Article: “How forcing colleges to go online could change higher education for the better” by Matthew Yglesias.

https://www.vox.com/21409692/online-colleges-lectures-digital-learning-covid-19

The article is about how digital classes have the potential to change university education for the better. The author starts by mentioning that most students around the US think that online classes are inferior to in-person classes. Faculty are also not fully content with online classes because it takes more effort and time to prepare recorded lectures. The author goes on by describing the positive side of online classes. Those are for example faculty learning to use the available technology more efficiently and recorded lectures being easy to distribute plus available for several years. Because of their shelf life recorded lectures might become the new textbooks.

This article is not really a news article but more like an opinion piece. The writer makes a lot of inferences about the future of digital classes, for example, that recorded lectures can become the new textbooks. He also uses more adjectives than what I would call completely objective. It doesn’t seem like the author used the inverted pyramid in their article because I think that all the information has the same level of importance. The article also doesn’t have a good and informative lead.

Article: “A Freelance Writer Learns He Was Working for the Russians” by Sheera Frenkel

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/technology/peacedata-writer-russian-misinformation.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

The article is about the freelance writer Colin Munro Wood who realized he’d been writing for a Russian façade website called “Peace Data”. The website intended to influence the elections in November by posting heavily biased information on the candidates. Wood was asked to cut parts from his articles that criticized the president or the Republican party. “Peace Data” is an operation that authorities said was connected to a covert Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency. Upon discovery more than a dozen social media accounts of “Peace Data” and its editors were shut down.

I didn’t plan on writing on something politics-related again but it almost always has a perfect example of bias and manufactured doubt. In this case, the doubt was manufactured by the Russian website with the intention to get voters to elect the president who is the most convenient for relations with Russia. As far as the article goes they didn’t necessarily report false news but rather influenced their audience by being biased.

Regarding the article itself, I think it is well-written and newsworthy because the author writes objectively and the topic is close to and impacts every person eligible for voting in the US. I would say it is also timely because it is an ongoing issue. The article is nicely parted into short paragraphs and has links to sources the author used.

Article: “Network’s Challenge: Covering a Live Convention when falsehoods fly” by Michael M. Grynbaum

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/24/us/politics/trump-convention-tv-fact-check.html?searchResultPosition=9

The author talks about the TV stations’ struggle of reporting what the president says at the Republican National Convention while trying to avoid including false claims and spreading misinformation. Different news channels took different approaches. These ranged from interrupting the president’s screen time to mention that he was making false claims to offering viewers a real-time analysis of what was being said. At the Democratic convention, most TV stations didn’t offer these clarification services which could get them in trouble with the Republicans and their allies.

I think the TV stations are in a real dilemma because of all the false news that are being used as a kind of propaganda during those conventions. Taking the first amendment into consideration, candidates are free to say whatever they want but that still doesn’t mean they should be able to spread false information and lies. Even though TV stations have to show the whole Republican and Democratic conventions in order to remain fair and create equity they still have the responsibility to uncover lies and misinformation. I think the approach by MSNBC with the live analysis would in this situation work the best because it allows the TV station to maintain fairness while warning people of false news.

The article itself is definitely newsworthy for me because at the moment the elections, conventions, and the spread of misinformation have a major impact on the whole nation. The intended audience is most likely adults with a higher education between the age of 35 and 50. I think that the author was very objective even though he himself is part of the media business and might have a strong opinion on this topic.