September 2009 Archives
The first front page I looked at, The Border Mail, an Australian newspaper, makes great use of a big picture to get the reader’s attention. The picture takes up more than half of the page. Also, instead of keeping the masthead separate from the picture, they superimposed it right into the top of the picture. I can see pros and cons to this decision. I think it makes the title of the paper stick out less how it is; however, this does allow them to maximize the space for the picture. The caption for the picture is also superimposed onto the picture. It is mostly white, but they decide to add a splash of yellow to make the white both a little less boring and also a bit more eye-catching than plain white. Right bellow this huge picture is a banner headline all in black. The thing about it that jars slightly is its disparity with the picture above it. The headline proclaims, “OFF THE ROAD.” The font size is very large and all in capital letters. While it is impossible to make everything on the front page of the paper coordinate, the massive celebration above this article on new laws against drunk driving contrasts a bit too much in my opinion.
The second front page I examined was the Chicago Tribune’s. This front page is a good bit busier than The Border Mail’s. The masthead is separated from the articles, so it is easier to decipher it from the headlines. The largest picture, which dominates the page above the fold, is of the Bears and Seahawks’ game. The picture corresponds to an article immediately below it unlike the giant picture on The Border Mail. This picture is also given a very large headline; in fact, the headline takes up more room than the small amount of text on the game. They do provide a convenient headline right above the picture though with the teams’ names and their scores for quick reference. What was surprising to me was the fact that in the bottom right corner was a very large advertisement Sealy mattresses. One would think that advertisements could be shuffled off to an inside page, while the front page remains reserved for only news articles and pictures which relate to them. The weather report on this front page is also less ostentatious than in The Border Mail. In the Chicago Tribune, it is not in color and is very, very small and is located in the very bottom left hand corner. The Border Mail’s stretches across a little more than half of the bottom of the front page and is printed in alternating colors of yellow, blue, white, black, and gray, making it easier to spot.
Wendy’s blog made me consider why vulgarity is inacceptable in news writing, while it is accepted in some other things. I think that there is a clear distinction between what newspapers print and theaters, music, and films. Theaters, music, and film are creative works which are not serving to report factual information. At times there may be fact in these things, but that is not their primary function. It is the artists creative license to include vulgarity if they so wish. Vulgarity could in fact serve a specific purpose in some cases. For example, maybe a character in a play swears all the time to show the audience something about that character’s personality. Furthermore, it is one’s choice whether they watch a play, listen to a song, or see a movie. If they are offended by the language, they can always leave or turn it off. Some of these (such as movies) have rating systems as well which help people to decide whether there could be language in it that they might find objectionable. Newspapers do not have a little code at the top of each article that says, “Warning, this article includes strong language, sensuality, and violence.”
Newspapers are read by a plethora of different people and therefore, journalists need to err on the side of caution. In addition, while in theater (or one of the other things listed above), the vulgarity may serve a specific purpose to help the audience perceive something about somebody; news writing is not really meant to do this. It is meant to state the facts in a simple, inoffensive way. Including a vulgarity that someone said in a quote will add very little to the facts of the article.
From Chapter 8 of The Associated Press Guide to News Writing:
“The ellipsis (…) indicates omitted matter. The trouble is that it calls attention to what is not there rather that to what is” (70).
I try to salvage or bend quotes to my will with ellipsis all the time. It allows me to use the parts of the quote that I want and to omit the rest. I never really considered that there was any danger in this. However, the point that Cappon highlights is very significant. When one inserts those three little dots, it sends a message to the reader than something is missing. The reader will undoubtedly wonder what it is that has been left out. In a sense, the ellipsis kind of undermines your credibility. After all what is missing and why did you remove it? The lesson is not that we can’t use them, just that we need to be aware of what readers may think about the absent text.
Read more on Cappon.
From Chapter 6 of The Associated Press Guide to News Writing:
“Again and again Mr. Micawber, soaring, abruptly pulls himself back to earth. That’s the side of him news writers should emulate” (50).
