Pulled Quotes

In last weeks USA Today there was an article in section A written by Calum MacLeod called “Chinese rally round their own in defense against protesters.” While the article was really well written, I have to admit I was pretty lost the first time I read it. While there was a lot of information provided that was informative, interesting and relevant to the article, a lot of questions were unanswered. I think that when including all this information, readers in return are left with more questions that remain unanswered in the article. Therefore I felt that maybe there was too much information in this article because the article seemed to bounce around from one idea to the next, and in the end I questioned what the main purpose and point of the article really was. Some of the questions that I had and remained unanswered in my opinion were: Why were there protests dogging the torch relay? Why is the torch relay called the “Journey of Harmony?” What harsh rule in Tibet? Why does the Chinese government claim that the foreign news media is biased against China? Why does Tang blame the western news media for bringing trouble on itself? While these may seem like unimportant questions, I happened to find them important in order for the reader to understand the article. I think it becomes extraneous when a bunch of different information is divulged and with that information, more questions arise that remain unanswered. 

I thought that the article was really well written, and had a great lead that set up the rest of the article. The article was also very informational, so it was obvious that the writer did a lot of research for this article. The article also had some great sources, however, personally as a reader I would have liked to read a quote or statement about how the protesters themselves feel. 

I found an interesting article in USA Today regarding the reinstated rule of the death penalty. The article was intriguing because I actually didn’t know that June of 2006 was when the Supreme Court decided to stall the executions. The article was entitled “States move on executions,” and it caught my attention.

It did leave me with a few questions: When did the Supreme Court decide to stall on the death penalty issue? What were the reasons? How many people were scheduled to be on death row for the past two years then? I thought the article was interesting and was an interesting topic; however, it spoke to an audience that knew the answers to these questions. Otherwise, the reader could be left confused. This is an enormous issue and one that readers might want to know more about.

The article “Teller pregnant with twins shot in robbery” on msnbc.com is pretty much your ideal news story. I was surprised by how much this article followed the traditional journalistic rules we’ve been taught in class, since that usually isn’t the case in today’s news stories.

The lead clearly spells out who may have been involved (two teenagers), what happened (shot a pregnant teller), where it occurred (Indianapolis), and when it took place (Tuesday morning).

One thing I noticed in this article is that early on the writer lets the reader know that the woman is in critical condition. This is something I’ve noticed that most news writers are good at doing: giving the most important information, even if it happened last, early on in the piece. One of my big mistakes at the beginning of this semester was that I would leave those important details until the end of the story. Seeing writer after writer give bits of crucial information early in their stories has helped remind me to follow this way of organizing the content in my news stories.

The second paragraph, and other paragraphs that follow, basically reword the lead in a more specific way, which is one of the key things to remember in news writing. In class this semester, when Professor Dehnart mentioned that paragraphs in inverted pyramid style should be written this way, I started noticing that that is exactly how good news stories are written. As soon as I started applying this rule, I started getting the hang of writing inverted pyramid style news stories.

The second paragraph names one of the police officers involved and gave a little more detail about the teller. As the story progresses, the writer gives details about the shooting which enhance the story, but aren’t necessary. The writer also starts including more quotes from the police chief and another police spokesman as the story progresses, to give some extra insight into the case.

As well as being written in inverted pyramid style, this story is also newsworthy because it has proximity (since it happened in the United States) and timeliness (since it happened this morning). This article has a great deal of impact. A story about a woman and her two unborn children being put in danger usually has an emotional impact on readers, and therefore has news value. It also has impact because everyone goes to the bank, so technically this could happen to anyone. This story could hit a lot of readers close to home.

USA Today continued their report on the sect that was raided in Texas two weeks ago.  The writer focused on information regarding the DNA tests that are currently being conducted, as well as the process by which authorities are splitting up the sect families.

