Week 3 - Alternative vs. Mainstream Media

I chose to pursue the issue of the universal health care debate in my comparison between alternative and mainstream media sources. The alternative sources that I visited included Wiretap Magazine, Yes Magazine, and Free Speech Radio News. I found that the level of writing in the alternative sources seemed less formal than what I'm used to reading in a mainstream newspaper or magazine. I also found that the alternative sources leaned very heavily in favor of universal health coverage. This isn't all that surprising considering alternative media sources tend to be more liberal in nature. However, the manner in which the opinions and information was presented was more creative and eye-catching than other mainstream online news sources I have visited. The article I read on the Yes Magazine website had two stories about health coverage experience from what one would assume are real people, but the article didn't dwell on the credibility of the sources. For all I knew while I read it, they could be make-believe people with fictional health care problems.

The mainstream media sources I viewed included The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and CNN.com. I found that the articles on these sites had more statistics and supposed facts incorporated in them. Really, they had quotable tidbits of information, percentages, ratios, and other statistics that stand out and make the articles seem more interesting and credible. Overall, I believe the mainstream articles did a better job than the alternative sources at being objective on a topic that has aroused a lot of debate. At the same time though, the information was presented in an entirely cookie-cutter way. It wasn't creative in the least. This is to be expected though. These mainstream news sources are catering to an audience that knows what they want to read and expects to get it. It would be foolish of them not to give their readers the cut-and-dry journalism they want.

In some ways, I believe that alternative media sources are at an advantage to the mainstream. There is a lot more freedom that goes along with alternative media. They have more freedom with layout, design, and of course, content than large newspapers like The New York Times have. Because alternative media sources aren't necessarily concerned with pleasing large groups of people, they can focus more on what they want to write about and how they want to present it to their audiences.