I really like this quote; first, because I am a literature major and therefore any sort of relations between journalism and literature always make me happy. Putting the foreign ideas of news writing in terms of the more relatable literature always works well for me. However, not only did this quote explicitly refer to Charles Dickens, it also reinforced something I learned in Linguistics. This past week we discussed the idea of “dead-level abstracting.” One is dead-level abstracting when one becomes stuck either in only using very general terms which are pretty much indefinable (for example, “justice” or “freedom”) or one gets stuck doing the opposite and can only see things in very specific terms. The secret to good writing and speech as our textbook (Language in Thought and Action by H.I. Hayakawa) explains it, results from an interplay of higher and lower levels of abstraction and the interplay of verbal levels with nonverbal (objects) levels. In other words, we should try to vary our language (while still making it understandable) and focus on showing with our words and by giving specific examples.
Jeanine’s blog on “Spot News” really helped me to understand the idea better. She explained it essentially as an article made up first of the little picture, then a tie-in, which brings the reader to the big picture. This helped me imagine a video camera focused in on one-specific person, and then it zooms out a little to the town where they live, then to their country, and last to the world. This is significant for two reasons. First, it cleverly creates a wider group of people who would be interested in the article. The local readers will be interested in the article because of its proximity to their homes, while at the same time, less local people will still be interested since it focuses on a larger subject than a city-specific issue. The second thing is that it gives a bigger view of the world to the readers. It helps them to feel a bigger sense of community, not just with those who live next door to them, but others who live farther away. In a sense, it reminds the readers of their humanity and relationship to each other and the world. It helps both the journalist and the readers keep things in perspective.
I was a bit surprised by these articles. I guess what I was picturing “on-the-spot” article to be is a bit different than what they are in reality. I was imagining the article to focus on the event and what happened there. Neither of these articles do that. In fact, it is not even really clear what prompted these news writers to report on these places. I mean, in the first article, the subject is the lay-off of workers from Golden Gate Park and in the second it is the efforts of race car drivers to cut down on pollution. However, these are much broader topics than just referring to one specific event. The reporter does not say, “this one time, I went to Golden Gate Park…” In fact, it’s not even really clear when or where they got their quotes or did their interviews.
As for the structure of the articles themselves, something very notable to me in both cases was that the article at the end looped full-circle. The articles basically consist of three parts:
1. They began in a positive way
- In the first article, a worker is caring for trees in an idyllic setting.
- In the second, the racer comes up with a way to pollute less while racing.
2. They move to some sort of challenge of problem
- In the first article, the monetary problems of keeping the park running threaten the beauty and well-being of the park.
- In the second, there is the problem that not all racers try to be more environmentally conscious.
3. And finally, they end on a more positive note.
- In the first article, the laid-off employees have such strong “community values” that they volunteer their time to keep the park going.
- In the second, there is the hope that other racers will follow Steve Zadig’s environmentally friendly policies.
This again makes these stories seem like story-telling in a sense. We have the beginning of the story, where everything is happy. Then some problem occurs, and finally there is some resolution.
After reading Derek’s blog and considering his question of
whether the court article was actually news or just facts strung together, I
went back and looked at it again more closely.
I noticed something which I thought was strange the first time through,
not on closer inspection, it bothered me even more. Yes, as I observed in my blog, I didn’t think
it was necessary for all the accused’s addresses to be included in the article,
but I’m not sure it was necessary to include every single thing they’ve been
charged with either.
For all three of them towards the end of the article, a long list was given of everything they were charge with. For example, “Jonathan Pollard was charged with rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, sexual assault, unlawful restraint, false imprisonment, interference with the custody of children, aggravated assault, simple assault, corruption of minors, terroristic threats, recklessly endangering another person and criminal conspiracy.” I can’t help but wondering whether this is really necessary either. I mean, the reporter doesn’t go into any more detail about this charges. Furthermore, if some sort of “plea agreement” has been reached, most likely the defendants will not even be convicted of all of these. Nor do I think the average reader would enjoy sitting there and reading a huge list of charges. It seems like the list could have been condensed into something like, “Jonathan Pollard was charged with 12 offenses,” or something else along those lines. It almost seems like these were just tacked on at the end to take up space.
Richelle’s blog made me consider several things. First, it made me think about the victim’s voice. In most instances that I can think of, the victim is quoted. Unless the victim is a minor or the victim wishes to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of the situation, they generally are given their chance to speak. Quoting the victim is certainly a good way to add a humanistic spin to the story. It makes it all seem more real, more possible, like it could happen to us. So in this sense, it makes the victim’s point of view essential to one’s story. Yet, on the other hand, some of the responses left by Derek and April pointed out a very important detail. Sometimes the victims will want to be left unknown and this got me thinking, even when they are known, there is a certain degree of care which reporters must proceed when dealing with victims. Whatever happened to them could be very upsetting, not only must one keep this in mind when interviewing them, but one should keep this in mind when choosing quotes. Perhaps something they said would be a wonderful addition to your article; however, what are the implications to including it? Is it going to cause a lot of pain and suffering to them that otherwise would not have happened? There are a lot of ethical implications involved in this type of reporting.
