Recently in Analysis Category

USA Today did a report on how lead factories that have been gone for years have left a dangerous poison in cities nationwide.

In order to do the story, the reporter had to go into public records to determine when the EPA and government had tested the soil from the old factory and found out that it was contaminated. However, the government failed to tell citizens about the danger.

USA Today did a 14-month investigation that found the EPA had put thousands of families and children in harm's way.

The investigative report showed widespread evidence of government failures when it came to lead factories.

USA Today looked at old insurance maps, city directories, and telephone books to discover that certain smelters did exist even though governments in Minnesota, Indiana and Washington denied they ever did.

This is just a small example of the large record digging and analysis that the USA Today reporter did.

The report also need some computer skills because there are a couple of graphics next to the story that shows how lead can pollute soil, and a graphic about lead in soil.

The reporter needed to know how to make that graphic on a computer in order to better tell his story.

The graphic on how lead gets into the soil is a step by step process where the reporter uses pictures to help demonstrate how it happens.

Without knowing how to create such a visual graphic, the reporter probably would have had a hard time describing how it happens, and it would also take up a large amount of space and confuse the reader.

The graphic helps a lot by visually showing how the process works.

The reporter did a lot of work for this story that included a lot of digging through old documents, and determining what those documents mean for the safety of citizens near old lead factories.

The Boston Herald did a story on students who are marching to Sanford Fla. to make sure Trayvon Martin stays in the spotlight of the nation.

I had my friend Tyler, who is an African-American, read the article and tell me if he found it to be stereotypical of what he has seen. Tyler is a sophomore at Minnesota State Moorehead University.

Tyler did not find the way this story was reported to be stereotypical at all. He said he found it to be very neutral.

The reason he found it to be neutral was because the writer never says that these are black students doing the marching, just students.

The case with Trayvon Martin has been predominately stressed by African-Americans. I do not know if the reporter just assumed people would think they were black students, or if he didn't want to single it out as a "black" issue.

Tyler found that the way the reporter wrote the story made it seem that students from all races were coming together to see that racial profiling is put to an end.

We both found the quotes to be racially neutral as well. Any number of races could have said them. It is not as if the quotes are saying, "I am a proud African-American, and I don't want to see this injustice anymore."

The reporter did a good job in grouping students together as one, and showing how this isn't a black vs. white thing, but how the students are coming together to fight injustice.

It very well could have been all black students, but that cannot be told through the story.

The New York Times did a report using numbers to show how Republican primary turnout is down compared to the 2008 caucuses.

The reported uses a lot of percentages to report how the raw numbers of the voting turnout has gone up, but the population of eligible voters have gone up even more.

The reporter also uses numbers to report the populations for voter turnout in some states.

The numbers are not overwhelming at all really if you understand basic percentages. Also the reporter spaces out the times where he uses the numbers so that the reader is not just looking at a list of numbers.

It doesn't look like the reporter used math to do the reporting. It just looks like he took the data that was given to him and reported it.

The sources of the information are completely listed. The reported used a poll from the New York Times and CBS. He also used an expert from George Mason University on voter turnout. There was also a study done by the Bipartisan Policy Center in the report.

All of the sources are told in the fact block that the numbers are used in except for one, but there is a source listed a couple of paragraphs above that could be the same for these numbers.

The report sometimes tells how voter turnout is down in some states without using actual numerals as well.

The numbers used in the report are effective in telling the story. They are spaced out well and give a better sense of what is happening at the primaries.

The New York Times did an obit on John Payton, a lawyer who fought for civil rights.

The obituary has a standard obit lead for Payton. It gives what he did, when he died, where he died, and how old he was. This lead works because he did not die in any unusual way. In fact, the cause of death was unknown.

The obit uses the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and President Barack Obama as sources. Both of the sources were used for quotes on Payton.

This obit gives a lot about what Payton did for his profession and how accomplished he was as a lawyer. It talks about awards he received and cases he won. In that aspect it really is not that different from a resume.

This obit really does not differ from a resume at all. I am essentially only told where he went to college, and how successful of a lawyer he was. There is nothing that tells me what type of person Payton was outside of his job as a civil rights lawyer.

There is not a small special quality about him that comes through the story at all.

Overall this is a very standard obituary without anything special or flashy about it. It just tells the information of why Payton's death is important.

The New York Times reported on a speech given by President Barack Obama to a pro-Israel lobbying group Sunday.

The reporter found the most important element to the speech was Obama's defense of his administration's commitment to Israeli security. The reporter also said Obama used the speech to address critics of the administration.

The second paragraph of the story does not back up the lead with a quote, but the reporter chose to give context to the speech and reiterate what the president was talking about.

The story then gives its first quote from the speech. I thought it was interesting the reporter chose to incorporate where Obama was giving the speech with the quote rather than having a separate paragraph for more context.

The story had a lot of paraphrasing from the speech with few verbatim quotes used for support. Perhaps it was a lengthy speech and the best way to describe the message was to simply give a brief description of what Obama said.

The reporter also described how the audience reacted, and the type of speech it was briefly. The reporter called the speech defensive at times.

In order for the reader to understand the speech more the story provides a lot of background on the issue. It tells the reader why Obama has been criticized in the past about Israeli security as well as why Israeli security is importan.

