CoreyStruss

Bare-bones - Family's Handicapped Van Stolen - This article is short and sweet. It explains how a family's van was stolen, and how they are asking for it back in one piece. It is needed so that their 17-year-old daughter can be transported properly. It includes phone numbers to call if the van is seen, as well as the license plate number of the van. The point is clear, concise, but really uninteresting.

Man-meat - Vandals - This article is more of a feature story. It isn't just to give information to the public about the vandalism, it goes into a bit more detail than that. It talks about that last time that the bust of Jesus was vandalized, and what motivated the people who were involved. This article is unlike the bare-bones story in that it doesn't advertise "if you know anything, please call..." The point of the story is to inform, not to collect information from the public. This makes it more meaty and detailed.

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Chapter 5

"Graphic details don't always make a story more compelling - there are times when all the news isn't fit to print. Still, there are times when graphic details are necessary to tell a story."

This is a question that I have poured countless hours of pondering into. Not really, but it does make a good point. Different people are offended by different things. For instance, a few years ago, beheadings of American Soldiers were aired on CNN and other news channels. This was extremely offensive to me, but to others, it may not have been as vulgar. I guess that's what the people at CNN had to do: decide if that piece of news was important enough to air on national television, despite it's vulgarity. It's a hard decision to make, because there is such a fine line. As for the Lorena Bobbitt story that Chapter 5 used as an example, I think people may have been offended by seeing the word "penis" in the newspaper, but there was no way to get around it. She cut off his dink. No beating around the bush on that one. I guess I have to agree that it's in the editor's hands whether a story goes out, even though it may be "offensive."

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AP Guide to News Writing (Chapters 3-5)

"The more action your lead conveys, the better. Strong verbs are important."

Leads are the hook of the story. What this chapter was getting at was to make it spunky, and as catchy as possible. Readers don't want to read the same thing over and over every time they open up a newspaper. There cannot be clumsy structure, or boing words. Verbs like, "went and stayed" and the sort need to be spiced up. For instance, I was reading a news story about an upcoming video game called Mass Effect, and the controversy that it may bring. The lead was short, sweet, and layed out what I will see if I continued reading the article. It used words that added color to the story, and held my attention.

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