A View on the News

An article appeared in the Houston Chronicle, written by Irwan Firdaus of the Associated Press and titled, "Indonesia floods leave 200,000 homeless." Like the headline suggests, this article is about the massive flooding in Indonesia that has taken place over for four days now. 20 are dead and 200,000 have been forced from their homes. The article discusses the fears of the officials and citizens and what everyone is doing to help.

The article actually doesn't have many quotations in it. Many of the things that were attributed weren't direct quotations at all, but more facts on the matter. What I thought was interesting were the direct quotes that were used, such as this one:

**"We fear that diarrhea and dysentery may break out, as well as illnesses spread by rats," Dr. Rustam Pakaya, from the health ministry's crisis center. "People must be careful not to drink dirty water."**

This quote could have been paraphrased - it is just plain information. And the last part, "People must be careful not to drink dirty water"...of course people shouldn't drink dirty water! It states the obvious. But I do understand the challenge the reporter had to overcome. There wasn't much to chose from obviously because in this situation there can be only so many sources available. This quotation is a little bit better:

**"Fortunately, people here are helping each other," said Yusnizar, who goes by a single name.**

Although it is nothing spectacular, it conveys a little bit of emotion, coming from an individual who is going through this experience and is a witness to all of it. The reporter also mentioned that this individual goes by a single name, which I thought was interesting and smart of him to do, to make sure that readers know it wasn't a misake.

This article can be found at: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4524938.html

The other article I found was on Forbes.com, was written by Irwan Firdaus for the Associated Press (the same reporter for the other article I looked at!) and its healine reads, "Indonesia Floods Leaves 145,000 Homeless." Obviously, the numbers of these two articles are different. The second article was written 5 hours before the other, which is a good example of how quickly things can change in a few hours. The second article sounds a lot like the first one (with word choice and quotations both) probably because the author is the same. One quotation that was in this article and wasn't included in the other was the following:

**"Jakarta is now on the highest alert level," said Sihar Simanjuntak, an official monitoring water levels at key rivers across the city.**

I'm not sure why this wasn't included in the other article. It is not extremely exciting but it definitely reinforces the urgency of the floods. The second article also includes this paragraph:

**Government agencies are struggling to provide aid to the homeless, many of whom are staying with friends or family on higher ground, or at mosques and government agencies. Some are holding out on the second floors of their homes, refusing to be relocated by soldiers in rubber dinghies, officials said.**

The first article only has the last sentence. The reason why the first article didn't include some of these quotes or attributed information was because of a legnth constraint on the article. Maybe the reporter had to weed out some of the details to make his first article shorter.

This second article can be found at: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/02/04/ap3392562.html

Both articles are well written and give a lot of information within them. They give the important information right away and credit any sources and quotations. However, I felt that the second article is more interesting to read because of those details that I mentioned. It "hits home" when the reporter talks about the people that are living through this horrible time and how they are surviving. That is what is going to spark human interest - thinking about those who are living through it as they read this article.