Blog Post #1 (James Morley )

On reading the online New York Times article entitled Gazing Afar for Other Earths, and Other Beings (01/30/11) I was immediately stuck by the strong nature of the stories lede. Having read Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel’s The Elements Of Journalism, having no experience in ‘academic’ journalism, and little general interest in the writings published by professional journalists I found Gazing Afar for Other Earths, and Other Beings as good an article to start with as any. The lede of the article:

“MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. — In a building at NASA’s Ames Research Center here, computers are sifting and resifting the light from 156,000 stars, seeking to find in the flickering of distant suns the first hints that humanity is not alone in the universe.”

The purpose of an article’s lede is to serve as a “…succinct summary of the story’s main point.” In the case of this article the lede serves it’s purpose well, a general outline of the article. The structure of this ‘soft news story’ unfolds smoothly in slowly adding more and more detail to a story which is of “… relevance to your community of readers but is not as… pressing as a hard news story.” The article is written using the basic model of the inverted pyramid, a system of organizing information in journalism based on its importance. From the general lede of “NASA are still looking through space for more discoveries” to exploring more specific concepts such as that of “starshading” and a more extensive look into the research of the Kelper observatory.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/grace-nasri/fast-food-calories_b_811965.html#s231197&title=Baja_Fresh_Nachos

In the Huffington Post’s Fast Food Calories: 10 of the Fattiest Foods banality and pointless common knowledge regurgitates yet another widely known fact as news. The lede reads as follows:

“The average American consumes too few fruits, vegetables, whole grains and high fiber foods and too many refined foods and food items high in fats and added sugars. According to the USDA, added sugars and solid fats contribute about 35 percent of the daily caloric intake of the average American.”

After reading the section of The Elements Of Journalism and thinking through Kovach and Rosenstiel’s definition of news and exploration of the nature of news I was left with one question, why did this fairly basic knowledge (fatty foods are bad for you) merit being re-packaged, re-written and (somehow) re-published. Should news not be current information of importance, new discoveries, reviews, opinions, surveys… Is this really what the general public should be spending their time thinking about? Who really cares if Baja fresh nachos, charboiled steak? After reading this article I was struck not by journalist Grace Nasri’s research or writing but by her choice of story and her reason to write Fast Food Calories: 10 of the Fattiest Foods as it offered no real news or interesting ideas. What’s the point in it, people already know that both fat and fast food are bad for you, a list of unhealthy food adds nothing important to the knowledge that the reader already has on nutrition except provide them with a pointless list of specific places to eat all over the U.S.A. that are unhealthy eating options.

Three News Stories, Deconstructed

January 27, 2011

Three Stories Deconstructed

Story One

Source: New York Times Title: “Facebook” Date: January 18, 2011

I chose this story because I wasn’t sure that the lede expressed the importance of the article as well as some of the other articles I read. The first line reads “Facebook, the world’s largest social network, announced in July 2010 that it had 500 million users in the world.” Although this might be an intriguing hook for the story, the fact that Facebook had reached 500 millions users was not the main point of the article, but more of a fact. I understand that it was important for this number to be included so that the article’s reader would see how large the company is, however I think the fact that the company is growing so rapidly is the main idea of the story. The lede paragraph continues to explain that the company is growing at a “meteoric pace” and how the company is redefining privacy settings for the upcoming Internet age. As the article progresses it explains important dates for the websites’ creator, Mark Zuckerberg, describing where how this $50 billion company got on its feet. I believe the lede should have been taken from the first three sentences of the article and fit into one: “Facebook, the world’s largest social network… has grown at a meteoric pace, pushing competitors aside and [re]defining standards for privacy in the Internet age.”

Story Two

Source: Washington Post Title: “Egypt Protests show George W. Bush was right about freedom in the Arab World” Date: January 29, 2011

I really enjoyed the approached taken by the author, Elliot Abrams, of this article. Within the story, the author made sure to draw in outside questions that really helped the reader sympathize with the Arab world and their lack of freedom. I also thought that this article was somewhat of a propaganda article, not so much in an effort to show how great G.W. Bush actually is, but in the sense of pathos. Instead of just telling us that these people were suffering, the author questioned our safety, which helped bring out the interest in the reader. Abrams writes, “What lesson will Arab regimes learn? Will they undertake the steady reforms that may bring peaceful change or will they conclude that exiled Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali erred only by failing to shoot and club enough demonstrators? And will our own government learn that dictatorships are never truly stable?” This caught my attention because it is interesting that he brings our own government into question after such deterring questions about Arab regimes. This is the moment when I was drawn into the article.