On the other side, I think it would be irresponsible of a reporter to only consider the victim. There are two sides to every story. The “accused” is innocent until proven guilty. No one knows for sure whether they did what they are accused of or not. Even if they did it, maybe there are extenuating circumstances. Maybe they didn’t realize the gun was loaded, maybe they were protecting themselves. As in any other news story, it is a reporter’s job to present all sides of the story—this includes victims, the accused, and police.
From Chapter 35 of The News Manual:
“You have a role to play, in providing information to counteract rumour.”
As this chapter points out there is a very distinct difference between reporting in a big city and in a small town. I come from a small town, just counting the borough itself (and not the township, which includes many smaller places), there are about 6,000 people who live there. Needless to say, this means that when anything happens almost everyone knows the people who are involved. Furthermore, this means there are lots of rumors about the situation and people involved that circulate. It’s hard to know what is true after a story has been repeated about 10 times. How much is exaggerated, how much has changed through the retelling. It’s almost like an out-of-control version of the game “telephone.” Therefore, I really like how in this chapter it is stressed that part of a journalist’s role is to “counteract rumor.” It is important for a news writer to realize this, because it heightens the importance of providing an accurate portrayal of the story. One cannot just rely on interviewing one or two people (who knows what biases they might have), nor can the reporter let personal bias influence them at all. It is their role, obligation, and job to report things accurately.
The breaking news story was obviously much shorter and had
less information than the second. One of
the main purposes seemed to be to seek potential leads on the “would-be-robber.” The article both reports what happened and
asks that if anyone knows anything about what happened that they tell the
police. It was also apparent that the
author did not have as much time to write or proofread the article, notice the
double “the” in the following sentence: “State police said the
man sprayed Mr. O'Neil with pepper spray and attempted to grab the the deposit
bags.” This isn’t that grievous of an
error and the rest of the article is well written, but it’s just little things
like this that make the time-limits evident.
The court story was much longer, had a lot more detail, and included quotes. One thing I noticed that I found rather strange was that the reporter included the addresses of all of the accused. I personally as a reporter don’t think I would do that. Maybe, this is just common practice for news articles, but it doesn’t seem very nice to do that to anyone involved. Another very notable sentence was, “The Tribune-Review does not name alleged victims of sexual assault.” First, they set this sentence apart all by itself in its own paragraph which really made it jump out. Secondly, the girl that was kidnapped was 17, meaning that as a minor her name couldn’t have been published anyway. I don’t know why they just didn’t say that. It’s almost like the reporter is trying to brag about how considerate and respectful the paper is.
I’m not going to deny, I wasn’t particularly looking forward
to this class…I might have even had a bit of a chip on my shoulder about
it. I recognized the importance of
taking the class. As an education major,
I realized that I may one day be called upon to run a school paper and I need
to know something about news writing.
However, when I thought about news writing, I saw it only as dry, boring,
and devoid of creativity. I saw it only
as an attempt at compiling facts (which I knew from EL312 last semester don’t
actually even exist, since facts are really just manifestations of value-judgments)
and being objective (which is also impossible, since there is no such thing as
a word which does not influence a reader’s thoughts in some way).
As the semester began, my bad attitude (I may be exaggerating my feelings slightly here, I don’t think my attitude would actually have qualified as bad) remained. The readings only seemed to confirm my fears, articles used words such words as “noxious” and “fierce” and I felt my frustration growing. How could a “good” article use such subjective words? But as time went on and I read some of my more open-minded peers’ blogs, things began to click into place for me. First, I realized that within news writing, there are different types of writing. What is acceptable in a profile, obituary, and accident report are all very different things. Second, I began to realize that creativity, as in any other form of writing, is essential to news writing. It might be a different type of creativity, but writing in a way which will keep readers interested and incorporating many quotes from different people takes skill and creativity. Lastly, I began making connections between news writing and other fields which I like. With Katie’s help, I realized that story pitches are not so very far from my beloved thesis statements and with Michelle’s help I realized that teaching in a sense is a form of reporting.
