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.