Meredith Pollack
Libya Op Ed
In a country such as the United States where everyone has a different point of view on all things political, it is often easy for us to find unity in a common enemy. Currently, that enemy happens to be President Barrack Obama’s call for military action against Libya.
Newsmax.com focused their home page story on Obama’s inexperience with this kind of foreign policy move. This story focuses strongly on Obama’s weaknesses and the flaws of the plan for Libya. It offers little hope that this will be a success, and the whole story appears to pit the readers against Obama’s plan for Libya. Also, an Op Ed piece from the same news source goes into great detail about Obama receiving “he lowest approval rating of any American military operation in almost three decades.” The poll that was taken did investigate a lot of other pressing issues that delve back into our countries history of doing these types of invasions. As well as getting an approval rating for this military action, they took polls for their approval of the “invention of American troops in Haiti in September 1994, “ and “ the invasion of Grenada in October 1983.
”A New York Times blog by Mark Landler held the clear headline, “Obama Plans Libya Speech on Monday” The piece was under 200 words, quick and to the point. It seemingly was to appeal to the internet generation, who want their information quickly or they will stray from the story. He summed up that Obama would be holding a speech on Monday night that all are eagerly awaiting, due to public curiosity over what exactly is happening here. Landler alludes to Obama being flustered under this pressure, with a striking graph,
“he campaign has been dogged by friction over who should command the operation, with the United States handing off its lead role to NATO, and by uncertainty over its ultimate goal. Mr. Obama tried to answer some of these questions in a conference call Friday with a bipartisan group of lawmakers.”
An angle that most opinion pieces in the news have taken is to focus on the tension of any situation. Here it happens to be the peoples unrest about a decision they feel they cannot control. The unrest in the middle east is clearly running most news sources and creating a big interest for the citizens that read the news.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
libya reading journal
Meredith Pollack
Libya Reading Journal
There have been many different news sources covering the events in Libya, all of which acknowledge the gravity of the situation and the necessity for extreme coverage. When searching the word “Libya” on the Huffington Post website, you will be directed to a page title Libya. There is a subtitle that reads “Some news is so big it needs its own page.” The entire page is filed with small pictures that quickly depict the story. You are able to click on the quick read option which includes a hard news lede and one other short paragraph. There is an option to read the entire post as well. But this method is clearly set up inspired by the ADD generation. Readers don’t have time sometimes to read an entire article or watch an entire news story, but they can appreciate a simple page that gives them their information quickly and precisely.
The images on the Huffington Post page for Libya are quite riveting and really draw in the reader to want to hear more from such a striking photograph. The most popular story on the Libya page is headlined “Libya Rebels Rout Gaddafi Forces In Fierce Battle For Oil Port.” This article focuses tightly on the port oil battle between Gadahfi and rebel forces on Wednesday. The article was short on quotes except for a few snippets of previous Gadahfi quotes. It was however brief, informative and to the point.
It appears that with the rush of political news in the Middle East and after Egypt, readers are not as drawn to the dramas of the protesters themselves. And although death tolls are rising in Libya due to violent protest, the news seems to be focusing more on the causes and the possible aftermaths because that is what really matters to their demographic.
On CNN.com they are honing in on the politics of the conflict as well. In a popular article about Libya still maintaining some allies, journalist Thair Shaikh was able to get some great quotes from a research fellow in the Middle East. "There is a natural alignment between all regimes which are into power maximization, that is, regimes trying to accumulate as much power as they can for themselves," says Barak Seener, a Middle East research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank.Considering the subject of the story which goes in depth on why Libya’s allies are refusing to talk about what is happening, the writer was unlikely to get any quotes from world leaders such as Hugo Chavez on the matter. He was however able to get some really useful information from an expert, and without it he wouldn’t have had a story at all.
News in Libya made front page on the New York Times today and they took an angle different from many other stories. Their headline was “Battle in Libya for Strategic Town Kills at Least 13”. Unlike other news sources, the New York Times is still pulling in readers to the sympathetic side of the protesters. Instead of discussing the hard politics of the battle such as strategy like Huffington Post did, they had quotes from eye witnesses and discussed the intimate moments of the attack on peaceful protesters.
