Looking at common conventions of newspaper articles

An article from an editor

I’m sure you must have watched the television coverage of the riots last night, as I did, with increasing concern and, yes, fear.

But there was also a sense of inhabiting a parallel universe. For those of us lucky enough to be in work, the years of economic gloom have seemed like a phoney war. We may have tightened our belts somewhat, but life has remained pretty much the same.

Yes, the rioters are damaging their own communities, laying waste not only to cars and buildings, but also undermining the hopes and aspirations of their neighbours.

But for so many of them, what else is there? These are the truly disenfranchised, the people for whom the eurozone crisis and the volatile markets might as well be on a different planet.

While the children of the middle classes whinge about the lack of first time-buyer mortgages, and the cost of university fees, these children – and many of them are children – have no more chance of owning a home or earning a graduate-level salary than they have of sprouting wings.

They are the result not of the new, credit-crunch poverty, but of an older deprivation – a marginalisation that is not only economic but also racial in its origins. A volcano does not suddenly erupt without a long period of growing tension deep in the earth. In the same way, riots do not come from nowhere. That pressure has been there a long time.

There was something quite chilling about the way the fires seemed to spread. Hackney, Lewisham, Peckham, Croydon – it was difficult to suppress the suspicion that some plan was being played out.

How organised, I wonder, will the government response be? Can we expect a co-ordinated strategy that will make a real difference? And if so, what should that strategy be?

The lexis used in the  above will also appear in my own work. Even though this is a letter I have chosen to analyse this because it featured in a recent newspaper, therefore having the same style and tone as the other articles. The first sentence uses emotive language such as 'increasing concern' and 'fear' which sets the tone for the rest of the letter. It wins the reader over by using the phrase '’Im sure you must have'. This brings the readers own personal experiences into the story and makes them want to read on; to support the editor because they felt the same way, or to go against his view because they felt the opposite. Either way this small phrase works well in drawing the reader into the article. 

The next paragraph uses the same emotive language and phrases to gain the readers support even more. Starting with the word 'but' makes the letter very informal and puts the reader at ease. The letter consists of simple to compound declarative sentences with a few interrogative sentences to make the reader think, mainly found towards the end of the letter. This is done so that the reader goes away thinking about what he/she has read; the whole point of an article/letter. 

Overall the article uses language to engage the reader, and draw them into the story, something I will also use when writing my own articles.