However, I found that the writing was, in general, very confusing to read and to understand.  The writer reports on the relationships between individuals and how the DNA tests will prove these relationships.  This information is not presented in a very clear manner, though.  Also, it is not clear as to how the families are to be split up.  The article mentions that siblings will be kept together when they are moved to other facilities, yet it is unclear as to if step-siblings are included in that, especially since there are a variety of relationships among siblings due to the unique nature of the sect.

It also confuses me as to how they can conduct these hearings with over 400 children among two courtrooms.  The entire process sounds like it will take a very long time to sort out, and who is looking out for these children during this process?  And how are the leaders and adults of this sect being judged and under what rule of thumb?  It can be expected that a great deal of confusion will be a result of this particular case.

The article “Hearing for polygamists’ kids grinds to a halt” on msnbc.com does an effective job of summing up the 5 W’s in the lead. The reader gets all of the important information in this first sentence. “A court hearing” is the first phrase, which accurately comes first in importance, since the article focuses on the court hearing.

The “who” is the court, the “what” is that the court hearing came to a halt in deciding what to do with the children taken into custody, the “where” is San Angelo, Texas, the “when ” is Thursday (today), and the “why’ is because hundreds of lawyers wanted to study the evidence of the case before it could be introduced. This is an extremely clear lead that gives me as a reader all the summed up information I need to know about the court hearing.

The article then moves into further detail, appropriately following the inverted pyramid, for those that want more detail or need more information because they haven’t already been following the case.

In inverted pyramid style, more details about the case and why the children are being taken into custody are found in the middle of the article. An explanation of the church’s background, detailed description of the scene and FLDS mothers’ appearances, and quotes from some of the fathers come later on in the story as the article gets into more specifics that could be left out if necessary.

As I’ve said in some of my previous blogs, few articles actually follow journalistic rules and inverted pyramid style today, leaving readers confused or without pertinent information that should have been mentioned in the lead. This article, however, was very clear and gave me what I needed to know right from the start. For an article two-pages long, it was definitely the best way to lay out the information.

Should a judge be able to force a journalist to burn his source?

A judge has ruled that Toni Locy must pay up to $5,000 per day until she discloses the source(s) that named former Army scientist Steven Hatfill “as a possible suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks.”

Locy is a writer for USA TODAY being held in contempt of court for refusal to disclose her source. In response, The Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press is filing an amicus curiae brief along with “18 news organizations and 14 professional and trade organizations.”

Monday USA TODAY reported that “Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, endorsed a federal law Monday to help reporters protect confidential sources, but he did so with reservations.”

Rightfully so, because I don’t think any party with power– whether it be the government or the press– should have power that cannot be accounted for. My sentiments echo that of McCain’s when he said to a group of newspaper execs saying, “he trusts that ‘you will not do more harm than good, whether it comes to the security of the nation or the reputation of good people.’”

According to USAToday, a construction worker gone awry was foiled in his attempts to curse the new Yankees stadium when the Boston Red Sox jersey he had planted under two feet of concrete was removed.  This article was written by an unnamed Associated Press writer, and is both a good and a bad piece.  As a source of entertainment, this piece is good for a chuckle.  But as a model for inverted pyramid style, this piece loses its humor and becomes just plain sad. 

The lede is effective, and summarizes (in very, very basic terms) the whole point of the article.  The next few paragraphs are logical and follow a recognizable progression, moving from the general to the specific in a fairly decent way.  Unfortunately, it all goes downhill from there.  The second half of the article switches into a chronological story, which fails not only to place the more important facts higher, but it also fails to even mention some pretty heavy details. 

For instance, the author states that the man who planted the jersey might be facing criminal charges.  Criminal charges….?  For what?  I didn’t realize there was a law against playing upon a bunch of Yanks’ superstitions. 

Also, the article mentions that the jersey is a David Ortiz jersey, Number 34.  Was it an authentic jersey worn by Ortiz, or just a knock-off that the construction guy bought? 

This article definitely is not stellar, though like I mentioned earlier, it is entertaining.  After all, this article signifies that the long-standing rivalry between the two teams is no longer limited to just the diamond; apparently, it can extend into the concrete of the stadium, as well.

