Evoking Emotion: delayed lead

A lead in another metro article this week reads as follows, “Louis Bourgoin seems an unlikely symbol of the latest battle over health care spending. The 68-year-old retired shipyard worker is undergoing chemotherapy for liver cancer. He lives in a state once renowned for its efforts to insure the poor, and Mainers stood to benefit even more under President Obama’s health care plan.” This article is concerning the Governor of Maine’s decision to reject federal health care funding, and his cutting of 44,000 Medicare patients. The lead in this case, is a delayed lead. It’s goal is shock and awe. It tries to show readers how people are effected by the Government’s decision. It tries to evoke emotion from the reader so that he/she will read on. In my opinion, it is very effective in doing so by choosing someone who is going through a sickness that most people have a personal connection to at one point or another. This makes the article real for everyone.

Evidence comes in different forms.....

In the metro section this week, there was an intriguing article entitled “Odds favor cardinal in Ghana as the next pope”. This article predicts who will be elected the next Pope. In an interesting fashion, the article makes the statement of who has a chance to be the next Pope using betting odds: “For gamblers laying wagers on the election of the next pope, the smart money is on Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, a strong favorite at 11/4 odds at the Irish Internet gambling company PaddyPower.com.” The article continues to use the odds of the Red Sox wining the next World Series in comparison. This tactic, as a lead, grabs the readers attention, and acts as a delayed lead. Although we understand where the article is headed, it is unclear the specifics of the claim that Turkson will win. The article goes on to explain why he is the favorite, and the actions people may have to a african Pope.

Leads: The Two Styles

      The strengths of writing a summary lead are that it is short and too the point, and extremely effective when writing breaking news stories in which the reader must learn what happened within the first few lines of the story. The downside to this type of lead is that it lacks an artistic spin, or an ability to tell a story in a more creative way. A good example of a summary lead appeared in the Boston Globe this Saturday entitled "Report of a gunman inside MIT unfounded, authorities say". This article was overall pretty short and to the point, but one could get the gist of the article within the first two sentences. Within those first two, we already understand why it’s news. 

       The delayed lead allows for more creativity in the telling of the story, but can lose a reader when the point of the article does not come until later. In order to avoid this, the article must grab the attention of the reader not by telling the synopsis of the story, but rather using emotion and other tactics that evoke a response.

Boston Living Center: Summary Lead Example

Larry Kessler, age 70, recently took over as executive director for the Boston Living Center, the region’s largest refuge for people living with HIV and AIDS, which has seemed to have made its resurgence over the past year.

Nightclub Fire: Soft Lead Example

Despite the horrors of the fire, former Governor Don Carcieri described it as “our people’s finest hour.” A time where the population of Rhode Island stood together as a support system for the families who lost loved ones.

Angela Bogart was apart of one of those families, and ten years later, can’t forget.

‘‘My mom lives in me in everything I do. I hear her voice wherever I go,’’ she said. Bogart was 19-years-old when her mother died in the fire.

On Sunday, ten years after the 2003 nightclub blaze, Bogart, as well as many other families of the fire victims, gathered in West Warwick, RI in honor of their fallen loved ones.

Summary Lead Example

Alex, an African Gary Parrot whose intelligence and ability to talk has influenced the world of animal psychology, died at age 31 from what appeared to be natural causes.

Sports Journalism: What you think.

Sports Journalism is probably one of the most read forms of news media in the world today. Being a top form of entertainment, the world of sports journalism lends itself to much more interpretation then the rest of the news world. In reading the Boston Globe this week, I noticed that sports journalism takes up much of the front page headline space. I then proceeded to read the articles and what I found was interesting. Most of them were not play by plays. or game summary’s, or even first hand accounts, but rather offer analysis of what the writer thinks are the greater trends. The article are about their own expectations for new players, or criticism of Lebron. This field differentiates from most of the news world, because the opinions of others are excepted within sports journalism. When you read the articles about the russian meteor, you want to know what happened, not what the writers think of the event. In sports however, we enjoy hearing the “experts” interpretation.

Organization, Dependent on Content

When Journalist write an article for their specific news outlet, there are many different ways that they can portray there information. In the Boston Globe, most articles are written in the traditional way, with a lead followed by the rest of the inverted pyramid. But in some articles, the writers find a more effective way to illustrate their stories to the reader. In an article entitled “How to find savings on smartphones” in Sunday’s paper, the story is told through bullet points and subcategories throughout the article. This is the best way to inform the readers of the topic. The key throughout the stories in the Globe is that they let the content of the articles determine how the article is written. What ever makes the material more informative, and more intriguing to the reader should be how the article is written. In the particular case of the smartphone article, it is written as instructions, which is affective in that the article’s goal is to instruct people how to save money on smartphones.

