Behind the News

Article one:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/us/27bcpolice.html?ref=sanfranciscobayarea

This is a follow-up story that seems to be uncovering something about this report that was not covered the first time that it was reported on. First of all, the lede is less immediate than the lede's of a hard news piece. It reads: "Last fall, after 21 years at the Oakland Police Department, Sgt. Robert Glock was fired for dishonesty." This reads differently than a hard news article because there is no urgency to the piece because this has already happened. The story is not about the Sgt. getting fired, but rather the investigation of the Oakland Police and the uncovered truths that this reporter found. A much longer piece, this article is not structured in the same format as the articles we have been studying. It goes into deeper detail about the funding for the Oakland Police and the possibility that the lack of funding is leading to the murder rates increasing up to 50%. If this were a hard news article, I probably would have put the increasing murder rates in my lede just to get the attention of my readers. We hear about budget cuts all the time and therefore have become desensitized to the effects of budget cuts, however, telling the people that the murder rates have increased by 50% since the department has laid off 180 officers, would get others attention. This article was not about the firing of Sgt. Glock but it played a large roll in the story anyway.

Article Two:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/nyregion/30about.html?src=mv&ref=nyregion

This article is a "behind-the-news" story for many reasons. In the lede, it quotes a woman talking about her facebook page, claiming that she never thought the pictures could be taken from the website or sold. However as you read further, you learn that the officer that found this woman's friend, strangled to death in her apartment, posted a picture of her dead body on his facebook account. This is something that I believe the Police department would have tried to keep quiet, although they fired him immediately. This is a story behind another story. The original story was probably the murder itself, and how terrible it was this a young woman was brutalized in her own apartment. Now, however, this is the story of a officer who had the audacity to post something so awful for everyone to see. Originally the reporter would have wanted to write about the girl's murder, but now he has found something about the news story that was not mentioned in the original report. This is different from a hard news story because it's a follow-up piece. It is something the reporter found out about, after the fact.

Article Three:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/30/arm-rapist-dublin-bay-nolan

I chose this article because the arm had been reported about when it was found (on Feb. 8) however, they did not know who it belonged to. Now that they have found out the arm belonged to a rapist who hasn’t been seen since he was released from prison, there is a whole new story to be told. Now they can follow-up on the story and give it a completely different spin. Not only did they find an arm, but it belonged to a sexual predator.