In light of today being the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech tragedy, I am going to focus my post on a recent article in USA Today that tells the stories of several victims and survivors who are finding ways to channel their grief into advocacy and art. 

Donna Leinwand’s piece utilizes a narrative lead, telling the tale of Michael Bishop’s struggle to cope with his son’s death in the massacre that took place last year.  Leinward plays on natural assumptions that the victim was actually a student, though she reveals a few paragraphs later that Bishop’s son, Jamie, was actually a 35-year-old professor.  At first I didn’t like the delayed-information approach that Leinwand took, but now I can see where the sudden shock of being corrected in my mis-assumption actually kept me interested.  As is customary to features, several of Leinwand’s word choices- “slaying,” “budding,” “slaughter”- are much more editorialized than would be expected in a strict inverted pyramid piece.

Another standout feature of this piece is its length.  Ordinarily, I would have not read the entire piece, but the various stories were interesting and played to my emotions (which, I’ll just say right now, isn’t all that hard to do).  Nonetheless, I think that this piece works despite its length because people are still interested in this tragedy.  Thus, I think that Leinwand really worked off of the timeliness of this piece’s subject matter and created an effective piece of journalism that will be appreciated by mourners and interested citizens alike.

I found an article in last weeks USA Today in the Opinion section about the increase of Sexually Transmitted Diseases among adolescent African American girls. The article was entitled “Black teen STD rate needs our attention;” it was an interesting article to me and the lead did a good job of pulling in the reader.

I felt it had a strong point of view as well as incorporating the facts and percentages of STDs among African Americans and Caucasians. It was something the writer, Yolanda Young, found to be a topic that deserves to be brought to the attention of the younger generations. The article gives the message to make a difference in the ways teens are living their lives. The rise in numbers is due to poor communities and sexual experiences beginning at a younger and more vulnerable age. I think it should be more newsworthy instead of an opinion piece. The writer has a strong opinion and feels this is an important and influential issue going on in the world around us; therefore, I find it should be made more newsworthy and should be longer to include more information for those readers that want to learn more and to live a healthier lifestyle.

In Monday, April 7th USA Today there was an article on page 1D by Scott Bowles called “‘21′ pays $15.1 million.” Personally, as a journalism student I thought that this article was poorly written. I felt that there were many questions left unanswered and many statements were very vague which in return made it very difficult for the reader to understand what was being written. Some of the questions I personally had as a reader were,  why did they call it Kevin Spacey’s film? Is he just the most famous person in it or did he write, produce or direct it? What did Bowles mean by a slew of newcomers? How do analysts project how much money a film will make? It could have been an interesting fact for readers to know. Also what is Preston-Sturges comedies? The reader should be aware of this statement in order to understand the article and the claims that the writer is making. And why does Bowles also claim that these Preston-Sturges comedies rarely catch fire with U.S. audiences? Also why is Hollywood in a slump? See, there were many questions in this article that were left unanswered and I felt were crucial for the reader to understand what the article was all about. Also, Bowles failed to really have any credible sources or quotes from the sources that he did use. 

I honestly think that the only thing well done in this article was that the lead was written well. Besides that, I think that the article was poorly written and could have included a lot more valuable information. 

The Minneapolis Star Tribune had an article called Biodegradable bags my not be as green as they seem.  This article seemed very comprehensive, and well organized, but there were some interesting formating.  Some of it made me wonder if this story text was just cut and pasted onto the web without being looked at. 

One line “1 percent of bags are recycled” was sitting on its own, and is obviously not a real sentence because there is no period and this phrase is repeated two paragraphs down.  So it would seem to me that perhaps this was one of those free-standing quotes pulled from the text to bring emphasis to something.  To me that seems like slopy website management.  These are the kinds of things that will make a story look better on the web.  And having a phrase that repeats itself like this is distracting in this format.  It works well in a printed paper that is layedout properly, but not when it is plain text stuck in with everything else. 

