600 words on your thoughts on how the form of blogging and newspaper writing is different and what you notice separates different papers from one another. Please use specific examples to make your points, and cite articles and blog posts. Post on your blog.

For me, there’s a definite difference between the language used in print newspapers and online blogs and how news itself is presented. Over the past week, several newspapers have reported on key events from the three-ring circus known as the Park 51 mosque controversy to more lighthearted news in the celebration of Fashion’s Night Out across New York City. While of course there were other newsworthy stories to hit the papers and blogs this week, I’m going to focus on these two events and how differently they were presented in several news articles.

While this year marks the ninth anniversary of September 11^th, it also comes at a time of great tension for American Islam society as the building of a mosque near the Ground Zero site comes under fire. Naturally this was the subject of many news articles throughout the week. In established papers like The New York Times, articles like “Unsettled Nation Marks 9 / 11 With Rituals of Sorrow” were standard fair and buzz phrases such as “heated demonstrations,” “Muslim center,” and “divide the country” ran wild across the pages. Absolutely, the Times and The Chicago Tribune took a hard news outlook on this event. On the blogs, Wonkette presented the mosque controversy on the eve of the ninth anniversary day in unabashed satire, undeterred by those who would call them out as being disrespectful on September 11^th:

“It’s September 11 Eve, everybody! Have you figured out how you’re going to honor tomorrow yet? {...} And of course, make sure to Burn Yer Queeran…Speaking of which!”

The article goes on in this fashion, discussing the same events repeated all over in a more humorous light. To be honest, I think I might prefer Wonkette’s interpretation to the more established publications, just because I think there’s more freedom in the blogging system to tell the news in more unconventional and more interesting manner. Many of the paper publications seem to run together, repetitively, while the blogs bring a fresher twist to the news.

Now, with Fashion’s Night Out, the fashion bloggers were in their niche and the event was recorded in more colloquial terms all around. Content-wise, I definitely noted a difference on what certain publications printed as opposed to others. Case in point, The New York Times article “On Fashion’s Night Out, Normal Hits the Streets” was undeniably a more straightforward news story, focusing more on what the event was, who was giving out what, and the overall experience of the event in various parts of the city. Still, it was undoubtedly written less formally and with a more conversational feel than a hard news story, opening with a softer lede about the normal city dwellers who attended Fashion’s Night Out:

“Fashion’s Night Out, now in its second year, may be responsible for several things: marking the unofficial start of fall fashion, bringing New York Fashion Week to the masses and demonstrating once again the power of Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue and the person most responsible for getting hundreds of retailers throughout the city to turn their stores into party spaces for a night.”

The article went on to give references to the TV shows “Sex and the City” and “Entourage.” Despite how informal The New York Times’ article on the event was though, The Huffington Post’s coverage “Fashion's Night Out: The Streets Are Rocking” certainly felt even more so, opening with an even softer, colloquial lede:

“You have to hand it to New York, when it's ‘feeling it,’ it sure knows how to throw a party. Fashion Week is all about pomp and circumstance and while all that glitz is great, there's an old saying in retail - nothing happens until you get a sale.”

Overall, I sort of felt that The Huffington Post‘s article captured the mood of the event better than The New York Times’ and generally as I was reading The Huffington Post throughout the week, I thought that it injected a lighter sense of humor in a good deal of their articles—more so than the Times, which seemed much more straight-forward on the whole.On the blog scene, Go Fug Yourself, paid more attention on reporting what various celebrities were wearing to the event rather than the event itself in the most colloquial terms yet. Here we have little gems of comedy, poking fun at the fashion disasters found at the affair, my favorite of which was, “Oh, Thandie. When your ENTIRE outfit is little more than a disposable wrapper for your erogenous zones, I'm not sure it's your fashion that's in search of a night out.” Here, you can definitely see where blogs sort of have more freedom to be snarky and informal. I suppose it’s because blogs kind of already assume who their niche audience is and write their posts with the mindset that its readers don’t need the back-story or nitty-gritty details.