Analysis Of Portraits Of Grief By The New York Times

A Multi-Media Assessment of “Portraits of Grief” by The New York Times

Question 1:

The focus of “Portraits of Grief” by The New York Times focuses on the different reactions of family members for those that had died in the September 11th, 2001 attack on the Twin Towers. The article focuses on “revisiting” the families and re-evaluating the personal lives of those that had died in the attacks. This presentation is meant as a memorial for those that died on 9/11.

Question 2:

There were two story forms that utilized video presentation of interviews with family members, as well as written biographies of various family members to a chosen victim of the attacks. The overall goal of the video presentations was to show a direct interaction between the interviewer and the family member’s responses to various questions about the victim. The biographies mention various family members in a written form to accentuate a biographical explanation of the characters of the victims. Question 3: The focus of each story was to present memories of the victim’s life, which would promote a memorial style of presentation for the reading audience. For instance, the video presentation of “Sheri Ladley-Calamusa” defines her own experiences of loss in relation to the memory of husband’s legacy as a father and marital life. In the “Eddie Wing Wai” story, the family stories told about his life are also depicted as type of memorial writing style. Question 4: I felt the presentation was effective in the use of video. The grief and sadness of the family members can directly be seen, which contrasts the more static written memorials done with other family members. The use of video was a very effective way to show the facial expressions, body movement, and emotional appeal of the families during these interviews. Question 5: The design of the media package was created in a two-column approach, which made it very easy to chose a video or written medium in which to understand the experiences of the family members and the biographies of the victims. Also, the article written about each of the victim‘s families was efficiently alphabetized to help people find a particular person at the top of the page. This website was very simplified to help the user find the appropriate medium to view or read with ease and ergonomic design. Question 6: I felt that the video interviews were very engaging, especially in …show more content…
In the video, her son was known to have helped people escape the scene of the 9/11 attacks, but he was then accused of being involved in the plot: “Your child goes out to work and does not come home. And then, instead being supported by your country, they are accusing him of being associated with the attacks” (“Talat Hamdani” 00:18). This is a very engaging and critical perspective, which I found to be unusual for a national newspaper, such as The New York Times, which had propagandized the War On Terror after the attacks of 9/11.

Question 7:

The overall strength of the package was the immense of diversity of American citizens from a wide range of ethnic and racial backgrounds. There were Chinese-Americans, Arabic-Americans, Irish-Americans, and many other people of an international variety. This aspect of the American experience defines the “melting pot” of American life, which the media package promoted as a major strength of the memorial focus.

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