Coverage: I completed all of my blogs; bellow are the entries which did not fall under any other category.
Depth: These are the blogs in which I really felt I went above and beyond. I put extra effort and thought into these entries.
- My blog, Seeing is Believing, Or Should It Be?, was written early in the class; however, I think it shows my development as I begin to consider journalism in a more critical fashion. I recognize the skepticism we should regard the news media with, link to Katie’s blog which got me thinking, and note the balance that the news media must find between sensationalism and allowing their audience to sleep soundly at night.
- In Capturing the Soul in an Obituary, I highlight the qualities which Nicholson’s obituary had which I felt made it tower above most other obituaries I have read. I also relate some of my past experiences with creating an obituary index at my local library and some of the changes in obituaries over time.
- One of the blogs which is representative of my changing view of news writing is Revelation: “The craft, the art, of storytelling” within News Writing. In it, my increasingly positive attitude towards journalism is evident as I begin to see that it doesn’t have to be all boring, dull fact without any life or zest.
- In Infusing Voice into News Writing—Remaining Objective without being Withdrawn, my budding understanding of voice in the news appears. After much struggle with whether voice is allowed at all in news writing or not, I realize that readers actually want the author to have a voice, they just don’t want that voice to skew the facts.
- Making connections between both Linguistics and News writing, The Struggle to Structure Short Sentences, includes my struggles to be concise and keep things short, but also my realization of the importance of doing so.
Interaction: These are blogs in which I participated in meaningful discussions on my peers’ blogs.
- On Angela’s Clark and Scanlon conTribute to our learning, we have a bit of a back and forth discussion on the ineffectiveness and misleading nature of a newspaper headline.
- After a full eight other comments on Angela’s Good Quotes Can Win Awards, I step into the action by giving my opinion that Stockton not only interviewed those biased in Silbert’s favor, but other impartial people as well.
- After reading Angela’s Children’s Author Tortured by Own Genius, I politely disagree about the skill of Gorney’s writing since she uses so many subjective words.
- On Aja’s The (Non) News of Michael Jackson, she politely disagrees with part of my comment and agrees with part of it.
- I politely disagree with something Aja says on her blog, Duck Profile?, and we both clarify our views.
- On Derek’s When writing, SHOW don’t just TELL, we have a discussion about the importance of showing, instead of telling in order to avoid opinion slipping into our writing.
Discussion: These are discussions which were inspired by my blog entries.
- In Picture of a Smiling Man=Homicide?, I consider the different orders of sections in different newspapers, Katie and Derek respond with a well-thought out answer.
- My blog, Capturing the Soul in an Obituary, sparks interest because of my personal experience and my comments on Nicholson’s obituary.
- In Revelation: “The craft, the art, of storytelling” within News Writing, my new view of news writing as a form of “storytelling” sparks discussion.
- My agreement with Shafer on A Replenishing “Oasis”—Bus Plunges makes my other students consider the role of having short articles interspersed throughout the paper on its readers.
- On A Necessary Characteristic for Journalists: Self-Confidence, Josie and Angela leave me comments and I answer in a long and thorough comment, Josie responds again after my comment.
Timeliness: All of my blogs were turned in at least 24 hours ahead of time (as soon as the RRR sequence was introduced). Bellow are just a few examples.
Xenoblogging:
The Comment Primo:
- Jessie’s Broadcasting didn’t kill Newspapers
The Comment Grande:
- Aja’s Hello Lead
- April’s Talking the talk
The Link Gracious:
- Aja’s Something New!
Wildcard: For my wildcard, I chose two reflections I wrote. I think that both show my progress towards understanding news writing better. In the first blog, I relate news writing to teaching a classroom and in the second, I begin to have a more open-mind about the stylistic rules involved in journalism.
Reflections: These are blog entries I wrote before class. They are based on my classmates’ blog entries. I expand on what I have learned from their blogs and what I now understand better thanks to them. The two I used as my wildcard are not included in this list.
Previous Portfolios:
- EL150: Do You Believe in Magic?
