Anecdotal ledes

            Today’s NYT article on Rick Perry begins like this: “COLLEGE STATION, Tex. — Rick Perry arrived on the campus of Texas A&M University in the tumultuous fall of 1968, cut his hair short, regulation army style, and donned a uniform. College students across America were rising up against the Vietnam War, but Mr. Perry, a member of the Corps of Cadets here, would not be among them.”

            At first it seems like we’re about to be told a certain kind of story about Rick Perry — probably some laudatory piece about how he defied his college peers and stood up for what he believed was right— but then out of the blue, the article veers off into another direction entirely. That’s what I like so much about this lede; that it keeps you on your toes a little.

            Though the article begins with a snapshot of Perry’s college years amid the tumult of the 1960’s, what it’s really about is his military service and how it shaped his later politics (or maybe how his politics influenced his decision to enlist). But his college years at Texas A&M are quickly abandoned after the first couple grafs. 

            This narrative shift reminded me a little of Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker.” In Caro’s  biography of Robert Moses, he begins by sharing a brief but revealing anecdote about an argument Moses got into while on the swimming team at Yale, and the way Moses ends the argument lays the groundwork for “the man he would eventually become.” Although it's a little novel-y I think this kind of coming-of-age storytelling device works well in a profile of an important political figure like Perry, because it gives us exactly the kind of colorful description of Perry that we want to hear: the man he was becoming before he entered into the military or politics (assisted by a great visual detail about his haircut, and an amusing photo of him in his corps of cadets uniform ). It's a good example of how an anecdotal lede doesn’t necessarily need to sum up a ‘thesis’, but can help set up the rest of the story. 

            The lede in today’s business article “A Voice Suggests Door-Busters Can Wait,” (a story about the employee backlash against Black Friday hours) was less successful. My problem with the lede, which begins “Anthony Hardwick never thought of himself as an activist or even much of an organizer...” is just that it seems like such a boring choice out of a million ways to begin a story. The article itself is such a relatable human-interest story (who wouldn’t sympathize with a guy making minimum wage who had to work through Thanksgiving?), but the lede fails to capture any of that sentiment. And to be completely honest, I tune out a little when I hear the word “organizer” or “activist,” because they're so overused, so I have to wonder why the author chose to use them to hook us.

            I also liked the anecdotal lede in  “The Witch Wears Silk Suits”, an article that ran in today's metro section of the Times, even though it was pretty cheesy: "It was the night before Thanksgiving, and the Witch Queen of New York was not stirring her brew or flying on her broom. Well, she did have her broom, but she was using it to sweep up the Pagan Center of New York, her headquarters in the Bronx..." I don't usually like campy writing like this, but I think this writer pulls it off by going 100% into it. (The following line doesn't disappoint either: "'Where the heck is that dustpan?' said the witch, Lady Rhea, 60, a Wiccan high priestess who was pulling off a nearly magical level of multitasking..." Another obvious difference about this piece is that the off-beat subject matter demands a little humor. A jokey lede here is more permissible than it would be in either of the above articles. Overall, I didn't think the tone detracted from the piece at all, especially because the woman profiled sounds like such a character that it seemed like the tone fit her personality rather than being condescending.    

Article 2

Intro To Journalism
Article 2
Occupy Wall Street Kitchen To Go on Strike?


For the duration of the upcoming Halloween weekend of October 28-30th
the “People’s Kitchen” at Zuccotti Park will be enforcing a massive
cut-back in its food distribution, in what the Occupy Wall Street
protest has called an effort to “strengthen” their operations.

“Hello Occupiers and Friends!,” states a laminated flyer taped to one
of the plastic folding tables that comprises the food station at
Occupy Wall Street. “In the coming days the People’s Kitchen of Occupy
Wall Street will be initiating some changes to help us better fulfill
our mission to feed the movement.”

Although the Occupy Wall Street protest, which has now been going on
for over a month, has received significant media attention for its
sophisticated cuisine — The New York Times published an article on
October 11th lauding the kitchen efforts, titled “Want to Get Fat on
Wall Street? Try Protesting” — the People’s Kitchen announced that
fare over the three-day undertaking will be reduced to “Simple meals
(such as beans and rice, PB&J, fresh fruit).”

On October 27th, The Atlantic Wire reported that the organization’s
plan to scale-back was nothing more than a logistical initiative to
better organize the Occupied Kitchen that was being sensationalized by
the press. "I can definitely tell you that none of us are concerned
about 'freeloaders,' " said Chris O'Donnell, an organizer, to The
Atlantic Wire.

Contrary to the claims of O’Donnell and the statements formally
released by Occupy Wall Street, kitchen worker Nan Terrie said that
kicking out freeloaders was precisely the aim of the People’s Kitchen.

Terrie, who has been volunteering in the kitchen since Day 1 of the
protest, described security issues at the kitchen as being a bigger
issue than O’Donnell claimed they were.

Terrie said that aside from dealing with frequently vexing behavior
from patrons like “complaining” and “cutting in line”, she was
recently threatened with violence by a visitor to the People’s Kitchen
who was angered that the kitchen staff would not cater to his personal
food request. Terrie said that when she refused to make the man “a
special rice krispie treat”, “[He] pulled a knife on me and called me
the ‘N word’ several times."

