Iran Daily vs Tehran Avenue

Global Cultures II

One of the classes that I am currently taking is a Global Cultures class. In this class we study other cultures in order to become more aware of others beliefs. This past week, we looked at Iran. We were told to look into two websites.

This post is my response to what I discovered in these two website new sources.

The news sources are:

http://www.iran-daily.com/

http://www.tehranavenue.com/

Iran Daily vs. Tehran Avenue

One of the main stories was about Israel and Gaza and how Israel blocked school supplies from a school in Gaza. They are also worried North Korea's short range missiles. One important thing that this Iran news source found about the missiles was that “North Korean leader Kim Jong Il indicated the country's willingness to return to the six-party talks, provided there was progress in bilateral talks with Washington. In an initial reaction, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday's missile launches did not affect Washington's policy towards Pyongyang.” Not only did this article show how they felt about North Korea and their missiles, but through the last sentence we see that it is important to Iran what the United States representatives say and how they feel about issues even if the United States are not directly involved.

Interestingly, two other stories that made the front page this week were more about the people in the area. One of them was about a flu vaccine that was coming to Iran in April. It is the first time Iran is getting the flu vaccine. In the article, the author wrote, “Iran requested to buy flu vaccine from American, British and French Companies later than other countries, therefore the vaccines will enter Iran in the next Iranian year (starting March 21, 2010).” Again in this story we see the importance of American in Iran. The other story was about an electric cars contest in Tehran. This seems to be a fun article to have in the Iran Daily. Unlike a lot of the other articles in this newspaper, it is interesting that there is such a lighthearted news article in the middle of so many heavier articles.

Another interesting story that was in the newspaper, “Iran Daily”, was about marriage. In the city of Minoudasht between 2002 and 2007, five years. “Bahram Bakhtiari Saeed, a faculty member of Azad University in Gorgan, says strong religious beliefs and training children to observe moral principles are the most important factors preventing family separation in Minoudasht, Mehr News Agency wrote.” I find this very interesting that they see that it is their religious background the reason for their high moral standards.

Unlike the Iran Daily newspaper, the Tehran Avenue news source seems to be a lot more similar to a blog than an actual newspaper. Although it has a lot of different pages and is not just a continuous blog, all of the articles in the Tehran Avenue seem to be more of opinion pieces. This news source has an entire section called “Around Town.” In this part of the website, there are five subsections. They are cafe, citylog, fiction, society, and outdoors. Each of these subsections have opinion pieces about the topic that it is under. They also have a section called “The Art.” The five subsections in this section are drama, exhibition, film, literature, and music. These also have opinion pieces that have to do with the section that they are under.

In the “About Us” section, they describe themselves by saying “The small group of young writers who originally contributed to the magazine has now grown into a sizable community. They are trying to focus on issues that official or established media seldom do. In the various sections of TehranAvenue, or in its back alleys if you prefer, the visitor will come upon a new language that is trying to push the limits of understanding and not simply stay within the confines of communication.” I find this very interesting because it seems that it is a site that is not so much just for the news, but for the people themselves. Having articles written by people just like them allows them to connect with those who live a similar lifestyle. This shows that they want to have a strong sense of community. This site was created to help to encourage this type of community where people can write about what they have experienced in that community.