- EL312: Discovering Preferences
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I think that Michelle had some really good advice on Cappon’s chapter 4. She wrote in her blog, “Remember newspapers are approximately written on an 8th grade reading level. People aren't reading the news for scholastic advancement.” This whole idea of imaging that you are writing for an 8th grader, I think will really help me keep my news articles more succinct and readable. As a future educator, I have a better idea of what an 8th grader would understand than the general populace, so simply keeping in mind an audience of 8th graders will help me keep things in perspective. As Cappon stresses, part of this is by keeping things short, not making the sentences overly long or complex, and getting rid of confusing jargon. All of these things are necessary when one is teaching a class. Furthermore, when one is teaching, one should not let one’s personal beliefs or bias control the class, so in a way there are many similarities between teaching and news writing. So, if I pretend that I am teaching a class of 8th graders about whatever my news article is about, it will set me in the right direction.
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Aja’s blog on overstuffing her leads made me consider my own tendency to do the same. I try to cram as much information into my leads as possible. I’m afraid I won’t put enough detail into my lead, and I have a hard time deciding which information is most important. So instead of forcing myself to prioritize the information I just try to stuff it all in the lead. However, as Aja pointed out, this can cause some serious problems. It makes the lead long and the sentence can become confusing, increasing the probability that the reader will misunderstand what you write. I think another valuable thing to consider is that if we really and truly stuff all the important information into our lead, why even bother writing the rest of the article? Sure, we want to use the inverted pyramid, but that doesn’t mean we need to include every single detail in the first sentence.
From “Newsroom Politics: Pitching a Story”: “Prepare your pitch with a little reporting. Talk to some people. Search the newspaper's library. Is this really a new idea? You don't want to be pitching a story that was written six months ago.”
I think this is really good advice that could be easily overlooked, which one may have very little time to come up with a story idea. One has no way of knowing if there is enough information or in interest in a pitch if they don’t do some initial research.
Furthermore, the checking to see if it’s a “new idea” seems pretty important to me. It reminds me of that story we read in the Tribune Review about texting—that was old news. So many reporters have reported on that on TV news and print news. Sure, it was a slow news day and they wanted to fill space, but still as most of us in the class observed, there was nothing “new” about this “news” article.
There were several things which Matt observed in his blog that intrigued me. Matt explained that he chose which articles he read based on the pictures that corresponded to the articles. After his mention of the graphics which went along with his articles, it made me remember that one of my articles (the one which Matt also chose about James Nielson) also attracted me because of its picture. I didn’t even realize this really, until Matt did. The article included a picture of Nielson, which in addition to all the quotes, helped to make Nielson seem even more real to the reader.
Another interesting fact that Matt pointed out was that his other article actually had a list of the names of the injured. At first, I thought this was a good idea. I mean, if you list all the people’s names, you are making it more personal. They’re not just a number, they are given names and respected as individuals. Yet, the more I thought about it, the more I came to agree with Matt. Why list all this names, no one will probably read them (unless they are concerned their loved one was in the accident)? And since the article has no quotes, the reader doesn’t really feel any connection to these names anyway. Quotes would be a much more effective way of drawing the reader in, than a bunch of names.
Josie’s blog on “bus plunges” helped me to see a new side to the “bus plunge” issue. I never really considered how callous making a joke of such a tragic event could seem. However, as Josie also observed, it’s not really all the disrespectful. (Most) journalists handle the articles in a very professional manner. Some even take it a step above and beyond—they get quotes and put emotion into the story. And those empty spaces in the paper need filled with something, so they do their best.
In some ways considering how journalists attempt to cope with the depressing material they are constantly forced to deal with makes me realize how hard their job is. How would you like to be in charge of writing obituaries all the time? Or how about covering murders and robberies every day? Does one become desensitized to all the destruction? I think it might be difficult for a reporter to keep in perspective how (in)frequent these events are since they are assaulted with them day in and day out.
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“But the longer the sentence, the less readable it’s likely to be, and the more exposed to mishaps or syntax. The remedy is simple: Chop up long sentences into their functional components and aim for an average sentence length of 16 to 17 words” (Cappon 37).
I like Cappon’s writing style and format. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, he practices what he preaches. He keeps his chapters succinct and gets right to his point. He also does not just “tell,” he “shows” the principles he is talking about by giving real examples from real news articles. He explains what is wrong with them and then improves them.
I have a tendency to write long sentences…and long paragraphs…and long papers…and yes, even sometimes long blogs. It is difficult for me to sort through all the details and information and decide what should be left out. What is most important? After all, what I think is most interesting may not be what is most interesting to everyone else. But deciding what should get cut and stay in the article is not the only place where things need to be simplified. As Cappon explains, every single part of the article needs simplified (including the very word choices).
