Blog Post 1: Comparing News Sites

Looking through different news sites, it’s interesting to see differences in language and how the tone and layout respond to the audience of the site. I compared several different sites, most focused on Milwaukee, specifically looking at the writing styles and audience.

OnMilwaukee
Just poking around the site, you can tell that it's made by people living in Milwaukee and really focuses on local events more  than national news. Which makes sense, given the name! Lots of small restaurants, events, and other reviews make it a very... personal, I guess, feeling news site-- you can tell that its audience is definitely people who would be in the area and interested in trendy and new things going on. It probably aims at people who are bit younger; folks who are still interested in trying the new hipster burger place that opened or want to keep on top of Netflix shows. Of course, older people could always enjoy those things, but the site is more marketed towards more youthful generations.
A lot of the most apparent articles are on or based around food. This makes sense to me; food is something that people always can enjoy and has lots of things you can do with it.
They also have a collection of guides which act like specialized directories. These would be helpful for people living in and out of the area.
I took a look at the featured article that popped up on the site: What's new on Netflix in September 2021.
It was a short article, as you might expect. The information was condensed well in a few opening paragraphs that precede dated lists of the shows soon to be appearing on the aforementioned streaming service. The article itself (that wasn’t just lists) was written in a very informal voice, with opinions and jokes that kept my interest. It was definitely a more lighthearted, entertainment piece than a straight informational one. It got across the information, and in a way that was appealing and fun to its intended audience.
The second article I looked at was Semolina pasta shop aims to revive the art of handmade Italian pasta. I love pasta, so of course I had to take a look!
This article was much longer. It consisted of a lot of thoughts and quotes on the new store from the owner, such as their inspiration for the new restaurant, as well as information on the menu and atmosphere of the small store.
The writing is uncomplicated, with lots of direct quotes and paragraph breaks. It explains  many of more obscure terms and also links to Twitter posts about the place. It closes with letting the reader know when the hours will likely be.
I’m mainly interested in the octopus stamped token pasta, oh my god.
Cephalopods are my favorite animals, and pasta is my favorite food, so I very much like this development.

Shepherd Express
 Okay, first thoughts! Poking around the main page, I definitely get a different vibe than OnMilwaukee. ShepardExpress strikes me as news for people living in Milwaukee, and less of a site about things in Milwaukee, like OnMilwaukee is. Definitely aimed to include an older crowd, I think.
I stopped looking through the front page and started looking for an article when a lifestyle article description started making me laugh, mainly for my own imagery when I read it.

I don’t know who this is, but “hardboiled” is somewhere in his name.

Time for the article!
I figured that since I did a food-based article for OnMilwaukee, I should do one for ShepardExpress as well. Thus, I chose Cheesemaker Opens Her ‘Dreamery’ Crafting Goat’s Milk Cheese! My grandma can’t have regular dairy, so she eats goat milk cheese, so that’s why this one caught my eye!
Right away, you can see the difference in writing styles between the two sites. ShepherdExress is much less “fun”-- there’s no little quips or jokes, mostly just facts and history points. It’s more information-dense and history oriented than person oriented, but that could also just be the topic.


Urban Milwaukee
Right away, I see that we’re moving further away from “trendy entertainment news” to more serious business stories. Lots of articles on business deals, new companies, old companies doing new things, old companies doing old things but during a pandemic, etc. 
A lot less articles on things like restaurant food or activities, unless it’s relating to rules or policies regarding them. This is not a site you’d go to looking for a new thing to do this weekend.
I can see my dad reading this site. He also makes spreadsheets of things for fun, so I’m not sure how much of a compliment this is.
I pretty much picked the first article that wasn’t about money doing things in business settings, which turned out to be one titled Supervisor Pushes Vaccine Mandate. It’s about a policy being pushed to require vaccinations for Milwaukee county employees.
Right away, it’s obvious that the article isn’t going to be having any funny jokes or many opinions at all. The language is a lot more serious than the others, leaning more towards academic writing. It definitely comes across as a more serious, factual article, which makes sense for its content.

Milwaukee Magazine

We’re back to more entertainment! 
At first… scroll-through, this site seems to have a rather eclectic mix of different Milwaukee and Midwest-based stories. Things from “Milwaukee Through the Years” to “Giannis Is Now a Brewers Owner” are featured on their main page. (I do take some offense at the headline outlining a “random” study that proclaimed Milwaukee third in cat adoptions-- don’t they know that studies are never random? People worked hard and paid good money to get that funded, let’s give our scientists some respect! I have strong feelings on this.)
This site comes across as more sensationalist than the others. It’s the more click-bait-y titles, I think; even if the articles are the same, OnMilwaukee isn’t titling their stories “The New Netflix Lineup Will Have You Buying Popcorn in Anticipation.” Because of that it kind of makes me trust the site less? Despite the nice black and white layout.
Actually, it’s because of the layout that I think this site might actually be angled to try and get older people to look at it. It could also just be the aesthetic, but in Graphic Design, one column, simple flow layouts are used in publications aimed at middle aged and elderly people a lot; they’re easier to follow and don’t have the same “frantic” nature of layouts like the one OnMilwaukee sports.

I live... near Lake Michigan! I live in a home! I figured I related a lot to the article Which of These Lake Michigan Homes Suits You Best? so that was my choice for this site.
So this article goes back to more of the style of the first, with opinions interspersed throughout. The article is short. Really short. Honestly, the pictures might be the more important bit. I’m not exactly sure what the point is, so that means that it’s probably just pure entertainment. More of a time waster than anything, to be honest, it kinda weirds me out that someone sat down, wrote this up, and got paid for this.

Milwaukee Record
Okay! Last assigned news site. This site definitely looks like it’s aimed at a younger and less formal crowd. It’s got a packed front page that’s got a lot of various articles about Milwaukee going-ons. It’s less focused on food and places like OnMilwaukee, and seems to deal with a lot of stories on things to do or that are happening currently. Other than that, it looks to have a lot of information on media that (probably?) has to do with the area.

I kind of just picked a random article from the front page. That random article turned out to be Matt & Kristin Talk About Milwaukee & Wisconsin Stuff #9: Vaccines, Colectivo, census!
Surprise! It turned out that the majority of the content of the story was in a video. A really long video. I didn’t watch it all. It was half an hour, okay? Don’t judge me.
Anyway, I can say that the story on the whole was very informal, lots of personal jokes and there’s some cursing and the two reporters are pretty laid back. 
I would say that this would be a pretty universally okay sort of story, unless you really only liked more formal news. Which I guess some people are like?

Finally, I went out and found a news site that wasn’t Milwaukee-based. I don’t really read the news, so it’s fairly random which one I chose. I have no guarantees on the quality.

Mic
So! This site is clearly aimed at younger crowds. Not like, young, young. Teens and up. Just not too far up.
It’s got a lot of international and national news, interspersed with social media stories, entertainment articles written around photo sets or trends, relevant scientific news, and other information that might be of interest to the intended audience, like articles on gender identity.
I selected a random article from the front page, which turned out to be titled FOMO is over. FOGO and FONO are our new social fears.

Article
This article was all about some of the repercussions of COVID and ways that people are handling changes in behavior and anxiety in a post COVID-world. Two new terms, FONO (Fear of Normal) and FOGO (Fear of Going Out) are discussed. The article, for being on two terms that were probably derived from memes, is surprisingly serious. It includes good research and quotes from experts, and discusses why and how these terms are spreading and how they’re important. However, it’s not written in a super formal voice, like a scientific paper, just a serious one, so it’s still accessible for the audience and not incredibly dry.