Archive for February 22nd, 2008
Still looking for those Green Bikes
After doing several blogs on larger-scale newspapers, I decided to look to Stetson’s publication, The Reporter, for my weekly assignment. Unfortunately, the website’s latest update was the first day of the month. Either way, I figured that I would write about a new addition to the Stetson community: the Green Bike program.
The lead for Mike Hodges’ article, despite an AP style error (31st instead of simply 31) was very good, and I felt that its focus on the “what” was the right approach.
As a member of SGA, I know a lot about the Green Bike (formerly called the Honor Bike) program, and I thought that this article had some good quotes from credible sources. Michael Hodges proved once again to be one of the only good writers for the publication, which seems to have gone downhill in the past few months.
But I digress. I especially liked the fact that Hodges included the progression of the bike program, but that he started the article in the present. This tactic went along well with the news timeline from class.
What I did not like, however, was the way that Hodges said that “Glasnovich was unavailable for comment.” I feel like that makes him seem like he was uncooperative in talking to Hodges about the bikes, and I am relatively sure that he would have been more than happy to lend a hand with the article. I think omitting that line would have been a better choice on the writer’s and editor’s part.
Though the article definitely supports, I think, the ”change in the status quo,” I think a follow-up article should have been written in the last three weeks that talks about the fact that the bikes have been launched, but are still unavailable for check-out. Why do a launch at the end of January, when you still can’t get a bicycle in mid-February? I’m sure there are people who went to the launch (or at least heard about it) that are anxious to start utilizing the new program, and they are left hanging because the Reporter neglects to follow up with the issue.
