Analytical Paper

Analytical papers
Donald Murray explains art as a word journalist’s fear. Art is how the application unfolds or the end result of a piece of writing. Craft is what you do and the tools you use it with. This is the application of skill.
In the piece the Boomerang, Michael Lewis uses the definitions of art and craft excellently. He explains the craft is the information he is writing about, which is the financial crisis of Europe and the how the West is going to be affected by this. The art of his writing is the language in which he writes the story. Michael Lewis is an excellent writer in how he can make something as confusing as European sovereign debt interesting for the average American to read it and understand it. Being the average American, I read the story and actually comprehended most of it.
“If Greece walks away from $400 billion in debt, then the European banks that lent the money will go down, and other countries now flirting with bankruptcy might easily follow, destabilizing the regional and world economies further. He also explains why taxpayers in Germany are reluctant to keep bailing out other countries they regard as profligate, indolent and irresponsible” (Lewis 2). Greece should be held accountable for their debt is what I get from reading this statement from Lewis. If not, more countries will suffer and put a strain on all of Europe. Lewis was diligent with his researching this disaster of debt Greece has accumulated. I believe this specific quote is a use of craft. It is giving information to the reader just like Murray states in his book, Writing to Deadline.
Lewis says in the last 12 years the wage bill of the Greek public sector has doubled with the average government job now paying almost three times the average private sector job. Those who work in jobs classified as arduous can retire and start collecting pentions. As early as 55 for men and 50 for women; more than 600 Greek professions have somehow managed to get themselves classified as arduous: hairdressers, radio announcers, waiters, musicians and so on. This is absurd. I believe Lewis is very professional, because if I was doing an article on this it would be one sided as hell. Murray would be proud of the way Lewis is biased in how he approached writing this article. This is another example how Lewis used craftsmanship in his writing. He took information and explained it in a way which we can understand it.
As far as art goes, Lewis does a great job of working with the information he has been given or sought after. He put a story together and made it interesting to hundreds of readers across the world. Lewis’s tools for craftsmanship are uncanny. In the respect of craft, he uses his skills to create a masterpiece. Even though Lewis is a journalist and the rules apply to him, he uses his creativity to make art become alive in his writing because he isn’t restricted.
As a professional, I think Murray would look down upon Lewis as far as technique. I only say this because I believe Lewis is more outspoken then Murray. Murray’s writing style, I feel, is much more subdued then Lewis. I think reporting to Lewis’s story is essential because people need to know what is going on in Greece because this can happen anywhere. People need to be informed of this and Lewis does just that.
The next article I will be doing is California and Bust by Michael Lewis. The first line says it all about this article. “On August 5, 2011, moments after the U.S. government watched a rating agency lower its credit rating for the first time in American history, the market for the U.S. Treasury bonds soared. The public was going out and buying bonds like no tomorrow. This made everything else as far as stocks and bonds free fall. The U.S. government after this was less likely to repay its debt and the solution was to raise the cost of borrowing not for government but for everyone else.
I liked how Lewis went back a year ago and shared this, “the television news program 60 Minutes are a 14-minute piece about U.S. state and local finances. Correspondent Steve Kroft interviewed a private Wall Street analysis named Meredith Whitney, who, back in 2007, had gone from being obscure to famous when she correctly suggested that Citigroup’s losses in U.S. subprime bonds were far bigger than anyone imagined, and predicted the bank would be forced to cut its dividend” (Lewis 1). This is an example of both art and craft. Lewis uses this information and uses it to the end result with his specific writing style. He presented us with a problem and a fact at the same time. Later in the article, I found a eerie similarity to Greece and the U.S. Meredith Whitney had found a pressure point in American finance: the fear that American cities would not pay back the money they had borrowed. The market for municipal bonds, unlike the market for U.S. government bonds, spooked easily. Some of our states are in debt and the for seeing future does not look good for us as a country.
Lewis’s writing style between this article and Boomerang are very similarly. The attitude in which Lewis writes, and how he presents factual information to the readers is exact. I am not sure if he picks topics that are down in the dumps, but I feel like he sees the world as an evil place, where money rules everything. Lewis goes back and uses a statement from Whitney: California is the scariest state.
Murray would give Lewis a good grade as far as professionalism goes, but as a journalists Lewis is one sided in almost everything he writes about. I only know this now while reading this second article. He tries and disguise what he feel, but if you look closely we can tell how he feels about the article. I thought journalists are supposed to be unbiased on anything they report on. Lewis is a mastermind when it comes to using art and craft in his reporting, but I think he comes off mean-spirited and spiteful in his writings. Once again, that could be just what he chooses to write on.
All in all, I believe there is a close resemblance between Lewis and Murray in regards to art and craft. The journalistic writing styles; however, are totally different. After reading a Murray article you feel more like he is personable and you can speak to him easily. When reading Lewis articles, I do not get the same feeling. Lewis comes off more of a jerk, who thinks everything is bad in the world, it might be, but his writings should come off more unbiased then biased.