Giving Addresses, Protecting Names
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.
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Katie Vann on Giving Addresses, Protecting Names : First of all, I didn't even no
First of all, I didn't even notice that second "the" in the first article, and I must have read it half a dozen times before I blogged. Also, I think your observation of the addresses was great. I don't see any reason why their address had to be included. Just knowing the area where the story happened was enough, we didn't need to know the exact apartment of where this was taking place.
Good catch with the error in the first article. And with the addresses...What *was* the point. I'm surprised that even made it to the paper, one because it seems like an invasion of privacy (though not as much for this reason as the next), and two because it was completely unnecessary. I can't think of a reason why this would be included. Like Katie said, the general area seems to be enough, doesn't it?