Today, a catchy headline or enticing photo is more likely to grab a reader's attention than the actual news. Whether it's the magazines at the checkout counters or online articles, the front page of any article will determine how many readers or clicks it receives. For my next bit of media dissection, I will be focusing on "front-page news." I will observe how the Oceania region's newspapers utilize text and photos to present the news to their citizens. The papers I will be examining come from Fiji, Australia, and New Zealand.
Today is March 17th, 2022, my first day of daily observation. Something I noticed right off the bat with the local paper from Perth, Australia, is the enlarged photo of two children. As someone who has seen countless children's pictures in the media, my instincts infer the worst. Too often, the stories either recount dead or missing children, and the front page of Perth's newspaper was no different. One-half of the page memorializes the lives of two young children who died in a car accident. The West Australian uses the bold, oversized, capitalized font in white on a black background to ensure the "pop" of the headline. Any other story meant to run today exists solely around the tragedy. The paper minimalizes them to maximize the reader's attention to the "Shining Lights" story concentrating on the children.
In reverse, The Fiji Times organizes their paper quite uniquely. What one would assume is the most critical story of today only consumes half of the front page. An excerpt criticizing "recent government trips" and comparing them to "conga lines" shares the newspaper's cover with an enlarged photo of famous Fijian athletes working out together. It seems as if the paper is trying to appeal to readers who focus on local issues while appeasing their sports fans with an enticing look into their lives.
However, what surprises me the most are the two newspapers out of New Zealand. In Christchurch, the main focus from The Press is on tourism, while The Dominion Press highlights the anti-mandate protests in Wellington. As an outsider looking in, I can't help but notice that the pandemic still seems to take precedent no matter how far around the world a place is. I believe that each of these papers format based on the audience they're trying to target on that day.
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