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.
