Comparing Leads...

Since the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, three different articles have been written about the incident. Two from the New York Times and one from the Washington Post. I'm going to use this blog entry to compare the leads in these three articles.

Post: "An Army psychiatrist, trained to treat soldiers under stress, allegedly opened fire Thursday in a crowded medical building at Fort Hood, Tex. When the assault ended minutes later, the attack had become what is believed to be the largest mass shooting ever to occur on a U.S. military base. Twelve were killed, 31 wounded."

Times 1: "An Army psychiatrist facing deployment to one of America’s war zones killed 12 people and wounded 31 others on Thursday in a shooting rampage with two handguns at the sprawling Fort Hood Army post in Central Texas, military officials said."

Times 2: "WASHINGTON — Born and reared in Virginia, the son of immigrant parents from a small Palestinian town near Jerusalem, he joined the Army right out of high school, against his parents’ wishes. The Army, in turn, put him through college and then medical school, where he trained to be a psychiatrist."

I think the article that provided the most information was Times 1. The lead is short and to the point, but gives the all the relevant information in a simple way. The Post lead is also good, although a little wordy, but it doesn't talk about the "why." You can argue that because we don't know the reasons why Hasan shot at the crowd yet, it shouldn't be included but the fact that he was soon to be deployed seems important to me.

The second times article's lead is nothing like the other two. We can't figure out 'everything we need to know' from this lead at all. The article, unlike the other two articles, focuses on Hasan, his history and possible reasons for his actions. Without the other Times article, this article would be useless, because it doesn't explain what happened at all. I happened to read this article first, and was very confused by the end.

Good Article

I really appreciated this article's subject. It was an article discussing the protests that have been going on in Iran since the elections this summer. Recently, most articles in the paper about Iran solely mention their nuclear plans and it seems as though everyone has forgotten how illegitimate the Iranian government of today is. Thankfully, this article discussed how the usual Nov. 4th anti-American rallies may be taken over by anti-government rallies from the green movement.

Although the article's subject was great and probably very difficult to receive seeing as any information from Iran about opposition movements is difficult to come by from a credible source, the writing was a little weak. For example, the lead wasn't until the third paragraph and a lot of the information was broad. For example, "Thousands of reformist figures were arrested in the unrest that followed the election, and many remain in jail." I for one would appreciate some harder numbers. However, the subject out-weighed the writing in this case, still making this a solid article.

An Article or an Ad?

While this article was really cool and fun to read about, it felt more like an add than an actual article. The article talks about different ways technology can be adapted so that it is "elderly friendly." According to the article more and more elderly folk are starting to use technology. Yet instead of saying how that trend came about or what this could mean, we just got a list of elderly targeted technology products. There wasn't even a single quote or source in the article!

In my opinion this was a terrible waste of newspaper space. Unless the author was bribed by the products mentioned in the article then it really should not have ran in the paper. Might as well use that space for an actual add.

Reasons I Love Reading the Paper...

Today I just read the article saying that the CIA has been paying Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in Afghanistan's illegal opium trade for the past 8 years. I know, I know, my first reaction was "wait whaaat?" too. I would have had no idea, thank God I read my daily paper. The political blogs I usually read mentioned nothing about it. (Although to be fair, neither has the Washington Post)

In fact, according to my research using google news there are a little over 200 sources covering this news. Today there have been over 500 sources covering Michael Jackson's death. Still. Of course this is including sources such as ABC Online and political blogs, but still the difference in numbers is very impressive. I think most of this difference is a result of the newspapers being required to be entertainers in order to make a profit. Hearst showed us the importance of what story you choose to write about in selling the paper. Still, you would think that the CIA paying an Afghanistani drug lord would be the classic Hearstian "Gee Whiz" story.

I'm going to conclude that because this story is still breaking that is why there are so few sources covering it. Hopefully by the end of the week both the Washington Post and the 24 hour news channels will cover this story as well.

Never knew that..

Maybe thisarticle just caught me on a good day, but I really enjoyed reading it. It took a conventional wisdom that I had always had and showed me that I could be wrong, without being preachy or annoyingly superior.

Although the lead was a question I think this worked particularly well in this article. If instead of asking a question Tara Pope had started off with a fact, the readers may have jumped to the conclusion that she is off her rocker and either didn't do enough research, didn't do the right research, or is showing a very skewed way of thinking. This first impression could have ruined the effect of the rest of the article. The rest of the article provided a lot of different perspectives, including an evolutionary perspective to help demonstrate the idea that long-distance running should not cause humans the pain it does.

Baby Not-so Einstein

Here's an interesting article in today's paper that actually made it onto the front page. Apparently, Walt Disney is offering refunds for the Baby Einstein videos that were sold. I had learned in child psychology that by watching the Baby Einstein videos when the child is younger than 2 actually hurts the baby more than it helps, so the fact that Disney is acknowledging this and now offering refunds is really interesting.

I think this article does a really good job showing the proper set up of a newspaper article. With just the first sentence, the reader has a good grasp on all the information that he or she would need to gain from the article: "Parent alert: the Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those “Baby Einstein” videos that did not make children into geniuses." As the article progresses we get more details. The reader first gets a brief explanation on what the Baby Einstein videos and the article goes on to explain the problems with the videos and the changes that lawyers want Disney to make.

The history of the struggle between the lawyers and Disney is written very fluidly and has quotes and facts from all the right people. There are quotes from the psychiatrists, lawyers and CEOs. Finally the article ends with a small sentence on what parents should be doing instead of letting their children watch Baby Einstein videos, leaving the reader with the right last impression of the article.

It's All in the Details...

Today's article was titled " Field Study: Just How Relevant is Political Science" caught my attention as a student taking quite a few political science classes. I anticipated reading an article that would some how dissect the current relevance of political science to what is going on in the world today. There was even the opportunity to discuss the past relevance of political science and what political scientists do for a living. Regardless, there were plenty of angles the author could have taken all of which would have given the reader far more information than the actual article did.

The article was very vague and either assumed its readers knew a lot more than they did or did not do enough research to fill in the details. The most specific information we got was: "Yet even some of the most vehement critics of the Coburn proposal acknowledge that political scientists themselves vigorously debate the field’s direction, what sort of questions it pursues, even how useful the research is." This isn't enough for me. What are the possible directions? What research is currently being performed? Another instance of this vagueness was shown by this quote: "In recent years he and other scholars, including Robert Putnam and Theda Skocpol, both former presidents of the American Political Science Association, have urged colleagues not to shy away from 'the big questions.'" What are the big questions? you cant just put it in quotes and assume the readers know.

Overall, I think the article lacked a lot of fleshing out and could have used specifics so that the average reader would have understood the article.