Content Analysis

According to the Webster Dictionary, focus means directed attention. (Webster) People are constantly arguing about what the real “focus” is for the betterment of humankind. Healthcare, money, jobs, housing, political issues, and numerous other topics often come up in the debate for real focus. In today’s America, things like healthcare, jobs, house and other issues are really important to people, yet, the people of America still get side-tracked and lose focus often. Often times, people, including newspaper writers will report on something crazy, rather than what is really important. Crazy, according to the Webster Dictionary means full of cracks/flaws, impractical, erratic, being out of the ordinary, etc. (Webster) How then can we lose sight on real issues and focus on things that are impractical or flawed? Why is it so easy for Americans, to lose direct attention? Are we too bored with all the political and economical news? Are we in denial about the issues at hand, that we turn our faces to what is crazy to distract us? Sure seems that way to the observation that one has made. It is from one’s understanding that people like focusing on what is crazy, because it pulls them away from the “boring”, “mundane” and, “fun-sapping” issues that are truly at hand. People have become lazy, and this mindset of, “it will take care of itself eventually” or “let somebody else deal with it” has been instilled in a lot of minds, making people lack real focus in their lives. Truly, the American society has become vain, and one could say that it is the media’s entire fault for changing the attitude of America. Instead of putting full focus on what is important, the media has everyone focusing on what is crazy instead. Such is the case, to a lesser extent, of a newspaper in a big town in southern Indiana.
Evansville is the third largest city (more like a big town, am I right?) in Indiana. Since 2007, approximately 349,717 people live in the metropolitan area. 91 percent of those people are white, 5.9 black, .2 % American Indian, .9 % Asian, 0 percent Pacific islanders, 1.1 % of two or more races, and 1.3 % of Hispanic/Latin-American. This shows that as far as diversity goes, this town is not the most diverse. Regardless of race, one is sure that Evansville’s Courier & Press gets out to almost all of the people in the metro-area. The Courier & Press, in a sense, is almost a direct reflection of the town itself. Then, one would figure that it reflect the issues that the people care about, such as jobs, the current economic crisis, current happenings around the local area, and so forth. The paper does that pretty well until; it takes the focus away from the important articles by putting crazy, irrelevant stories in the headlining pages, which in turns have people focus on the irrelevant, instead of what is important. It gets a person to talk about nothing, which makes them forget about everything that is relevant to their life. We are crazy about crazy subjects, which time and time again, detract from what is really going on in our town. It saps us of our rhetorical analysis and distracts us. We become slaves to what is irrelevant and crazy.
Crazy, again means full of cracks/flaws, impractical, erratic, being out of the ordinary, etc. (Webster) One would then ask one’s self, “Why are we attracted to madness?” Why then, are we constantly looking for car crashes? Do acts of craziness excite us? Do we simply use them for distraction purposes? Whatever the case may be, people continue to do crazy acts, and we continue to watch.
Evansville’s Courier & Press is no exception to getting people to lose their focus by using crazy stories. In fact, out of every Courier & Press that one has examined, one has come up with this solution: Evansville is scatterbrained; therefore it is easy to lose its focus to crazy stories that are printed onto the paper. The reasoning is because scatterbrained people lose focus easily, and with crazy stories in the paper, it is not hard to get the people of Evansville distracted.
One example of a crazy story that was more than likely to distract people was this article titled Beloved Clinton cat, Socks, Dies. In this article, it shares with the reader about how the cat Socks has died after 18 years. Of those 18 years he spent all 8 years with the Clintons in the White house. He was then given to their secretary named Betty Currie in 2001, who took care of him until his death in February. Now, this article would not appear crazy, however, it is crazy when it appears in the headlines of the Courier & Press next to other headlines such as “Israel getting push to form unity government” or “Many feel punished by homeowner bailout.” Why would this particular story be put on the same pedestal as the other stories one mentioned? I strongly feel that for one thing, why would it matter if that cat socks died? Honestly who really cares other than the Clintons and their secretary? How does this article give me good information about the current state of my town? It does nothing for any Evansville citizen. The fact that it is wasting space, where a more relevant article should go is what is truly crazy. This to one’s self really reflects Evansville’s way of thinking; that it is okay to talk about some dead cat because it is somehow relevant to the people here. However, this is only one example of crazy articles that have no relevancy. Another article titled Teenager burned trying to kill lice talks about this young girl, named Jessica Brooks who poured gasoline on her hair in an attempt to kill lice. The fumes settled in and ignited the pilot light on the water-heater, resulting in a fire. The rest of the article goes on to talk about her getting taken to the hospital and etc. Now, first off, this article shows sheer idiocy. Not only that but, it shows the irrelevancy to everyone else in town. Who really cares if this idiotic person burned themselves? Surely the people who read this more than likely did not care, and thought this person to be really stupid. Overall this article is crazy because it shows a crazy person, doing a crazy thing and, it is amongst the headlines where it should not be. Barack Obama has become a hot topic in The Courier & Press and you would think that all of his headlines would be relevant, but even political figures can have irrelevancy written about them.
Because the Courier & Press presents crazy articles, there is also a hint of irrelevant information that comes from relevant articles. For example, there was an article about Obama’s trip to Canada titled, Cheered in Canada, Obama treads Lightly, which summarizes his trip in one big article. This article in particular actually puts some good information that is relevant to the reader of the article. However, what is important is overshadowed by what is irrelevant. The fact that he stopped in a market to pick up sweets does not matter to the general public, so why does Evansville Courier & Press focus on such things? It also talks about the discussion that Obama had with the Prime Minister which is actually important, and that is all well and good but, the fact that he gets gifts can be distracting to some and they may only focus on stuff such as that for the rest of the article. One cannot get why the Courier & Press beats around the bush?
I mentioned earlier, that the Courier & Press, in a sense, is a direct reflection of Evansville, which shows the true side of it. Scatter-brained because we are constantly at odds, distracted by crazy things that gear us away from relevant topics, and just plain crazy all together through our actions in the community. Our focus is long gone and we need to focus our eyes back onto what issues truly matter. Forget the award shows, who won what game, what Obama did this week (that only includes irrelevant info), and put our focus towards bettering the city. Evansville has been known to get together in a time of crisis, so why can we not get together and focus on the true issues at hand? How can we achieve this?
We can do this by getting rid of all the distractions in the media, as well as get rid of the irrelevant information in relevant articles. We as a community can become more frank, blunter in what we want to say. We can get rid of the crazy topics that nobody truly cares about, and we can voice our opinions. One good way to voice our opinions better would be to getting a better opinions section in the newspaper. It could show case a lot more information to the people and give the readers a better perspective as to what the whole town wants. Through rhetoric, we as a community can become more informed citizens and truly make Evansville a well organized and informed town that it is truly meant to be.