News articles - Weeks 8, 9, 10

Week 8:

You can find this crime story at:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/12/02/cold.case.arrest/index.html

This is an interesting crime story. What I find fascinating about it is that it very much sticks to news story basics - it has a hard lede, immediately followed by a nut graph, and hard story structure. However, it is a well done crime story as well...in part because it makes you empathize so much with the victim and her family.

The lede stays simple, for such a complicated story:

"A call to the Secret Witness tip line helped police break CNN's first featured cold case: the slaying of college student Brianna Denison, investigators say. "

It does a good job of letting us know where all this information is from (with "investigators say").

Also, the nut graph stays to a similar stirctly news format:

"At a news conference Wednesday, relief was visible on the faces of the cops who worked the case and came, as one said, to view Denison as "everyone's daughter." For her family, the relief competed with tears."

Again, what I appreciate about this article, is that it really hones in on the "people" aspect of the story by focusing on the reactions of her family. Thus, it is informative yet well-crafted.

It ends with an unusual kicker, one that involves the reader:

"Police are urging anyone with more information to call the Reno Police Hot Line at 775-745-3521"

Overall, I think that if I were to write crime stories, I really would like to write ones like these....that highlight the human aspect of the story.

Week 9:

This story can be found at:

http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2008/12/01/few-young-adults-seek-treatment-for--psych.html

If the story for Week 8 about crime does a really good job of developing the "so what" of the news topic, this Week 9 story, on mental illness in youth, does the opposite. I chose this is part because, in my opinion, it is a BAD news story. The lede is bland, the nut graph is redundant to the headline, and I guess overall, while this story would be better written as a feature anyway, it doesn't do justice to the topic, which is very important, pertinent one.

Here's the lede:

"Psychiatric disorders are common among young adults in the United States, but few seek treatment, a new report shows."

My first response as a reader wasn't "WOW that's an important, sad, fact!" it was more like, "This could be written so much better as an anecdotal lede!" And that's how I feel.

The nut graph is more of the same:

"The study found that 45.8 percent of the 2,188 college students and 47.7 percent of the young adults not in college met the criteria for at least one psychiatric disorder, but only 25 percent of those with disorders sought treatment over a one-year period."

This topic would be MUCH BETTER serviced by "showing" not "telling" in this particular example! So, if I appreciate the above article because it highlights the "so what" or the person perspective of the story, this one does the opposite - it just makes a story that should draw people in, and should be interesting, really, really dry with all the statistics and numbers.

Finally, the thing ends with a quote kicker, when once again I really wish it was anecdotal:

"The vast majority of disorders in this population can be effectively treated with evidence-based psychosocial and pharmacological approaches," they wrote. "Early treatment could reduce the persistence of these disorders and their associated functional impairment, loss of productivity and increased health-care costs. As these young people represent our nation's future, urgent action is needed to increase detection and treatment of psychiatric disorders among college students and their non-college-attending peers."


Week 10:

This story can be found at:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2008-12-02-obama-poll_N.htm

I chose this story because I have been reading a lot of political writing this quarter, especially writing that is about the election...I have begun to notice that the style of political writing seems to me to be "punchier?" than other kinds of journalism? It just seems really energetic, really active, and really much more fast-paced than other kinds of writing. This is exemplified by the lede:

"President-elect Barack Obama is riding a wave of good feeling toward him and his key Cabinet appointments, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds — positive attitudes that may give him some breathing room for tough decisions ahead."

There is a greater use of jargon and colloquialisms...."riding a wave" and "breathing room" as examples. I think too, that this must be the case beccause the risk of writing about politics, is that, well, it might end up reading like a Civics textbook.

Here is the nut graph:

"Soaring ratings for the way he has handled the presidential transition so far — more than three of four Americans express approval — contrast with a downbeat national mood over the economy."

Again, verbs like "soaring" hit home this same idea....that the writing has to use a lot of energetic language to bolster the potentially dry material. When I think of other writers who write about politics, like Thomas Friedman, the same quality is true about their writing as well.

The kicker is pretty much a fizzle-out kicker, but that makes sense because this is a short story with not all that much information to it:

"There's little concern Obama is relying too much on veterans of President Clinton's administration. By nearly 4-1, those polled say the picks will make the new team more effective."

As my last post for the quarter, I think I would like to reflect on the fact that I am beginning to hone-in on the very discreet differences in different sub-types of journalism....political blogging and writing being very different stylistically from other types of news writing.