News or Opinion?
In USA Today there was an article in on page 3D called “Planets collide in all-black ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ revival”. It was about a play that recently got revived o Broadway. I thought that the article was really well written, however, I thought it was somewhat unusual because it did not follow the structure of a regular news story that you would see in a newspaper like USA Today. I honestly think that the article would have fit better as a opinion article, not as just a regular news story in the Arts section. One reason I thought this was because the writer criticized and praised the acting of the characters in the show. For instance the writer said this about one of the actresses in the play, “…but its another case of a normally astute, elegant actress adding too much sauce to an already spicy part” I think that this quote right here shows the writer being biased, making it sound more like an opinion article than a regular news story. Also the writer used a lot of descriptive speaking which is odd for a regular news story, you would see descriptive speaking more in a magazine story than in a news story in a newspaper, especially since I personally think that descriptive speaking makes the article seem more opinionated. Also, the ending of the article sounded like a conclusion to a story, tying the entire piece together, whereas regular news stories don’t tend to do that. On the other hand, I thought that the article was very informational and provided readers will a good background on the show and the characters of the show. I did not really have many questions about the show because the writer provided a lot of information in a short and efficient way. The only questions I had were, what is Big Daddy prosperity? Who is Tennessee Williams? And was the show written about Tennessee William’s son? Was it a play written on someone’s real life, or in other words, was it factual, a true story? While these questions may have not been newsworthy enough for the article, I think that it would still be interesting to know the answer to these questions after reading this article.
