Roberts Blog

"Man is Sought in New York Psychologist's Stabbing" is an update to a stabbing First Reported early Wednesday morning.
The reporter, Al Baker, summarizes the crime and adds new information available. Baker summarizes the event in the lede, then adds an update before explaining what is known about the crime. The following is an outline of how the story is structured:

¶ 1 Lede: What happened, when, where
¶ 2 Update: What police know and are doing
¶ 3 Why suspect was at crime scene
¶ 4 What happened when he arrived at crime scene
¶ 5 Description of the crime
¶ 6 Description of the crime scene
¶ 7 Additional description by a witness
¶ 8 What police know about the suspect
¶ 9 How police are investigating it
¶ 10 Quote from Police
¶ 11 Physical description of suspect
¶ 12 Information about how the suspect got to and from the crime scene
¶ 13 Details about the exit from the crime scene
¶ 14 Details about evidence
¶ 15 Details about an eyewitness

This ordering is effective, because if you are familiar with the story, you know what's new by the 2nd graf. If you don't' know what happened, you get filled in in 5-7 before getting the other details. The information at the end is not as important, but gives you a good picture of how the crime happened.

Posted by Christopher Roberts at 11:33 PM | Permalink

A story about charges filed in the death of a four-year-old boy in the Star Tribune uses the following sources:
Police Lt. Amelia Huffman
An unnamed witness
The suspect, Tony Reed
The boy's paternal grandmother, Charmon Brown
A neighbor, Rehalle Barksdale
The suspect's uncle, Kenneth Poole

All but one of seven sources are named.The sources are clustered throughout the story. Since the police did not provide very much data the reporter relied on her own contacts to build the story. The information is mostly from people. The story focuses on the impact this event has on the family and the community. The reporter attributes using "he said" and effectively sets up attribution so the reader knows who is speaking. The method is effective.

Posted by Christopher Roberts at 11:23 PM | Permalink

In the New York Times, Jeffrey Gettleman leads a story about the death of a Kenyan opposition leader as follows:

"Melitus Mugabe Were, a freshman parliamentarian, could have been one of the keys to unlocking Kenya’s crisis, but he never got the chance.
On Tuesday morning, as he pulled up to the gate of his home, Mr. Were was dragged out of his car and shot to death."

This is a hard-news story with a hard-news lede, though at first it seems to “back in� to the story. The main element of the story, Were's death, is buried in the lede. Oftentimes in an inverse pyramid lede, the death would be one of the first things mentioned. However, the decision to lead with a statement about his potential tells the reader that this was the death of an important person. Essentially, Gettleman leads with an answer to the “so what� question. Hundreds of people are dying in Kenya so a lede about an individual’s death (the “what� question) would usually not merit its own hard-news story in the New York Times. Right away, Gettleman tells readers why they should care and why this death is relevant to the greater situation in Kenya. Consider the lede with these news elements reversed:

On Tuesday morning, Melitus Mugabe Were, a freshman parliamentarian, was dragged out of his car and shot to death…

By emphasizing the death itself, the loss of a “key to unlocking Kenya’s crisis� would be the secondary focus. The reporter likely chose to order the lede the way he did to emphasize the impact of a key figure’s death and to set up an article that will look at his death in the context of the situation in Kenya. Therefore he is not “backing in� but rather emphasizing a news element judged greater than the death.

Posted by Christopher Roberts at 10:04 PM | Permalink