Libya Reading Journal
There have been many different news sources covering the events in Libya, all of which acknowledge the gravity of the situation and the necessity for extreme coverage. When searching the word “Libya” on the Huffington Post website, you will be directed to a page title Libya. There is a subtitle that reads “Some news is so big it needs its own page.” The entire page is filed with small pictures that quickly depict the story. You are able to click on the quick read option which includes a hard news lede and one other short paragraph. There is an option to read the entire post as well. But this method is clearly set up inspired by the ADD generation. Readers don’t have time sometimes to read an entire article or watch an entire news story, but they can appreciate a simple page that gives them their information quickly and precisely.
The images on the Huffington Post page for Libya are quite riveting and really draw in the reader to want to hear more from such a striking photograph. The most popular story on the Libya page is headlined “Libya Rebels Rout Gaddafi Forces In Fierce Battle For Oil Port.” This article focuses tightly on the port oil battle between Gadahfi and rebel forces on Wednesday. The article was short on quotes except for a few snippets of previous Gadahfi quotes. It was however brief, informative and to the point.
It appears that with the rush of political news in the Middle East and after Egypt, readers are not as drawn to the dramas of the protesters themselves. And although death tolls are rising in Libya due to violent protest, the news seems to be focusing more on the causes and the possible aftermaths because that is what really matters to their demographic.
On CNN.com they are honing in on the politics of the conflict as well. In a popular article about Libya still maintaining some allies, journalist Thair Shaikh was able to get some great quotes from a research fellow in the Middle East. "There is a natural alignment between all regimes which are into power maximization, that is, regimes trying to accumulate as much power as they can for themselves," says Barak Seener, a Middle East research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank.Considering the subject of the story which goes in depth on why Libya’s allies are refusing to talk about what is happening, the writer was unlikely to get any quotes from world leaders such as Hugo Chavez on the matter. He was however able to get some really useful information from an expert, and without it he wouldn’t have had a story at all.
News in Libya made front page on the New York Times today and they took an angle different from many other stories. Their headline was “Battle in Libya for Strategic Town Kills at Least 13”. Unlike other news sources, the New York Times is still pulling in readers to the sympathetic side of the protesters. Instead of discussing the hard politics of the battle such as strategy like Huffington Post did, they had quotes from eye witnesses and discussed the intimate moments of the attack on peaceful protesters.
Friday, January 28, 2011
1st reading journal response
Meredith Pollack
Reading Journal
Due 1/28/11
After having some difficulties accessing The New York Times and The Guardian, I decided to check out the L.A. Times. I moved on to what seemed to be a hard hitting story for the Woodland HIlls area at the time. It was about a school police officer who had allegedly faked being shot by a school intruder. The schools had been locked down, when the officer was lying to higher authorities the entire time. I thought that the article did a poor job reporting on the slow reaction of the story. This entire development had taken place over a week, and many of their sources were simply named as anonymous officials. Upon the event breaking, after watching the matching news footage from the local news channel, it seemed apparent that their were suspicions of this being fake right from the start. Yet, not until a week later, is the alleged scandal broken.
The first thing however that I noticed that was strong about the article was the lede. Not only was all of the information in one sentence, but I think the art of it was really having the reader not notice that they had just read a lede at all. It included the facts as well as getting the reader to at least read on to the next paragraph. I have included it here :
A Los Angeles school police officer who said he was shot by an attacker last week, prompting a manhunt that shut down a large swath of Woodland Hills, has been arrested on suspicion of concocting the story, authorities said Thursday night.
(Joel Ruben and Andrew Blankstein, Los Angeles Times)
This lede encompassed what really needs to be done in that first sentence of a news story. It was cleverly worded, so as not to sound like a run on sentence, while also including the tone of the story. This article as well as the accompanying news clip, stressed the fact that this was such a big deal to the people, because it caused such chaos. Without this being included in the story, there would have been no tone or emotion behind it. The reporting of the chaos gave the reader some tension to feel while reading the article, and understanding the gravity of the situation.