Story Three

Source: Boston Globe Title: “Brothers in crime, bound for brutal end” Date: January, 30, 2011

The main reason I chose this article was its lede. It was the first lede I read that really followed the guidelines I felt we had covered in class. The lede read “They were sons of the old Maverick Square projects, and sons of a Boston policeman. It took 4 decades, and a bullet, to finally bring the Cinelli boys down” (Michael Rezendes). First, this lede does an excellent job of drawing the reader in. Right away I wanted to continue reading the story because I had to find out what it was that the Cinelli boys needed to be brought down for. It reminded me of the crime story someone brought to class on Wednesday, because I thought this would be a good example of a lede for his story. Although the crime happened 40 years ago, the author still had time to factor in what the brothers did, and the fact that they were finally caught.

Close Reading of New Articles- Oona Kelly

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/28/egypt-protesters-tanks-cairo

This article from The Guardian is an example of coverage of an ongoing event, in this case the protests that have been going on in Egypt the past few days. In many places, the reporter assumes that the reader has some previous background and understanding of the issues. A few quotes are included that are not attributed, but are assumed to be taken from statements by the Egyptian government, which the reader has enough context to figure out.

At the same time, the most essential details to understanding the events are included.

The article includes a hard news lede, which does a good job of succinctly explaining the main events going on in Egypt.

 The coverage of the issue comes from many different standpoints- the reporter explains the reactions of the British Foreign Secretary, of the Unites States as represented by Hillary Clinton, and of a United Nations representative.

To make the story more well-rounded, a quote is included by an Egyptian partaking in the protests.

This piece draws out the conflict between the Egyptian people and the government they are protesting. Without stating any explicit bias, there is a distinct sense that the reporter is more sympathetic to the protestors, since most of the information included is framed from their side. Also, there are statistics about the number of deaths and much of the information included is about what police did to protestors.

This article also provides context by mentioning the link between the protests in Egypt and the conflicts going on in Tunisia.


http://www.economist.com/node/18010573


This piece in The Economist comes from a different style of writing since it’s a magazine rather than a newspaper. It is about the same issues as the previous articles, but it covers the situation in Egypt very differently. While The Guardian hinges their story on a new development—in this case, the disobedience of the president’s attempt to instate a curfew—in keeping with the style of a news article, The Economist takes a different tack and focuses the article on an in depth analysis of the protests in the Middle East.

There is a lot of detail in this article to situate the reader. This article, unlike the previous one, explains background rather than leaving that to the reader. It also spends more time discussing Tunisia and giving a comparison between Egypt and Tunisia and the significance of the push for democracy in the Middle East. This article posits that Egypt has a more significant political impact than Tunisia, which the other neglects to mention.

Also, there are no quotes in this article, instead the information presented is assumed to have been researched by the reporter, whose main purpose is to give broader context for a major current event.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/central-heating-may-be-making-us-fat/?src=me&ref=health

This Health blog post from The New York Times reports on a recently published medical study that indicates that indoor heating contributes to obesity. The reporter explains that the researchers argue that, “rising indoor temperatures are contributing to obesity.”

What is missing from this article is any counter argument to the findings of the study. There are no quotes from researchers that dispute this claim. It seemed to me that the reporter should have been more critical, and looked for this opposition. Especially with a topic like reasons for obesity, there is a lot of research supporting different claims about how to lose weight.

When the reporter writes, “that is not to say exposure to cold is a major driver of obesity: overeating and lack of exercise are the main causes,” this is the only time the significance of the findings is actually questioned.

Instead, the article focuses on explaining the findings of the study and quotes the researchers supporting it. 

