The article I chose to analyze is from a British magazine called The Independent, about air quality in Mexico City. The city has long been known for the terrible air pollution numbers, and even considered to be one of the worst's most polluted major cities. This article explains how the air in Mexico City has drastically improved since a decade ago.
The important theme in the article is the air quality of Mexico City. The opening paragraph(s) explain that the city has improved their air quality so much that people can see the summits of two volcanoes that weren't in sight years ago. The author does mention some cities that have surpassed Mexico City for worst polluted cities, but fails to introduce any figures comparing Mexico City and its polluted counterpart. By this I mean how does one measure air pollution? Is it clarity of the air, toxins that make up the air, the oxygen-carbon dioxide ratio, etc.
The story is shorter than a normal article, but cites plenty of good sources like Aaron Jazcilevich, who is a researcher at the National University's Atmospheric Science Center. There is a photo of a snowcapped volcano that can be perfectly seen. The article was the second link in the magazine's climate change section, which seems odd to me because the publication is British, which doesn't have any proximity relation to Mexico.
Since the item I chose for analysis is a newspaper article it presents a lot of information simplistically in the least personal way. This is different from say a television show or radio broadcast, because a writer isn't able to connect with the viewer on a personal level. A newspaper article is effective for this issue because it can go more in-depth. Whereas, a television broadcast on the same issue is around 30-seconds.
The article cites politicians, scholars, and scientists using the element of prominence making it credible. The involvement of all of these people helped Mexico City's pollution problem become a social issue that needed to be dealt with.
The tone of the article suggests that Mexico City is currently in the "realizing the cost of significant progress" stage of the "issue-action cycle" theorized by Anthony Downs in 1972. In Mexico City's situation they are halfway through the cycle and next is "gradual decline of intense public interest."
For the most part the article is written from a positive but neutral standpoint. The reason I say positive and neutral is that the article fails to discuss any negatives that Mexico City experiences, but the writer doesn't form an overbearing opinion by using plenty of sources. Another criticism that I have is that the article gives improvement number for Mexico City by saying things like, "we have started 2010 with the greatest number of clean days, 50 out of 60," but how does that compare to the rest of the world? I would have like to see a graph of image of some sort that showed some of this data because I'm sure it's available. At the end of the article an expert claims that Mexico City's air now trails Cairo as well as Indian and Chinese cities on the most-polluted list. How? What is taken into consideration? The only other criticism is that their is only one expert cited in the article. People are more likely to believe him because he is an expert so to make the story the most objective, the author should have gotten another expert with an opposing viewpoint.
