To cremate or not to cremate?
In April 21st USA Today on page 3A there was an article written by Chris Joyner called “Cremation industry awaits tougher controls.” While I thought that this article was very well written, I did encounter a few problems, well issues that I personally thought were some problems. I felt like the writer did more background research more than personal, interview type of research. While there was a good amount of information provided to the reader, it kind of felt like a tease because the writer didn’t supply enough detail on all the information provided. I also would have liked to see more quotes from more sources. I also had some questions that I felt were left answered in the article. First off, what does Joyner mean by regulating cremation? How do they regulate? What are these regulations in each state? How do they determine between honest and dishonest operators? Or is there nothing to determine this by? I also wanted to know why do they think people are choosing cremation lately? Why do they think the rate of people choosing cremation has increased? Even though having the writer’s opinion would be bias to the article, it would have been interesting to know; instead the writer could have quoted someone who gathered these statistics.
The last thing about the article was while I thought that lead of the article was great, I did think that it sounded more like a feature lead more than like a straight news lead. Even though there is no problem with feature leads, I felt like the rest of the article didn’t seem to fit into a feature news story.
