CKE Restaurants Agree to be Bought Out

The recession has effected Carl Jr.'s target market of young males. (Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times / October 1, 2003)

By: Brittany Fastuca
February 27, 2010

Private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners, parent of Dunkin' Donuts, offers to pay $619 million in cash, but Boston private equity firm also offers to buy the company for the same amount. CKE says it will continue to accept competing bids through April 6. CKE, the parent company of Carl Jr.'s and Hardee's, still has about $309 million in debt. Many fast food restaurants share prices have plummeted, especially CKE.

Los Angeles Times is the only article that offers a picture to give the publication more of an upper on the other two newspapers. This article offers a topic lede since it tell you the event that occurred, but it isn't offering any of the other relevant information needed to pinpoint what the reader is about to read about.

USA Today goes most in depth about what the CKE company is, what it offers, the name of the CEO, and the activity of the company. Funny thing is that none of the articles give what CKE stands for.

New York Times offers the shortest article, but within regards of immediacy they were the fastest. The length of the article might have relation with the timeliness of the article being posted compared to the others.

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AIG Narrows Fourth Quarter Loss

This is a file photo of the AIG logo shown in New York. AIG came out about there $8.87 billion loss in the fourth quarter as it started to pay down some of its billions of dollars in bailout loans it received from the government.(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, file) (Mark Lennihan, AP / September 17, 2008)

By: Brittany Fastuca
February 26, 2010

AIG came out to the world about its $8.87 billion loss in the fourth quarter today, keeping the insurance company at a week point. The company was still in debt with the government in paying back loans. AIG did come out and warn the government and Securities and Exchange Commission of needs of financial aid. According to Los Angeles Times, "these fourth-quarter results were an improvement from the $61.7 billion AIG lost in the year ago period, but they were worse than analysts expected."

The USA Today paper actually published the same article but with a different title. Obviously all statistics were the same and facts, since it was the same writer. The way that Los Angeles Times makes it better though, is by presenting the article with a picture and a more in-depth title acknowledging the reader more of what they are about to read. Both these articles use a summary lead by including the 5 W's minus the where since there isn't a specific place.

New York Times was the first article to actually write out American International Group. The article starts out with a summary lede basically describing exactly what's going on and getting straight to the point in the first paragraph. New York Times states exact comparisons between each year with dollar amounts versus the other articles that use percentages. The way the 2 other articles top this is by going into how much AIG owes the government in dollar value. None of the articles follow the inverted pyramid structure, even though it known to be most common, they all keep the important facts flowing throughout the whole article. Even at the end of the USA Today and Los Angeles Times article they save the astonishing fact on how much AIG owes the government.

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New Home Sales Drop to a Record Low

Sold sign seen outside a new Houston home leads the trend in the new home sales great tumble of 11.2% in January from the previous month. (Pat Sullivan / Associated Press / February 22, 2010)

By: Brittany Fastuca
February 25, 2010

"The housing market is still flat on its back and it is only being held together -- as well as it's being held together -- by very aggressive actions by the federal government," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com in the Los Angeles Times. There are no signs of stop the deep plunge the new homes housing market is going through after a huge leap to 11.2% this past month compared to the previous month. This is the lowest the new homes housing market has been in 13 years. Funny thing is, previously occupied homes continue to over sell new homes even though the construction of new housing is supposed to help the United States break out of this hard economic time.

"Sales of new homes plunged to a record low in January, underscoring the formidable challenges facing the housing industry as it tries to recover from the worst slump in decades," according to USA Today. Obviously USA Today, knows how to exaggerate since according to Los Angeles Times it has only been a decade since the new housing market has been this low. One good thing about USA Today's exaggeration is their timely manner. The publication came out in front of the pact with immediacy by several hours. All articles keep with the same 11.2%, making all articles seem very credible.

"The sickly housing market was socked with another dose of bad news on Wednesday when the Commerce Department reported that new home sales fell in January to the lowest level since record-keeping began in 1963," which is how David Streitfeld and Javier Hernandez from New York Times puts it. New York Times comes out of the race between the three news publications with the best lede. This definitely could count as a zinger giving this article a lot more spice compared to Los Angeles Times and USA Today. New York Times also agrees with the 13 year all time low, showing that USA Today is over dramatic. USA Today continues to carry this trait through out the article with multiple "unexpectedly"s, using more climatic words like "fledgling" and "heighten fears" to explain the economy. As for the Los Angeles Times, the publication goes about the news in a more relaxed manner by just dishing out facts to inform people exactly what is going on with the economy without completely scaring them after they read the article. Overall, the New York Times displays the news the best by catching your eye from the beginning and also including more facts even to the raise in percentage of new housing supply in January.

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A blog about jobs and the economy, pulled from LA Times, NY Times, and the Washington Post, from students from Judith Frutig's Writing in the Media course at CSULB (Jour120).

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