It’s October which means it Halloween time, my favorite time of year! This means that there is now a slew of haunted attractions that are popping up all over the country and oddly enough the news is reporting on that. I realize that these are a bit more to an advertising side than straight reporting but they were on “legit” news outlets so I figured I would compare them.

The first piece appeared on the NY Times website but it looks like it originated on the Associated Press. It was called “Can Halloween Freak You Out Any More Than the Real World?” and it reports on the different Halloween attractions around the entire country.

The second link is to a video I saw on Facebook from Fox 11 in Los Angeles (I don’t know why this was on my Facebook page but it was) where they sent a reporter to an IT themed haunted house and followed her as she went through the attraction.

As we discussed in class the two pieces differed greatly due to the medium on which they were reported. The video was far more entertaining and the NY Times piece was a lot more straight forward with the facts. The video focused on one specific attraction and the article could highlight a number of attractions.

In my opinion, the print piece seemed a lot more like a news piece than the video did. The video seemed to play on a trend that has been going on on a number of afternoon talk shows, mostly Ellen, where you watch someone go through a haunted house and make a fool of themselves as a thinly veiled promotion from said haunted attraction. That being said the other piece is also a form of promotion from a couple of companies but it seems more like a news story because there is this guise of a story hanging over it. This idea of “Are these any scarier than the real world” is carried throughout the piece and could be conceived as an actual report and not just a shameless promo.

Personally I enjoyed the video more because I love watching people make fools of themselves in haunted houses. Thats why I love to work them during this season. I personally love watching people be scared, the schadenfreude is real. I don’t think I actually learned anything about this house (where it is, when its open, etc.) from this piece though so I don’t know why they even put it under the guise of “news.” I learned more pertinent information from the print piece.

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/10/03/us/ap-us-travel-halloween.html?_r=0

http://www.foxla.com/news/local-news/scary-it-haunted-house-pops-up-in-hollywood (link to the Fox 11 LA website the video at the top of the page is what I am writing about)

(Writers note: I realize that there was a strong suggestion that this assignment would be easier if we discussed the shooting but I personally have a hard time dealing with stories surrounding tragedies like this therefore I had to find some semblance of a story reported on two different outlets that did not deal with that. So I know I used “news” in a BROAD term here…)