Reading Diary I

Article 1: “Does Facebook Make Someone More Social Offline?” By Pamela Paul, NYT

This article, with its though provoking headline/question, touches on a very popular subject today, but in a different and more interesting way than all new outlets seem to be doing these days. Instead of siding with the naysayer as is customary of most contemporary culture critics Pamela Paul acknowledges that with the release of The Social Network, Facebook often makes one feel like a “soulless shut-in,” but with a new report from the University of Texas, Austin, results seem to say that Facebook makes one more sociable. Pamela Paul, with this article, will definitely capture ones attention, and she tackles the Facebook issue at a very different angle (example: Should Facebook be able to define the norm for social behavior?), but throughout the article there seem to be a lot of little details and statistics that aren’t really needed. Near the end Pamela Paul is just listing off the different Facebook habits between men and women and to conclude the article she gives us a quote about how Facebook users become more mature with their internet output as they get older, which isn’t very surprising because most people mature when they grow up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/fashion/30Studied.html?ref=technology

Article 2: “Nabokov Theory on Butterfly Evolution Is Vindicated” by Carl Zimmer, NYT

Vladimir Nabokov happens to have written one of my favorite books, so his reputation for excellence being upheld even in the scientific community was definitely worth a look at. This article seems to be very well rounded and aimed towards a very wide audience (both a man of letters and a man of bugs could very well be entertained by this story). The story touches on parts of Nabokov’s life that most might not know too much about, but when Carl Zimmer gets down to explaining how butterfly experts and lepidopterists realized Nabokov might be on to something Zimmer might lose some people in all the scientific jargon that gets thrown at the reader so that by the end of all the explaining one is not really sure how scientists figured out Nabokov’s hypothesis was accurate in the end. This article expertly joins two areas of academics; literature and science without favoring one over the other and giving the text of the story enough drive so that people will want to know how this scientific mishap happened.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/science/01butterfly.html?ref=science

Article 3: “Anonymous Hacking Suspects Released on Bail” by Josh Halliday, The Guardian

This article could act as a sort of ‘cherry on top’ to the WikiLeaks story, with Julian Assange’s initial media buzz dying down for now, it seems that his anti-secrecy website has rattled the cage of many and paved the way for other ‘hacktivists’, this story being proof of that. Josh Halliday seems to not know what the actual topic of his article is at all for he centers in on the hacktivist group Anonymous’ “advice”/“statement”/ “declaration of war” / “serious warning” instead of the actual individuals who perpetrated the crime. The crime itself (cyber attacks of several credit card companies for cutting support to Wikileaks) is mentioned at least three times for some reason and the repetition is very noticeable. This story works well because the actual content seems to be a hot topic among newspapers today but it seems that the headline could misguide some readers and that some of the most important information like the fact that Anonymous “…is understood to have grown significantly in number and firepower since its support of WikiLeaks, with the overwhelming majority of users simply volunteering their computer to be used in the attacks,” is placedat the end of the article.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jan/28/anonymous-suspects-police-bail-wikileaks?INTCMP=SRCH

White House Seeks Web 2.0 To Enhance State Of The Union Address

By Harrison Golden

WASHINGTON – In an effort to encourage voter openness and ease political tensions prior to Tuesday night’s State of the Union Address, President Obama has decided to create a vaster online political forum, tapping into a variety of social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter.

The White House website devoted to attracting voters not only to the speech, but also to the primary issues that will presumably be discussed on Capitol Hill on Tuesday night. The Obama Administration’s new Internet initiative, asserting the nation as one “of Google and Facebook,” as the speech transcript states, also includes a frequently updated app chronicling preparations for the address.

In addition, Facebook and Twitter pages in which top presidential aides can answer questions from the public have been implemented in a similar vein. Viewers of the address are also invited to ask questions, in real time, to the president as well as his cabinet members, such as Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, via the website and other social media sites.

Furthermore, during the State of the Union speech, WhiteHouse.gov, the official website for the Obama Administration, will be offering a companion stream of visual aids such as charts and corresponding statistics in an effort to better emphasize the key issues, including the economy and national security.

According to representatives from Sunlight Live, a journalistic collaboration made up of the Sunlight Reporting Group, The Huffington Post, National Journal, CQ Roll Call, and the Center for Public Integrity, “This platform of real-time investigative reporting will provide real-time transparency of the annual State of the Union and make analysis participatory in a way we couldn’t have before the Web.”

Although The White House has previously been known for its technological savvy, this more in-depth plan marks a new endeavor to inform and unify the voter base. Washington officials hope to use this spreading of information to diminish ongoing polarities between Democrats and Republicans, as fueled by not only the January 8^th shooting in Tucson that killed six and injured fourteen, including Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, but also a variety of rage-filled Tea Party protests nationwide.

