9/30 Newsreading

Today, I found quite a few interesting articles, especially on the Fosters Daily Democrat website.  I read an article about President Bill Clinton and how he is visiting UNH on Wednesday this week, which was news to me.  The article didn't inform me too much because I guess there was not very much information available, however, I did find it good to know since it was about my own school.  I also read an article about a bus and car colliding in Kittery, Maine, today, Sunday. Another article I read was from the USA today, which had to do with attacks in Iraq where 26 people were killed, and atleast 94 were wounded. After a few weeks of reading news consistently, I am beginning to realize that I like smaller and more local papers more than big ones like the NY Times or LA Times.  I think I like the smaller ones more because I find the local articles to be more interesting.

News Reading 9/28

The articles I read today were from a variety of sites, like the NY Times, LA Times, and some sports sites.  I read one article about the political races and how Obamas ratings might be going down after how he handles the Libya situation, but apparently people don't like Romney's reaction to it either, so I'm unsure of how bad it actually hurts Obama.  Regardless, I thought reading this article was interesting and helpful because I don't usually like reading political articles because they only interest me for so long, even though I know I should be paying attention to them.  Another article that particularly caught my eye was one about partying at Cornell in Ithaca, NY.  As a college student, this article caught my attention.  However, I don't really like the way it was written.  The beginning starts off with a narrative type of lead, telling a story basically at a bar, then goes into its main point about bars in the college town of Ithaca.  As I was reading the article, I realized it really doesn't have too much of a point.  I found myself reading and looking for the point of it, and I just didn't find it, so I think the article was lacking the "so what" aspect, which I find I also lack so far in a lot of the articles that I have written.  Because of my age group, I thought the article was worth reading, but overall, I didn't really like it.  I also found out tonight that the New York Times has a limit on articles you can read a month, but there are ways around it by clicking on articles that tweet on Twitter.

News Reading 9/27

Today when I did my news reading, I focused a lot on local, New Hampshire news because after scanning some World and US news headlines, nothing seemed interesting enough to really catch my eye.  I found a few local articles that seemed to qualify as "breaking news."  One of the articles was on a crash that killed a man at Hampton Beach.  I found this article interesting because it happened in my town, yet I heard nothing about it until I looked on the WMUR website and found it.  There was also an article on it in the Hampton Union, but I used all my articles I could read for the month, so I have to hold off another few days before I can read from that paper online again.  Another article I came across was about an attacker in the Mont Vernon, NH area who assaulted a woman in her home.  The article was very fresh, so it didn't have much to it, but I thought that this was terrible considering it could have been similar to what happened a few years ago in the same town where a woman was killed and her daughter was injured by high school boys who broke into a home there. After reading some articles on WMUR, I realized they are all, for the most part, very short and to the point, which is different from those articles on sites like the NY Times which are not necessarily made for broadcast news stories, but written by legitimate journalists.

Newsreading This Week...

Today while I was reading articles, I decided to read more of the "world" type articles, since I've realized that I haven't been following too much besides my own, local, news now, and I am officially out of articles to read online on my local newspaper website because I am only allowed ten a month, unfortunately.  I was reading some articles in the USA Today and came across a few things I haven't heard of, like a pipeline fire in Mexico that killed 29 people.  After reading the article, I realized that it followed the inverted pyramid very closely.  The lead answered some of the "who, what, where, when, why" questions, and as the article went on, it definitely became full of more of the useless quotes and facts.  Another article I read had to do with a helicopter crash in Damascus, Syria, which I found to be a coincidence because I remember, "where is Damascus" being a question on our first news quiz, but I had actually never heard of it before, and now since I had that quiz, I have seen it in an article.

Ideas from Around Campus on Monday/Most interesting story.

The group I was in for Mondays class was looking for sports stories around campus.  We decided to look at the Whittemore Center for what was going on in the sports world, and with campus recreation.  We found things about the football team and homecoming, the dance auditions, intramural sports starting, and more.  It surprised me that just by looking at one place, we came up with six different ideas for sports stories, and if we were to go to the Field House, or even check the UNH website for Campus Recreation, we probably could have come up with even more.  When I am looking for stories to write about each week, so far, I have tried to just think about things that I have heard by word of mouth around my town, but that definitely won't always work out since there will be some weeks when things don't come up that I could write about.  So far, this week, the most interesting story I have come across was this story on weight gain and soda among teenagers, probably because I drink a lot of soda, so naturally, I clicked on the story.  I also found it interesting that the story was under "nation" on USA Today because typically in my findings, studies like that usually just are listed under the health section because they are perhaps less important than some of the political and other world news that is currently going on.

Different Types of Leads

While reading news stories and referring back to the textbook on leads, I realized that there really are many different ways to write them.  One that I found was a story using the delayed identification lead in the New York Times.  I think these work best on stories where crime may be involved, because if the lead only says something like, "A police officer was arrested Friday night," then most people would be likely to keep reading, and want to know which one they are talking about, especially if it were a local story.  Another type of lead I found was a narrative lead in a story about Apple's new IPhone 5 and Samsung.  It would be a narrative lead because the lead is telling a mini-story about what happened last month between the two companies.  I think narrative leads may be good generally in follow up stories, because not everyone reading the follow up story may have read the story before it, so a quick narrative about what the previous problem was would be helpful to readers.  Another lead I found was a question lead which, in the textbook, are told to be avoided because they are weak, irritating stalls.  I think question leads may work in some cases, like in health articles, for instance, if one started off with, "is dark chocolate really healthy for you?" because in that case, people may want to know, and be curious, so they will keep reading the rest of the article to find out the answer, however, in the article I found, I think another lead would have been a better choice because it would be more interesting if the author had just gotten to the point instead of dragging it on.

9/14 News Reading

Today while I was reading some different newspapers online, I found myself looking at many different articles.  I realized that I focused a lot on the technology portion of the New York Times today, mainly because of the IPhone 5 release and because I happened to pre-order it, so I wanted to read more about it.  According to one of the articles I read, it was already getting more orders than planned an hour after it was put up to buy, so shipping was moved to a week longer for those ordering it after that time for the Apple site.  I also found through another article some of its features, and things that it cannot do, which was new to me.  Another article that I chose to read was an article on the anti-American protests that happened in the Middle East and beyond.  What I noticed in the article is that the lead seemed to be kind of drawn out and boring to me, however, I still ended up reading the rest to see if it would get better and more interesting.  It made me think about how maybe short, straight forward, leads are probably more appealing to readers, or at least to myself. I found myself wanting to know the who/what/when/where/why/how questions right upfront in the article.  I also read a police-report like article in the Hampton Union, my hometown paper, about firearms being involved in an incident at a house in the town on Thursday, which interested me since not too much ever happens in the town.