Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Hennessy & Staunton

Over the weekend I spent a lot of time catching up on my newspaper reading. A lot of what I read was the Irish Times's coverage of the American election. I can't point to anything definite, but after reading many articles by both Mark Hennessy and Denis Staunton I noticed that there was a difference in the style of the two reporters.

I think the difference is that Hennessy's reports struck me as his attempts to report what he was hearing and seeing as he traveled around with the two campaigns. Staunton's reports have a more editorialized tone. Obviously I can't say for certain, but I wonder if it's down to the difference between being one Irish reporter being temporarily in America to report on an event and the other being the full-time Washington correspondent.

Hennessy normally reports on Irish politics and only turned up in America in September (August?). Staunton, meanwhile, sounds like he's spent too much time having drinks with correspondents from the NY Times and Washington Post (& their wannabes).

Anyway, after an hour or so I stopped reading Staunton's articles and stuck with Hennessy's.