**Reading Diary 1**

Article #1 – (The New York Times)“Egypt Calls In Army as Protesters Rage” written by David D. Kirkpatrick & Alan Cowell

The first thing I noticed upon reading the lede of the story, was that although they alluded to what might be the cause of the protest; they never specifically state the “why” of the protests, not even in the secondary paragraph –that information doesn’t appear until the fourth paragraph down (which doesn’t follow the schematics of the inverted pyramid). To me that suggests, in most hard news story detailing current events, the writers expect the reader to have a bit of background as to what the situation is; which may be confusing to those who don’t.

Secondly, I observed that some of the strongest quotes and strands of information in the article were through secondary sources (A.P./Reuters, Al Jazeera, etc.), or anonymous sources just stated as “frustrated protester” or “angry Egyptian.” Considering the caliber of a newspaper such as The New York Times, I did find that the quotes didn’t seem as strong or connect as personally as it would have (to me), had they just simply given them a name, age, description of what they do; or just any other general information that may humanize them a bit more, to help the reader empathize with the struggles of these people. The only people named were all prominent figures of political and social status in Egyptian society; I think it would have made a heavier impact to showcase more of the actual everyday people, who are being strongly affected by the riot and the issue itself at large.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/29/world/middleeast/29unrest.html?_r=1&hp

Article #2 – (The Guardian) “Slackistan censorship means the future looks tight in Pakistan” written by Huma Quershi

This was a very light Feature Story regarding the censorship of a new teen film entitled “Slackistan”, written, directed by, and acted by all Pakistani citizens – but not allowed to be show in Pakistan itself. Firstly, I loved that the actual director of the film was the primary source for the story, as he not only had the first hand knowledge of the film’s topic and intention of statement; but he himself grew up and is from Pakistan. So he helped to aid the reader understand what possible motives the Pakistan Central Board of Film Censors had to warrant their decision (for the record – the issues were the teens saying “lesbian” “Taliban“, and drinking fake alcohol.)

Though this was not a political piece, it was more entertainment-driven; I appreciated that Ms. Quershi made an effort to intertwine details of the film, but also present the subtle political undertones, which have caused people to deem the movie as negatively influential, and not suitable for Pakistani youth.

Later on, she quotes a young audience member at a Q&A for the film, who posed a great debate point, suggesting that the young slackers in the film are just that because they do not have proper role models. The writer then goes on to agree with him and many fans of the movie alike, and share her opinions as to why; without forcing her thoughts down the reader’s throat. Throughout the article, I feel she maintained her stance as to why the decision to censor creativity in a land where it is needed most was wrong, without sacrificing her journalistic integrity.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2011/jan/26/slackistan-ban-pakistan-director

Article #3- (LA Times) “Charlie Sheen out of hospital, recovering from laughing too hard?” written by Christie D’Zruilla

Right away from reading the headline; the story not only captured my attention, but immediately set the tone making it pretty clear that this would be a story more poking fun at Mr. Sheen, instead of talking about the actual details that hospitalized him. And I was right.

Though the journalist may not have specifically made obscene comments, the article was riddled with snide remarks at Charlie Sheen, and obviously made an intention to help further slander his name. I believe this because aside from the obligatory clarification made by his publicist, the majority of the quotes were either from porn stars who allegedly had sex with Sheen, stating that they “couldn’t keep up with the party;” or from a talent agent who used a direct quote, but didn’t want their name used (Not for Attribution), who said he believed that he “will end up dead.” She would also back-handed comments in every other sentence. (Examples “…laughing too hard – at his own show perhaps?”, “ ‘..he might end up dead’, “sound familiar?”)

She then ended the article with a link to “an unsteady, vulgar” appearance he had made last month; further solidifying the propaganda she was employing to paint the worst possible picture of Charlie Sheen (as if anyone needs to add fuel to that fire).

All in all, though an interesting story no doubt; I feel she would have better served the public by trying to obtain more in-depth information as to why he might lashing out this way – maybe a psychiatrist’s point of view, other (legitimate) Hollywood players, or anyone who may provide more insight, instead of another drawn out, typical sex joke.

(**Side Note – Even look at words chosen to link the article – “Charlie Sheen/Hospital/Hernia/Porn/Alcohol/Drugs…it couldn’t have been made more apparent!)

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/gossip/2011/01/charlie-sheen-hospital-hernia-porn-alcohol-drugs.html

Welcome...

...to the class blog for Intro to Journalism, Spring 2011. This is where you will post all articles. Readings diaries and blog entries will be on your own blogs.