The focus of chapter 4 is on simplifying sentences. While it is good to have sentences of various lengths and some can be longer than 17 words in order to switch things up and keep the article interesting to the reader, Cappon says the average length of a sentence should be 16 to 17 words (which means I’m in trouble because there were about 45 words in this sentence…). However, it really does make sense to keep the sentences shorter. The longer a sentence the easier it is for the reader to get lost. It reminds me of something that I read in my Linguistics textbook. It explained that sentences can be as long as one likes, they are only limited by our ability to understand what we’re saying ourselves and the person we are talking to understanding what we are saying. Well, the longer the sentence the easier for everyone involved to get confused and for the writer to make a syntactical error. So, the easiest thing to do for everyone involved is to keep the sentences short and simple, as difficult as that may sometimes be. A complicated and long sentence does not prove one’s intelligence; it just leads to possible confusion for readers.
Read more on Cappon chapter 4.
“Reporters indulge in tennis-ball writing and legal jargon because they don’t quite trust themselves to tell in a straightforward way what’s going on. By sticking to the legal terms, they play it safe” (Cappon 34).
A common quality seems to be popping up again and again that is necessary for journalists: self-confidence. Qualifiers aren’t allowed, because it makes the story seem less credible. Journalists must weave enough of their own voice into their articles as well as quotes. They must use strong verbs. They must be assertive and out-going enough to interview and talk to people they have never met before. And now, they need to be confident enough to explain complicated jargons in everyday, easy to understand language.
It makes sense that a reporter needs to be self-confident, after all, they are supposed to be the authority. Yet, at the same time, I can also understand why a reporter would hide behind jargon. Chances are reporters are not experts in the law field. Unless they’ve been reporting court cases for years, they probably don’t know much more about it than the average person.
However, as Cappon points out, it is important for them to simplify it. If they don’t write it in an understandable manner, no one will read it, so why even bother writing it at all? Maybe in this case, the best policy would be to get quotes about the case. Instead of relying on one’s own limited knowledge, the reporter could call a lawyer and ask them to explain what the jargon really means. Regardless, reporters need to be sure about what they write, because if they’re not, it’s going to be very obvious to everyone that reads their article that they’re not sure what they’re talking about.
As for articles that have leads that begin with "when," I would say that almost none of them do. Usually the "when" is included within the lead, but it almost never starts it.
Read more on Cappon’s Chapter 3.
The first “bus plunge” article I read (23 killed as bus plunges into gorge in northern India) follows the more typical pattern of such stories. We get the requisite number of deaths, number of injured, how far the “plunge” was, and how far it is from the capital city (just as Shafer said they usually include). Now, if this was a typical “short” from the 50s and 60s when the “bus plunge” stories were truly necessary, the article probably would have stopped after these first two paragraphs. However, it continues to give the reader some quotes from a policeman and some facts. We learn the additional information that the bus “plunged” because the driver could not “negotiate a bend” and that India has more fatal car accidents than even China (which is more populous). Of course, this information could be cut off if necessary, true to inverted pyramid style. However, I would say that this “plunge” story has advanced a bit from the shorts that Shafer referred too. This article was probably meant not to simply fill a small space left open because of typesetting, but to fill a larger space in the event of a slow news day. Or, since the source is South Asia News, this could just be a real article which is relevant to its intended audience, since the people would be in closer proximity to the accident.
My second “bus plunge” article ("Brisbane man James Nielson dies as bus plunges over cliff”) is a bit of an exception to the typical “bus plunge” story. First off, it is relatively long for such a story, about 370 words long. Second, it lists the name of a specific person who died and focuses on him, instead of leaving all of the deceased in anonymity. Thirdly, it uses quotes from the deceased’s mother to invoke emotion within the readers. It also talks of his long-time girlfriend’s memorial to him (by traveling the same road he died on). I think it’s safe to say this is an atypical “bus plunge” story (undoubtedly because the man who died was from Australia. Shafer addresses this by quoting Mort Rosenblum, “‘A hundred Pakistanis going off a mountain in a bus make less of a story than three Englishmen drowning in the Thames.’ By and large, if an American plunged on a bus, the news was always more likely to run as a free-standing story in a U.S. newspaper than as filler.”) In other words, this story about Nielson is not even really filler at all. My point is that just because something is a “bus plunge” story, does not make it filler.
Read more “bus plunge” article comparisons.