The story also talks about future meetings the president has with the prime minister of Israel. This story does not focus so much on the speech, but the issue the speech was addressing. There is a significant amount of details on why the speech was given in the first place. The actual event of the speech took a back seat to the issues in the second half of the story.

Giving the background information on Iran and Israel allows for a better understanding of why this story is important. Just reporting on the speech would not provide enough context to the speech. Reader's would be lost if that information was not provided for them.

The story ends with a long quote from Obama about his policy of sending military forces into Iran, which is a deep concern for Israel's safety.

When comparing the multimedia used by the Star Tribune, and ESPN.com I noticed that both outlets use very similar forms of multimedia.

A lot of the news stories the Star Tribune used were also accompanied by a video. Some of the bigger stories had a full written story to go with the video. What this does is it allows for people to get a visual of who the Tribune is talking about. Also it is a lot easier to watch something than try to read a full story.

The Star Tribune also has photo galleries for some news stories. Most of the stories in the photo galleries were about sports. The action shots were able to give a little more life to the story, allowing the reader to again visualize what happened. With the pictures there was just a one sentence description about what was going on in the picture.

ESPN does similar things with it's multimedia. They have a lot of videos to help portray the stories. Sometimes things happen in sports that are difficult to describe well enough to do the moment justice. The video allows for the audience to see for themselves what happened, without a middle man.

ESPN also offers podcasts on their website for their audience to listen to. Again listening is easier to do than read through a couple page story.

Most of the writing that went along with the multimedia was very simple. The videos or the photographs are suppose to help tell most of the story, and the writing is just a side note for general description.

The multimedia allows for a better description of the story, and allows the audience to visualize what happened easier.

Foxsports.com did a follow up story on the ESPN scandal where a headline ran on their website that contained a racial slur.

The leads to the two stories are pretty different. The first story's lead tells about how ESPN apologized for the racial slur. The second lead tells what the consequences were for the employee that allowed the slur to be used. That employee has been fired. The second lead also brings in information about the suspension of an anchor that also used the slur.

The main news is summarized pretty much the same way. They move around some fact blocks, but the information in those blocks are exactly the same.

The way they advance the news is they talk about what anchor was suspended for using the slur. They also add another apology from ESPN to Jeremy Lin and the Asian-American Community.

There was also a story about how the slur was used on ESPN radio, but ESPN did not take action because the person was not an employee of the company.

Aside from some different fact blocks talking about the action taken by ESPN the story uses fact blocks from the previous story to give the background information. If people had not read the first story they would still get the same information and then some.

Msn.com wrote a lengthy piece on Whitney Houston's death on Saturday that included multiple elements of her life and career.

The writer begins the story with an information-packed lead that portrays the highs of Houston's career along with the dire lows Houston experienced before her death at age 48.

The story then goes into details about Houston's death such as where she died and when. There were no details on exactly what the cause of death was.

There is about a four-paragraph summary of Houston's life of how she was a star in the mid-1980s to the 1990s but then ultimately crumbled into a life of drugs, and finished with the loss of her incredible voice. The story probably could have ended there and it would have given all the information needed, but the writer goes into a lot more detail of reaction and Houston's life as the story progresses.

The way the story is structured is the writer goes back and forth between Houston's career progression and reactions to her death. The writer talks about where she came from, how successful she was and how it all sort of crumbled in front of everyone's eyes. In between those elements there are present day reactions to the death from Clive Davis, Aretha Franklin and Houston's ex-husband Bobby Brown.

I think they ordered it this way to keep the reader interested in the story. By giving bits of information on Houston's past it gives information about Houston that some readers, such as myself, may not have known about her. But they summarize well enough so it is not overwhelming. Having the little breaks with reactions allows for a little bit of a break from all the details of her life. I think it was very effective.

The story probably could have been done differently with information about Houston's death then a chunk about her life, and then a chunk on reactions to her death. I do not think this would be an effective way because it would get old for readers to read through a biography on Houston and then get to reactions on her death, which is the real story. I felt the writer did a good job with keeping a balance and reporting everything that was needed.

MSNBC.com reported that a snowboarder was killed in an avalanche Saturday.
The news lead the reporter chose was very straight forward. The lead gets right to the point. It tells who died, where it happened, why it happened, and it also says the public had been warned not to go into the area, which could make people read more.
Who the person was is general, the lead just says that it was a 24-year-old man. It also only says it happened in a steep Utah backcountry. As someone who is not from Utah naming a city in the lead would be pointless, because I wouldn't know where it was or what it looked like anyways.
How the person died was a specific element in the lead. The reporter uses a good verb in "trapped" to describe how the snowboarder died in the avalanche. Also saying he was a snowboarder allows for a better visual of the man, he was not a skier or hiker that died. That information puts the stereotypical image of a young snowboarder in my head. Then giving the information about how the public was warned about bad conditions is somewhat specific to why the avalanche occured. It tells the reader that it was not just a freak accident, but the conditions were right for an avalanche to happen.
Overall this lead was very informative with only one sentence. I got the whole story aside from the specifics such as the man's name and where he is from. It told me what happened right away, and if I chose not to read on I still have a firm grasp of the event.