Another page on the site that caught my eye was the Crime Alert page. Although this did not involve any ledes or elaborate stories on each crime, I found it interesting the way the page was set up. It was a color coded map, that depicted the levels of crime from Violent, to virtually none per neighborhood. When clicking on a specific neighborhood, the reader is able to see a list of all the different crimes that occurred there, and whether they were rape, theft, or vehicle related.
In front page news for the Washington Post, they were covering the protests in Cairo. Seeing this in their paper, as well as all over the news and in every other paper, brought up an issue that I had not yet thought about from the perspective of a journalist. That is, how to make an original story out of a very big news event that a lot of other people are also covering. Aside from reporting the basic facts, which was what everyone seemed to be doing, the Washington post’s story was original in that it focused bluntly on the gravity of the violence. They also included a live reporter, and much more history on the country and its issues than any other story I had read. However, with such a popular story for the moment, I can see how it is hard to get your news to stand out from the rest. It seems as though doing some more in depth reporting, and finding the most eye witnesses could really help make a story more riveting.
I also enjoyed reading from the freepress.net where I was directed to several different blogs and websites through the headlines page. As well I found watching the must see videos helpful, because they followed along similar guidelines to writing a hard news story, but with the added visual bonus. Also, as a fan of radio news, I liked the Media Minutes series. These include a single sentence lede, defining the radio story.
Reading Journal
Due 1/28/11
After having some difficulties accessing The New York Times and The Guardian, I decided to check out the L.A. Times. I moved on to what seemed to be a hard hitting story for the Woodland HIlls area at the time. It was about a school police officer who had allegedly faked being shot by a school intruder. The schools had been locked down, when the officer was lying to higher authorities the entire time. I thought that the article did a poor job reporting on the slow reaction of the story. This entire development had taken place over a week, and many of their sources were simply named as anonymous officials. Upon the event breaking, after watching the matching news footage from the local news channel, it seemed apparent that their were suspicions of this being fake right from the start. Yet, not until a week later, is the alleged scandal broken.
The first thing however that I noticed that was strong about the article was the lede. Not only was all of the information in one sentence, but I think the art of it was really having the reader not notice that they had just read a lede at all. It included the facts as well as getting the reader to at least read on to the next paragraph. I have included it here :
A Los Angeles school police officer who said he was shot by an attacker last week, prompting a manhunt that shut down a large swath of Woodland Hills, has been arrested on suspicion of concocting the story, authorities said Thursday night.
(Joel Ruben and Andrew Blankstein, Los Angeles Times)
This lede encompassed what really needs to be done in that first sentence of a news story. It was cleverly worded, so as not to sound like a run on sentence, while also including the tone of the story. This article as well as the accompanying news clip, stressed the fact that this was such a big deal to the people, because it caused such chaos. Without this being included in the story, there would have been no tone or emotion behind it. The reporting of the chaos gave the reader some tension to feel while reading the article, and understanding the gravity of the situation.
Another page on the site that caught my eye was the Crime Alert page. Although this did not involve any ledes or elaborate stories on each crime, I found it interesting the way the page was set up. It was a color coded map, that depicted the levels of crime from Violent, to virtually none per neighborhood. When clicking on a specific neighborhood, the reader is able to see a list of all the different crimes that occurred there, and whether they were rape, theft, or vehicle related.
In front page news for the Washington Post, they were covering the protests in Cairo. Seeing this in their paper, as well as all over the news and in every other paper, brought up an issue that I had not yet thought about from the perspective of a journalist. That is, how to make an original story out of a very big news event that a lot of other people are also covering. Aside from reporting the basic facts, which was what everyone seemed to be doing, the Washington post’s story was original in that it focused bluntly on the gravity of the violence. They also included a live reporter, and much more history on the country and its issues than any other story I had read. However, with such a popular story for the moment, I can see how it is hard to get your news to stand out from the rest. It seems as though doing some more in depth reporting, and finding the most eye witnesses could really help make a story more riveting.
I also enjoyed reading from the freepress.net where I was directed to several different blogs and websites through the headlines page. As well I found watching the must see videos helpful, because they followed along similar guidelines to writing a hard news story, but with the added visual bonus. Also, as a fan of radio news, I liked the Media Minutes series. These include a single sentence lede, defining the radio story.
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