This article also had just two labled “sections” but they are not very well spaced and seem like extra stuff that is just not needed.  Plus, the titles for these sections do not seem to match all the subject following it.

The last thing I wanted to comment on was the line that I think  I will call the “toot your own horn” line.  This was a line thrown in the article literally as a side note: (The Star Tribune is considering using biodegradable plastic bags for newspaper home delivery.)

This is something that could, and I think should have been integrated into the article itself instead of taking such a tactless short cut.  This also breaks up the story more than need be. 

An article in USA Today reported on the recent groundings of hundreds of planes flown by American Airlines.  I found these to be one of the better written articles that I have read from this news source.  This is because the writer provided background information about the problem, as well as information about what is happening at the moment and is expected to happen in the near future, regarding the grounding of the airplanes.

I found that the lead contained the most important news, that the airline will return to normal schedule soon, and continued on with the rest of the mews and information after this.  The style used was the inverted pyramid and the article ended with general information about the problems the airline had encountered and was fixing as of when the article was written.

One thing that I think would have been interesting to include would be information on what parts of the United States would be effected the most by the grounding of the flights or if it would be equally distributed.  Also, it would have been nice if American Airlines provided a statement as to how they would successfully ensure that the problem with safety compliance would not happen again.

I liked the structure of the article by the Mercury News reporting American Airlines flight cancellations. There seemed to be two stories: the first was the impact the cancellations had on travelers and figures from the FAA and the airline. The second story concerned the details of why the flights were canceled.

There also was an efficient use of sources. Both travelers and officials were used in the story which yielded a much broader picture. I also thought the attention to detail proved to be effective in the story telling though.

What caught my attention was the last line, however. It seems like the journalist is setting himself up with a follow-up story when he adds the quote from one of the frustrated travelers. One of the important stories is the background of what caused the apparent negligence of the airline. I think readers would be ultimately more interested in that, and maybe perhaps the future of the airline, the industry as a whole. Also, a link or brief outline of the FAA rules and regulations might of helped in this story.

At 29 years old, you’d think that Gregory Kats would know whether or not a science project was fit to bring to school or not.  However, according to a recent Associated Press blurb, he found himself stuck on a subway as his project for the New York City College of Technology started smoking in his backpack.

I must commend the unnamed author of this article for sticking to inverted pyramid and keeping all of the absurd details in an organized and logical order.  However, I was disappointed that the only quotes were from Kats.  What about the passengers on the subway?  What about the police who questioned him?  What about the College of Technology?  I think there were a lot of overlooked sources who could have added more depth to the story. 

After all, I’m sure that the passengers who saw Kats’ project (which was a box with a motor, wires, and a small battery) could have added some colorful commentary.

You’d think that George Lucas could spend his time- and money- doing something more useful than suing the man who helped create the Storm Troopers costume.  After all, it’s not like the iconic film series has made him wealthy enough to single-handedly provide for an impoverished small country or anything.  Nonetheless, it seems like Lucas means business in his suit against Andrew Ainsworth, who sculpted the first Stormtrooper helmet back in 1977.  Here’s the best part- Lucas already sued Ainsworth, back in 2006, for $20 million.  Ainsworth, though, is countersuing back for $24 billion, claiming that he should be receiving a chunk of all the merchandise revenue that came out of those shiny plastic headdresses.

The article was written by Jill Lawless of the Associated Press, and her style reflects the ridiculousness of the whole story.  Her lede doesn’t inform the reader of any of the important details, and instead goes for the wit appeal by claiming that “it’s a storm inside a Stormtrooper’s helmet.”  She doesn’t really stick to inverted pyramid style, saving most of the really important details- like why Lucas is suing, why Ainsworth is suing back, how much they’re both suing for, etc- for the end.  While this is an entertainment piece, I think she still should have stuck to the basic news values and addressed the details sooner in the piece.  For the most part, though, most of my questions were answered by the time I finished reading this article.

Well, every question except, “who the hell cares?”