Framing

Writers frame their stories based on the information they they gather, their own experiences or maybe their interests. Writers could report on the same story, but they will come out differently based on the way it was written, the focus on the story and the frame it took.

A couple of weeks ago when Elaine Driscoll spoke to our class she told us one of her assignments in college was to choose a news story in multiple newspapers and compare the similarities and differences in the frames of those stories. This showed how differently a story can turn out when written by two different writers.

I was inspired to do the same. Because the story of bullying at South Hadley High School and the death of Phoebe Prince is widely reported right now I chose two articles on this topic, both written on the same day. One is from the Boston Herald and one is from the Boston Globe.

The story from the Boston Globe seemed to point blame at the administrators and teachers at South Hadley High School. This story definitely reported on what happened to Phoebe Prince leading up to her death, but it seemed to target the fault at school officials, administrators and teachers. It pointed out a multiple times within the article, how Phoebe had gone to an administrator complaining about being bullied, wanting to go home and being scared, and the administrators did nothing about it.

The story from the Boston Herald reported on the same types of things that was reported in the Boston Globe, however the focus was on the students that bullied Phoebe. There was very minimal mentioning of Phoebe going to an administrator to talk about the problem, resulting in nothing happening. So this article seemed to frame around what students said and did to Phoebe as opposed to pointing blame at someone like the article in the Boston Globe did.

I think both articles had good information to offer on the topic, and reported on what was the latest on the story, but it's interesting the different frames that the stories took. even when they are both reporting on the news of the case.