Pulled Quotes

With the rise of gas prices, the economy is taking a fast dive downward. USA Today posted a story, “Fuel prices forcing airlines to squeeze,” which wrote about the increase of oil and gas prices, and the decrease of planes that will leave the ground this year.

As the rise of gas and oil reaches an all time high, even over last year’s average, airline companies wonder what to do next? This article states that airline companies, such as Delta, United, JetBlue, and US Airways, will be keeping some planes and employees grounded before they experience painful bankrupcies.

We travel via planes, trains, and cars, and as we continue to go around the globe, the prices of gas and oil are slowing making our plans dwindle. Some airline companies have begun to sell their planes in order to reduce the risk of over spending on gas fair. What is going to happen when the prices continue on the rise? Where will we be in say five years from now? It is time to make some changes in the economy so we aren’t struggling to travel come the future.

Here’s a short post about a man in Wisconsin who was arrested because his money smelled like weed.

The reporter was obviously working from a police report (since s/he cites it at least three times) and has one interesting quote from the police officer, but the story really seems like it’s missing a quote from the teller who called the police about the money. It seems like it would be a lot more interesting of a story if it had a quote from the person involved in the story’s main action (and a person strange enough to call the cops because the guy’s money smelled vaguely of weed).

Other than that, I think this story has a pretty good lede: “The musty smell of a man’s money led to his arrest on possible drug charges.” Other than the word “musty,” I think that’s about all that needs to be said about the story.

Today Barack Obama released his tax returns to the media. This isn’t a very interesting event in itself, but I think that the different ways the media covered it is, judging from this CNN article and this Fox News article.

The CNN article has the headline “Obama releases tax returns, follows Clinton to challenge suit,” and ledes with pretty much the exact same thing. The Fox News headline, however, focuses entirely on Obama: “Obamas open tax return, earned nearly $1M in 2006.” It doesn’t mention Clinton until the third paragraph, when it indirectly quotes her.

This brings up the same question as my last post: what part of this is newsworthy, or in this case, more newsworthy? The Fox News writer doesn’t feel that the Obama challenge to Clinton is the most important part of the story, and focuses instead on his earnings (which the CNN article doesn’t address until the tenth paragraph, pretty low on the inverted pyramid scheme of things). I’m honestly not sure which is more important in this situation, since neither of them are particularly interesting; if I had to pick, I’d probably go the CNN route because Obama’s challenge is more recent and timely than his releasing of the forms, as much as I dislike the idea of making a story out of something a candidate feeds to the press.

I haven’t posted in a while, but I probably should, so here’s a CNN article on an Obama supporter refering to Bill Clinton and the infamous ‘blue dress.’ I want to address the newsworthiness and news values of this article, since it’s something that Obama has been dealing with for a few weeks.

 First, by ‘Obama supporter,’ the story means someone who worked for Obama when he was running in the Iowa caucuses and has no connection to him now. This is basically the same thing that happened to Obama last week with Rev. Jeremiah Wright; he took heat because the news media (probably at the behest of the Clintons, for us paranoids in the audience) attributed something someone tangentially related to him to a ‘Obama supporter’ or Obama staffer. There also seems to be a double standard about this, since Geraldine Ferraro (who was actually working for Clinton’s campaign) practically called Obama a misogynst a few weeks ago and Clinton got significant less heat from the media.

This seems to be breaking one of the cardinal news values that we talked about in class: prominence. Is it really that important to know what that guy who cut Obama’s hair when he was in high school thinks about NAFTA? Do we really need to know what some guy who saw Obama speak once thinks about Iraq? Even if you want to argue that these people are in fact prominent, you can’t really argue that they’re VERY prominent, which makes this kind of stuff sensationalist at best.

Disregarding all that, this article doesn’t even seem to focus on the right sleaze. It ledes with Clinton’s blue dress, but the second sentence says the guy also compared Clinton to Joe McCarthy; likening your opponent to a witch-hunter is probably worse (and, I guess, more newsworthy) than making a reference to something that, you know, actually happened. If you’re going to be sensationalist, at least go with the right sensation.

 EDIT: There’s a great column over at Rolling Stone about this issue by Matt Taibbi, probably the best gonzo journalist since Hunter Thompson blew his head off. Check it out for a more profane and probably more correct view of the media’s focus on unnewsworthy presidential “news.”

A recent political article by the Orlando Sentinel dealt an issue that Senator Gary Siplin had with the NAACP for calling him out for proposing a bill that could support racism.  The legislation would impose a standard dress code to all school children banning them from wearing baggy, low slung pants.  The article is very inadequate in detail coming in at only 117 words.  The journalist doesn’t detail anything the bill might impose, but instead refers a link to another article.  This move seems unprofessional as the journalist could have easily summarized the legislation letting the readers merely know if the legislation would be national, what punishments would be, if the bill is enforceable or even constitutional, and what standards would be set to define which pants would be of issue.

Though those issues with the article exist, they are not of dire concern.  The major issue with the article is that the journalist did not question the motives of Senator Gary Siplin in the first place.  Why isn’t this an article calling out Siplin for limiting freedom of expression, wasting constituents time on the senate floor, being worried about pants instead of bigger issues like the war in Iraq and universal health care.  Does anyone honestly care if teenagers pants are a few sizes too big!?  This is utterly stupid, and for this journalist to ignore the bigger issue of congregational time wasting and aimless idealism, creates a major issue on its own.

Recently the Daytona Beach News Journal posted an article about a man that was recently found guilty by a jury in a case where this man stabbed another man in a fight that included many others.  The lead of the story says that the knife wielding criminal (Coty Eldridge) was “found guilty of stabbing another man.” This is a false statement from a legal stand point as the jury would find a man who committed such an act guilty of aggravated assault and/or attempted murder.  The lead would be better worded if it said “Eldridge was found guilty of aggravated assault (or attempted murder depending on which one it was) for stabbing another man.

Also, the second paragraph includes additional parts of the Five W’s along with some unimportant information.  If the fact that Eldridge is facing 5 to 15 years in prison was taken from the second paragraph and inserted in the lead for its newsworthy qualities the lead would be much more informative.

In the end the best amended lead would read:

“BUNNELL — A jury found Coty Eldridge guilty of aggravated assault for stabbing another man and could face up to 15 years in prison.”

As opposed to:

“BUNNELL — A jury found Coty Eldridge guilty of stabbing another man during a 2006 brawl outside a Palm Coast home.”

A recent Daytona Beach News Journal article reported on a fire that erupted from an unknown cause, growing to consume a mobile home and a corvette, with the estimated total of damages being approximately $90,000.  It would be easy to criticize this article for its brevity and the fact that the article admits to having no idea how the fire started… but this is a breaking news piece posted online immeditaly after the fire when the details are still being sorted out, and though it seems crucial information is missing (which it is), it would be unfair to attack the article on these points of weakness.

The articles biggest (and inexcusable) flaw was the choice of the lead: “Three people escaped unharmed from a mobile home fire in Port Orange, authorities said.”

Later in the short article the journalist mentions: “A fire hydrant failed, delaying firefighters in getting water on the blaze.”

The major point of news is not that three people are ok, other people only care if people died, the issue is that three people could have died and $90,000 worth of damage could have been prevented had the near by fire hydrant worked.  The journalist needed to ask – Who is responsible for maintaining these hydrants? When was the last time this one was checked? When will it be fixed?  And more questions of the liking.  Instead the journalist merely reported what they saw, neglecting to dig deeper.