Pulled Quotes

This story appeared on CNN.com called ” From $70K to food bank, one family’s struggle.”  It was set up in a different way from most stories we have looked at in class and that I have seen so far.  The author tries to frame the story as a human insterest sotry by centering it around this one family with an anecdotal lead and conclusion, but the real story is hidden between those. 

 The 7th paragraph down seems to be working as a nutgraph and brings up the real reason why this story is newsworthy today–increasingly severe economic problems in the Middle-class.  I think adding this human interest aspect to the story helps make it more interesting to the reader.  And if anyone else has been looking at this like I have since I graduate soon and will have to meet this problem head-on myself, you will notice that this story also makes the problem a little easier to understand because it using this one woman’s story as a scary example of how fast and hard economic changes can happen.

 My one biggest criticism to this piece, though, is that it does wait so long to slip the larger picture in.  I feel like it could have been briefly mentioned in the lead by saying something like “Patricia Guerrero is facing a problem far too many other Americans are also facing.  She was laid off in February from a $70K job and within weeks was forced to go to a food bank.”

This is probably not the best written lead in the world, but I just want you to see what I mean.

Plus, I totally did not know the phrase was “making ends meet,” instead of “making ends meat.”  I will have to investigate and see where that came from.