Tracking Analysis

Alex Leeds
EMB 265
10-21-2008
Tracking Analysis

I found through my research of five days of newspapers a couple of different things. The first thing is that titles are used everytime somebody new is brought up. The front page, the sports page, and the business page all have around the same number of titles being used, be it a doctor, sports coach, or CEO of a major company. I can see why this is done, as if somebody just pulls out a name like “Joe”, nobody will know who you are talking about. That’s why you have to put “The Plummer” at the end, so we all know who is saying what or being talked about.
The front page of the newspaper was average compared to the other pages, average meaning that there were not as many reference to being male, female, or to race. The articles on the left side of the paper usually were references to other stories on other pages, which if those were discounted then the numbers would have been even fewer. I did find that the front page had the second most references to race, two, which I would think is because race is a hot topic now, which it often is, but now more than it has been in the last few years because of the election being so very close.
The sports page, like the other pages, also had a lot of titles. There was a specific reference to gender that I saw, an article on “girls’ soccer”. These days a lot of sports are gender-specific, for men it’s baseball and football, and for women it’s volleyball and… I can’t think of another one that would be gender-specific. Basketball is the closest to being gender-neutral, but even when there is an article on woman’s basketball it still says “woman’s basketball”. But to bring up girls’ soccer again, I never found an instance where a sport was defined as “Men’s (insert sport here)”. Soccer is possible to be referred to by gender, but the only other sport I could think of would be men’s volleyball.
The art section had the most reference to gender, which surprised me somewhat. The last paper that I gathered data from had a big front page article on male-oriented plays were dominating the scene this season, which is why. The one reference to race was about an African-American poet coming to a local school to give a reading.
The business section had the most references to race, which did not surprise me. I think that it would be safe to say that when you think of the stereotype of the “rich businessman”, you think of a white guy. That would be my best guess as to why these are the results I found. I guess most people don’t imagine a black person reading the business section. I don’t see why. They’re as likely to read that section just as much as me. I also found a reference to being female, which was a story about a businessman’s wife.
These are my results of the tracking project. I hope they are refrigerator-worthy.