Opinion: Is it considered news?

An interesting idea that should be examined in the world of Journalism today, is the concept of whether or not opinion columns should be considered news. Often, in national media, television news is built of opinion or news spun in a way to please a certain constituency. In print news, these biases or opinions are more often illustrated in columns. In the Boston Globe, columnists such as Joanna Weiss write how they see the world and the news as it unfolds. She wrote this week in an article about Facebook’s downfall, “If people are slowly turning away from Facebook, it’s not because the company has overreached or gone over to the dark side. It’s because we’ve come to realize that people are boring.” Is this writers opinion news, and does it belong in the news world. I think there is a place for it, but people should always read it with a grain of salt. These columns are not written through reporting or fact, but rather a reaction to real news.

In-Class Article (Based on provided information)

A violent, single-car accident occurred on Tuesday evening around 9:00pm trapping two young females for over 45 minutes and sending them both to the hospital.

The driver of the car, Jamie Peterson, a seventeen year old resident of Belmont, was driving along Mile Hill Rd when the white Ford Mustang swerved off the road, hit an embankment, and flipped onto its roof.

Josie Cradall, a resident of Mile Hill Rd, witnessed the accident from her window. 

“I’ve never scene a car going so fast on this road,” said Cradall who lives across from the Ponderosa trailer park. “It’s a dirt road, and it’s really easy to lose control.”

Peterson managed to escape the vehicle, but rescuers had to use all force necessary to save the female passengers. They were both taken to Memorial Hospital in Belmont. 

One girl has been stabilized at Memorial Hospital, but a hospital spokesperson confirms that the other has been airlifted to Mass. General Hospital in Boston to be treated for a brain injury.

Tom Carrol, seventeen-years-old, was also driving on Mile Hill Rd that evening. He told police that had been following the Mustang with his truck when the vehicle suddenly sped up to take a turn. He says that the next thing he knew, the car was belly up.

Observations from "The Globe"

Through my readings within the Boston Globe, I noticed a lot of different stylistic tools that I can use in my own writing, but the attribute that intrigued me the most is that a news story can be told many times from different angles, by different reports, all within the same issue of a paper. I chose to look at the stories surrounding the big snow storm that hit the northeast this week. The front page was covered with pictures and headlines about the impact the storm had on people, as well as what it destroyed in its path. When reading the articles, it was fascinating to me how a story could be spun many different ways to make it intriguing to the reader. Some articles concerned individual people and their struggles with the storm, some concerned the meteorology, and others were about the impact the storm had on closings and parking bans as well as power outages. All had a different portrayal of why the storm was so bad. I found that very intriguing. An event can have many stories written about it, but the key is to pick the most interesting angle to hook your readers.

Adapting to the Specific Requirements in News Writing.

Honestly, adapting to the requirements of news writing is relatively difficult. Unlike most pieces of writing one writes in their college career, news writing does not give room for fluff. Fluff being the language used to further describe, in an artistic way, what has already been stated. In news writing, there is room for fact, and sometimes not even enough room for all the facts that you have. I have found that an easy way to make the adjustment is to get as many facts as possible. The more reporting, the easier it becomes to write the article. I have found the once a lead is written, the rest of the article becomes easy to write with all the facts that I have collected. Another challenge that has come up when writing my articles has been “showing my hand” (so to speak) at the beginning of the article. In most writing, especially novel writing, you can save the outcome for the end, actually, you are supposed to do so. In news writing, you must give a synopsis of the whole story within the first few sentences. Otherwise you lose your reader, and this is a challenge.

What I noticed from the text...

One thing that I have noticed through my readings of the textbook is how there is no one formula for Journalism. There may be standard form such as the inverted pyramid and the development of a lead, but Journalism leaves room for creative presentation. One may, if they chose, tell their story in different forms if it fits the needs of the story being told. It is an intriguing idea to me that the form is based off of the necessities of the story. Yes, most stories are told in a conventional way, and that design will almost never fail. But in contrary to that, form can be changed to make a story more effective. One can use bullets, changing paragraph size, as well as rearranging the facts and the order of which the story is told. Whatever it takes to grab the readers eye and keep them reading is the correct style and formation for an article.

Little Red Riding Hood Lead

A local Huntsman saved young village dweller, Elisabeth, known as Little Red Riding Hood, as well as her Grandmother after they’d been eaten by a wolf. Elisabeth was making the 30 minute trek to her grandmothers when the attack occurred.

The attack occurred early yesterday morning when Little Red Riding Hood was trying to deliver a basket to her Grandmother who had been rather sick.