‘Steve Jobs authorised biography tops bestseller list on pre-orders’

Picture and news link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/07/steve-jobs-biography-rushed-out

After the death of English singer Amy Winehouse, Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, becomes another spotlight in media’s reporting after he passed away. Different kinds of reporting such as about his achievement on computer technology innovation, his former speech in Stanford University, the reason which result in his death and even the Apple product itself, are all become popular topics among the public. That is why it’s no wonder when the authors of The Guardian’s book column decided to write some book news articles about Steve Jobs. Since this kind of topic now can easily catch the attention of the audiences.

This article, named ‘Steve Jobs authorised biography tops bestseller list on pre-orders’, is start with quote one words of Steve Jobs “I wanted my kids to know me” and then shows the fact that his biography now tops the Amazon bestseller list on pre-orders. This is an effective start since it generalized the central idea of the whole article. That is: Steve Job’s biography is quite popular now and this article contains information about how Jobs think about his biography. The leading sentence is followed by details about the release date of biography. The following paragraphs introduced the author of the biography of Steve Jobs and Jobs’s own attitude toward this book. The news article is ended by some interesting quotes from Amazon book describers.

I think this news article works well because of its relevance to the current popular topic and the way it represents the news. It also introduced the author of this book, in this article it mentioned that the author who writes the biography for Jobs is the one who’s written articles and books for Einstein and Benjamin Franklin. This works well because the public is always interested in news about prominence. The end is humorous quotes from two book describers. Their words show their great respect for Steve Jobs. This is a good way to show the author’s respect for Jobs since in a news article the author cannot show he/her own opinion toward certain thing, it is a good way of “show” rather than “tell”.  

Apple face lawsuit over e-book price

Picture and News link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/11/apple-ebook-price-fixing-penguin-macmillan

This is a news story from the Guardian’s website. It’s about the price competition of e-book between Amazon and Apple. To me, this is a well-written news article which has clear structure and high news value.

The author adopted a balanced structure to represent two opposed stands. In this lawsuit, the main plaintiffs are consumers of e-book and the accused are Apple, HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster. To show the news in a fair way, the author adopted a balanced structure to represent each side’s idea to the audience. This is a good idea since balanced structure can show audience news in an unbiased way. Also, it can display the conflict and drama elements in a single issue. Therefore, audience will feel more interesting in reading this news piece.

Another success for this article is that it addresses the news value of the whole lawsuit. The lawsuit is actually between consumers of e-book and five major companies include Apple, HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster. The author finds the newsworthy aspects about the lawsuit and then arranges the information according to their priorities.

The title of the news story is “Apple and major publishers face lawsuit over e-book ‘price fixing’”. This is very smart idea since Apple is the most famous one among these companies. Also when famous one has something to do with lawsuit, it adds to the news value. Furthermore, e-book’s pricing is definitely concerned closely with audience’s daily life. Thus in one word, the title is a great hook.

Instead of focusing on the argument between consumers and e-book publishers, the author relates the lawsuit to ‘Amazon's consumer-friendly $9.99 rate’. Related the lawsuit to Amazon can help audience understand how this lawsuit affects their daily life. And in some extent, the author extends the single lawsuit topic to general e-book pricing regulation.

In one word, I think this news story works very well because of the clear, effective structure and news value it represents.