A View on the News

The article I chose is from newsday.com and is titled "Grammys 2007: Making nice to Dixie Chicks." The article discusses the country singing group's album "Taking the Long Way." The album is very controversial and "politically charged," as the article puts it. The Dixie Chicks won album of the year, country album of the year, song of the year, best country group vocal performance and record of the year. This came as a surprise to the singing group and others, as well, since their album was not played on a lot of country radio stations after lead singer Natalie Maines outwardly stated her opposition to the war in Iraq and President Bush.

This article is definitely written in an inverted pyramid style. It starts out with a summary lead, which wraps up the main news event:

**The Dixie Chicks cleaned up last night at the 49th annual Grammy Awards, sweeping the top three categories and taking home five awards for music from their controversial, politically charged "Taking the Long Way" album.**

The article then goes into supporting information, giving the information on the awards the singing group won and a quote from one of the group memebers about the win in general:

**I'm ready to make nice," said Maines, after the sweep was complete. "I think people are using their freedom of speech here tonight with all of these awards. I think people were using their voice the same way this loudmouth did."**

Then, of course there is a lot of backround information about the Chicks at the Grammys, giving some more quotations from before the awards and a quote from one of their acceptance speaches. The rest of the article is a whole secondary theme, giving an overview of the entire awards show Sunday night. It mentions the big winners, a few quotes from them, such as Mary J. Blige. The article ends with "Highs and Lows" of the night, which could potentially be cut off if it was to be put in an actual newspaper and space was limited. However, because this article seems to be only read online, the reporter probably added that to spice it up and give the reader a better feeling of the show, for those who didn't watch it.

This article can be found at: http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/music/ny-etgrammy125091067feb12,0,448493.story?coll=ny-music-print

The second article on this subject is from the Kansas City Star and is titled "Nice Chicks finish first." This article's first two paragraphs function as the "summary lead," explaining the most relavent news:

**Nearly four years after a flippant comment about their president nearly derailed their careers, the Dixie Chicks are feeling some salvation.
The country trio won five Grammys at the 49th annual award show Sunday night in Los Angeles, including album of the year, song of the year, record of the year and best country album. And the Chicks were feeling redeemed.**

Naturally, the article then gives details about the news event, such as a quote from the group's lead singer Natalie Maines. The article also goes into other artists' wins at the awards who seemed to have redeemed themselves, such as Ludacris. The article mentions former Vice President Al Gore showing up. The article seems to suggest that the show had a underlying political theme. The article seems to take a turn here, talking about the transition the grammy's are going through:

**Like the recording industry it represents, the Grammy Awards show is navigating an unpredictable transition: from the longtime and loyal fans who represent the industry’s lucrative past to the younger, finicky fans who are its uncertain future.**

From there, the article talks about the performances of the night and how the show was geared toward younger audience but the oldies were definitely not absent with a tribute performance for the Eagles, the "In Memoriam" segment and the commercials' appeal to the "boomer generation." These things are definitely a second theme. The reporter definitely could have written an article with these ideas as their main theme, but because the Dixie Chicks were a winner of 5 awards, that is what took priority.

This second article can be found at: http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/living/16678724.htm

In my opinion, I think both articles were informational, but took different routes. The second article focused more on the performances than the first article, which are always big highlights at the Grammys, whether they are good or bad performances. The first article goes into fashion a little bit with its "High and Lows" commentary at the end. Both articles have good and bad things about them, but they seemed to follow the inverted pyramid style pretty closely, putting the most important, news-worthy information at the beginning and the things of less importance at the end.