Pulled Quotes

I’d just like to point out some great journalism in Stetson’s Reporter in a story about Public Safety and a sexual harassment complaint. Not coincedentally, it was done by me.

This was a sort of difficult story because the newsworthy thing was that Public Safety denied these allegations, but most of the reporting involved the actual incident itself. I think I manage to use both of them in the lede: “Stetson’s administration denied claims of sexual harassment after two Public Safety officers allegedly keyed into a room where two students were sleeping in only their underwear.”

Since I need to transition to the meat of the story here instead of focusing on Public Safety’s denial, I got a really good quote that let’s me do that: “Nothing was done that was wrong,” said Duane Knecht, Associate Vice President for Facilities Management. “I believe that the officers did what was right, and I do not believe they should have done anything differently.”

I like all the quotes in this story, particularly this one: Knecht said that the officers responded to a loud female voice within the room and that the situation was Keys’s fault because she was violating fraternity visiting hours. “Choosing to ignore University policy was the driving force behind the situation,” he said in an email. (Note: I didn’t actually do all the reporting for this, but I wrote the whole story).

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I actually did learn something from this class. I hope this makes up for the embarassingly few blog posts I did.

This story from Yahoo News about Barack Obama fighting perceptions of elitism is pretty much what’s wrong with the media today.

The story is all about Obama fighting the perception that he’s an elitist “after weeks of negative headlines,” including the infamous San Francisco “guns n’ God” speech and the flap about his pastor a few months ago that has for some reason resurfaced this week.

The problem, however, is that these stories were blown greatly out of proportion by the media in the first place. Why is Barack Obama responsible for what his pastor says when Hillary Clinton isn’t responsible for Geraldine Ferraro (who worked for her campaign) practically calling Obama the n-word? These are classic cases of the media blowing something out of proportion.

What makes it even worse is that they continue to report on it. This story is like the ultimate conflict of interest: the media reheating its own blown out of proportion stories, like some huge, pointless perpetual motion machine. There’s any news in this story; all of this stuff was reported weeks ago.

There are tons of reasons the media would do this (racism, etc.), but I think it comes down to profit, as everything ultimately does. Obama versus Clinton is good for ratings and subscription rates, and if one candidate wins it, there’s a huge source of news that is gone. That’s why they attacked Clinton when she was up and have now moved on to Obama.

Of course, classifying “the media” as one big, unfied, corporate evil is probably a stretch, but that’s a whole other post.

Not really having plans to write anymore of these things, bathroom talk caught my attention.  The lead starts with the words Tormented by bouts of diarrhea…who wouldn’t look!  What caught my attention even more was the fact that this lady actually gave quotes about her explosive diarrhea, I think I would have wanted to remain an anonymous source.

This made me think of the things we learned in the beginning of the course.  Without her consent, this piece could not have used any of her examples.  I still think it’s unecessary to bring a person into all of this, how embarrassing!  Her quotes are particularly important because it’s a circular story bringing her back in the end. 

Another thing I found weird about the story was the quote humbling disease right in the middle of the story.  Just those two words were typed.  I am wondering if it was a title of some sort becasue the next few sentences are about how Crohns disease is humbling to people.

I know this is a serious issue and some people gotta go right now.  But, by ending with a lady who had her friend have a poop accident in public makes me laugh.  (sorry)…..  I think they should have tried to keep it more legislative and about the law rather than adding all the bathroom talk, bathroom humor to me.  However, it did make me look at the story, so they did their purpose. 

In the comments section of the story, someone said something about these people getting a frequent pooper pass…that made me laugh too.  Overall, I guess to spare these people their reputation (I don’t want to be known as the diarrhea woman) they should have taken a different approach.

Another question I just thought of….how in the hell did they find these people?  I thought some of my interviews were awkward but can’t imagine asking someone about the accidents they have.