Textual Analysis Rough Draft: Sunday Styles New York Times

Business, stocks, and politics are dry articles meant to be read by the black-tie business man running to his corporate meeting. He’ll spend some time flipping through the money articles and drooling over the stock rates. But where are the articles for the stay-at-home mom? The art major? Or the high school teenager?  Passing through the business section, are the Arts and leisure segments, the travel information, and the Sunday styles.  The Sunday styles contain information about fashion, trends, and social happenings.  It shows weekly weddings and contains ads advertising anything from shoes to shows.  Since The New York Times is a biased newspaper, it is hard to see how this would have any impact on the Sunday styles. Once one reaches the meat of the section, the bias can be seen with the progression of the articles. The changing view points and voices of the articles make this segment more open and less constricting.

The Sunday styles contain a range of articles that have to be reviewed in different ways. While one describes the conflict in a republican-democratic marriage; another explains a new way to set up intellectual meetings. Ideas are swapped and the articles contain a more personal underline. The Sunday styles is not like People magazine or Us Weekly; it contains articles about pop-culture’s impact on social issues in a conservative manner. The writers, in these sections, focus on current and modern issues that both entertain and inform the reader. While some are just reviews of music or books there are articles on love, studies, and on-the-street fashion.

All the authors that put together the Sunday styles section have different ideas and purposes. On the front page there are articles communicating two different concepts with the readers. One article, by Stephanie Rosenbloom, explains the accomplishment of a network of social entrepreneurs coming up with ways to set up free TEDx discussions. She discusses how social events are changing due to the new ideas sparked by ongoing progress with technology and expanding topis such as math curriculums, health care, and mastering the work-life balance. On the same page, an article by Sheryl Gay Stolberg explains the life of Valerie Plame Wilson: a spy that went Hollywood. These two, very differing articles, might be strange to look at in the same section but they both have the same purpose: the effect of social media.  The writers in this section are mostly women that write with an emotional and attached style.  Toward the middle of the section is a very interesting article that combines marriage and politics. In Hand-Holding Across the Aisle the author, Aimee Lee Ball, discusses relationship between a democratic woman and a republican man. This “coexistence” brings in the political culture into the social culture mixing both personal and government-related topics. The differing articles combine under one theme: pop-culture and social influences.

The Sunday Styles is a place for the socially elite. It reaches out to the fashionable New Yorker who tries to avoid the business section while still maintaining the appearance of a sophisticated resident. The articles do not communicate to the younger population because of the intertwined social and political information in the articles. The authors create a voice in their articles that can be bias. While most are more informative of the social event and happenings, a lot of the authors state their opinion indirectly toward small hints in their writing. This section is also for the curious and snoopy reader that looks through the wedding/celebration section. These wedding pages are for the people that like to be in other people’s business. Like the stocks to the business associates the Style segment is for the more culturally aware and interested.

While most New York Time readers are the higher-class business men, there are those who skip over the intellectual articles to the sections meant for them. The Sunday Style section incorporates social issues and happenings with a more compassionate voice.  Set up with different ideas on different pages, this segment shows the week in news through a modern and social stand point. It sticks together various articles that explain economic, cultural, and political events and ideas through a modern perspective. It covers topics from leopard print shoes to expanding entrepreneurs intensifying their ideas. This, all-encompassing, section truly shows another side of the very conservative New York Times.