By Octavio Abea
A story from PBS that talks about whether border patrol agents have been using excessive force curb illegal immigration is a good example of computer assisted reporting.
The journalist searched for the records regarding the amount of deaths by border patrol agents as well as video taken by on-lookers showing an individual getting beaten. Skills that a journalist would need to do a story like this is searching government records and interpreting them.
By Octavio Abea
The story I'm using for the numbers analysis is from The Wall Street Journal. It's a story on how businesses are becoming more optimistic in the UK.
This story uses numbers in a few different ways. First it lets the reader know how many companies were a part of the survey, then it gives some percentages on how certain questions were answered. The story also gives some background information by using some GDP percentages.
The numbers are straight forward and easy to understand. The surveys are cited and easily Identifiable. I'm not sure if there has been any number crunching since some surveys come with an analysis and break down the numbers into more understandable figures, which the article might have used.
By Octavio Abea
The Obituary I'll be looking at comes from the New York Times. It's about John Cowles Jr., a Minneapolis newspaper executive.
The Obituary follows the standard style, which is the name, something prominent, where and when he died, and how old he was. Then the article goes directly into the cause of death in the paragraph. The bulk of the article is the chronological story telling of his life and finally ends with who he was survived by.
The way this article differs from other obituaries is that the only quote in the whole article is Cowles' own words from an old interview. The only source used was Cowles' son, but the rest does not have any attribution so maybe his accomplishments could easily be found in public record.
The Obituary differs from a resume because it's not just listing his accomplishments. Instead it's using his accomplishments to draw an image of his personality and how he affected the people around him.
By Octavio Abea
Im going to look at the multimedia options for the Los Angeles Times and The New Yorker.
In the Los Angeles Times I clicked on something called "the week in pictures." It is just a series of interesting photos with clear concise captions. The captions only describe what is in the pictures and in some cases gives a really brief explanation for why it's happening (for things like protests).
The New Yorker focuses its multimedia on audio. Right now there is an audio only piece that talks about the overall political climate of Russia. There is also an audio slideshow that focuses on the story instead of what you might be seeing at that moment. So the pictures are more of a compliment to the audio.
By Octavio Abea
The story I chose for this analysis is a local one. It's about a boy that died while hopping on and off moving trains with friends. The Star Tribune wrote about this incident on Friday. This version of the article is only four paragraphs long and does not say anything about jumping on and off of trains because the information was not available yet. The only thing the Star Tribune could write about was that a 15-year-old boy named Christopher Hanson was found dead with head injuries near a railroad track. The rest of the article talks about how Hanson's body was not found near a railroad crossing and that no incidents were reported by the train crew. At this point nothing is known about how he sustained the injuries.
The second story written Sunday is packed with an overwhelming amount of new information reaching over 20 paragraphs. The earlier lead is a typical hard-news lead while this one focuses on the mother that tried to warn her son about train hopping the day before his death. They name the mother in the lead as well. The article has a lot of quotes from the mother and also builds an entire chronological story of how the incident occured. There's background information from the police about other accidents that have happened because of kids playing ear the tracks.
The old information was built upon and questions were answered. The information in the old lead was brought down so that the new story could be more chronological.
By Octavio Abea
The story I'll be talking about by Fox News deals with the aftermath of the Powell story. He killed himself in a house explosion along with his two sons.
The follow up talks about a tip received by the police that said Powell dumped some papers at a recycling center. This follows typical progression of the information by placing the hard news at the top of the story. The rest of the story, which is also the majority, consists of getting the reader up to speed. It contains almost identical paragraphs of previous stories regarding this incident.
The second half of the story is much more interesting, but in this case the newest information takes precedent. If it was done any other way there would be no point because the later information has already been told. The recycling center follow up would get lost in the massive amount of older information if it was not at the top.
By Octavio Abea
I will be looking at a different version of the Powell story. This is one is by CNN International.
This breaking story is constantly receiving updates. Many different sides of the story revolving around the Powell's past are being told. We see attribution even before we get to the article from the words in the link that say "Sheriff's official: Missing woman's husband, 2 sons killed in explosion."
The whole story is primarily made up of attributions from a social worker involved, a sheriff office's spokesperson, a fire chief, and a police sgt.
Although the number of attributions is small compared to how long the story is, there are a lot of direct quotes coming from these four.
I think they did a very good job at making a cohesive story out of the attributions by first describing the actual incident in detail and then giving a good amount of context. Especially considering they had to sift through all of the scattered information.
By Octavio Abea
I will be taking a look at the lead in this Wall Street Journal article about a case regarding an honor killing in Canada.
A Canadian court found two Afghan immigrant parents and their eldest son guilty of murdering four female family members in a so-called honor killing Sunday, the climax of a case that's transfixed Canada and sparked a wider debate about clashing cultures amid the country's large immigrant population
This lead is packed very tightly with a lot of information. Not only does it talk about the hard news, which is that they were found guilty, but it also gives context as to why the case is important. Usually it would make more sense to give that kind of information in a later paragraph, but the significance of the case may have given the journalsim some more freedom. It seems like it could have been done either way and that this style was just a matter of preference.
There are also typical style choices that many leads use. No names were used, the hard news is easily found in the beginning, and it lets the reader know what day this happened without getting too specific.
