated October 28, 1929 (shown on the next page), it could be viewed that the presentation and outlay of articles are straightforward news reporting with all contents in text and in black font. Only the sizes of the fonts are being differentiated to emphasize headings and sub-headings. One of the featured a rticles entitled â€Å"Stock Prices Slump $14,000,000,000 in Nation-Wide Stampede to Unload; Bankers to Support Market Today† (The New York Times 1) share the same focal point and importance as with the other featured articles in the cover page. Source: The New York Times, 1929 Source: Yardley & Harris, 2012 The message content of this particular article was very comprehensive containing 2,006 words and presented equitably in eight sub-headings. The reporting style was highly structured, formal, and professional. This was corroborated by the statements written by Broersma (n.d.), who averred that â€Å"in the United States, objectivity was firmly established as a leading norm in the 1920s. Journalism affiliated itself with the rising public demand for facts as a basis for rational choices and actions† (p. xvii). As such, one would observe that the target audience for the information contained in newspapers, such as The New York Times in the 1920s were businessmen and p rofessionals who need to keep track of their stock investments or of the status of the economy and current issues pervading the political sphere. Cover Page, The New York Times, August 1, 2012 The cover page of The New York Times in contemporary period, particularly the front page for the issue dated August 1, 2012 reveals that the focus of the publication is the news feature entitled â€Å"2nd Day of Power Failures Cripples Wide Swath of India† written by Yardley & Harris (2012). It was likewise extensively written containing 1,278 words. As an article featured in the front page, it was accompanied by three (3) photos: the first one shows â€Å"passengers waited for electricity to be restored at a railway station in New Delhi on Tuesday† (Yardley and Harris); the second photo showed people in trains; and the third photo was a barber trying desparately to continue working by candlelight in Kolkata (Yardley and Harris). The style of writing manifested conformity to the use of rhetorical appeals and is significantly assisted by technological applications such as visual presentations (photos, charts, or graphs), greater options to use different fonts and sizes, colors, and even advertisements, as required. Broersma (n.d.) emphasized that in contemporary journalism, â€Å"while the content of an article is unique and incidental, its form is more universal and refers to broader cultural discourses, and accepted and widely-used news conventions and routines. The content of news items is bound to their national context, while forms and styles tend to travel internationally†