Benedict Clouette, a worker in the People’s Kitchen, downplayed
Terrie’s concerns, saying that they were the opinions of one person
and not shared among the staff. “That’s not really the dominant tenor
of the kitchen now,” said Clouette in a phone interview.

Clouette, who said the decision to scale back on food was not a
strike, said that the primary motivation was to make the kitchen run
more efficiently, and give organizers time to reflect on what
direction the protest is headed. “Right now there’s a huge amount of
energy that just goes into running it every day, and in the morning we
don’t know who’s going to volunteer to cook... That’s not really a
sustainable practice,” added Clouette.

When asked whether the Occupy Wall Street protest would be able to
without the kitchen, Clouette said, “I think the whole shape of the
thing would probably change. Part of the occupation of Zuccotti Park
is dependant on certain types of provisions, medical attendance, food,
sometimes a comfort station.”

Reading journal 3: Cynicism vs. Healthy Skepticism

(*Sorry, I forgot to post last week, but I figured better late than never!)

Admittedly, I know pretty much nothing about global economics (or really any economics for that matter) but David Brooks’s op-ed in the Times last week, titled “The Lost Decade?” which considers the implications of a possible global financial crash, jumped out at me for some inexplicable reason. I guess it’s a good example of what we talked about in class a few weeks ago, of stories that are written both for experts and novices.

I thought that Brooks’s op-ed, though it could have easily slipped over into cynicism given the depressing nature of the topic, managed to stay “healthily skeptical” by backing up his assertions with specific examples. Brooks doesn’t try to sugarcoat the gloomy economic situation in the least (“The prognosis for next few years is bad with a chance of worse,” he says) but at the same time, he doesn’t just come in and tell us we’re all screwed so we might as well give up, either. For each complaint he lodges (and he has a lot), he offers specific evidence of why and how it has unfolded.

His biggest complaint seems to be with partisan responses to the growing crisis. “To put it in fancy terms, the crisis is an emergent condition — even more terrible than the sum of its parts,” writes Brooks. “Yet the ideologues who dominate the political conversation are unable to think in holistic ways. They pick out the one factor that best conforms to their preformed prejudices and, like blind men grabbing a piece of the elephant, they persuade themselves they understand the whole thing.” It seems here like Brooks is implying that the politicians are more concerned with sticking to party lines and regurgitating whatever party rhetoric seems faintly applicable, than with intelligently examining the situation and strategizing appropriate solutions.

He calls both parties to blame for this, saying that Democrats are too ready to name increased government spending as the be-all-end-all solution, and Republicans are too ready say the same of cutting taxes, and reducing regulation—neither of which fully addresses the scope of the problem at hand. (“To a man in love with his hammer, every problem requires a nail,” offers Brooks.)

But although Brooks certainly doesn’t hold any punches, and seems to denigrate both parties equally, I think he manages to escape sounding exactly cynical or nihilistic by balancing his own opinions with outside evidence. He includes expert opinions (he references a former deputy Treasury secretary, and quotes a foreign policy professor from Bard College) and also offers solutions of his own (“Simplify the tax code. End corporate taxes and create a consumption tax. Reshape the European Union to make it either more unified or less, but not halfway as it is now...”)

By contrast, I would compare the “skepticism” of Brooks’s article to basically anything/everything on Gawker. I think the main difference is that Gawker’s clout as a blog is basically predicated on being snarky. Even though Gawker definitely covers news stories that are important and relevant in the metropolitan area, (I'm personally a fan and read their site about ten times a day until they installed the new layout) their goal is to entertain readers more than it is to be objective. It's perfectly acceptable for them to be cynical given the specific media niche that they fill, whereas that kind of opinionated bias would never in a million years fly at harder news publications, and given that they're very different kinds of journalism that seems like an okay thing.

Reading Journal 9/14/2011

For this assignment I chose to compare two different concert reviews, the first, a NYT review of the Das Racist show on September 12, and the second, a Star Tribune review of a private Foo Fighters show held yesterday in Minnesota.

The Times piece, “Order Moves In On Chaos, As Rappers Go Legit,” by Jon Caramanica, seems very much like a singular expert’s opinion, which the author makes explicitly clear from the beginning. The basic argument he puts forward in his first few paragraphs, can be summarized in one sentence, “the members of Das Racist are going legit.” Caramanica asserts that Das Racist concerts in the past were frenzied and chaotic spectacles (he calls them “anti-concerts), but that as the band as evolved there’s been a discernable shift in their live performances. Unfortunately (or perhaps not, depending on how much you trust the author), Caramanica doesn’t even attempt to marshal in any outside evidence to back up his claim, but suggests instead that the reader is just going to have to rely on his word. Of their frenetic live shows, Caramanic writes, “It had to be believed to be seen.”

Going forward, Caramanica doesn’t really use any outside sources in this story: he doesn’t speak to any concertgoers to ask what they thought of the performance, interview the members of Das Racist, or even quote past reviews of the hip-hop outfit. What Caramanica does have going for him is an authoritative voice that commands respect from the reader, and he backs this up with strong details from the night of the concert. Caramnica makes the claim, for example, that, “The polyglot group also thrives when toying with its heavily white audience, acknowledging the tensions of inclusion and exclusion.” Here he reinforces that assertion with a comical anecdote from the show: “Midshow Mr. Suri asked the crowd to wish his cousin a happy birthday: ‘Can you various Americans say ‘Divya?’’ The Crowd chuckled, and the D.J. reminded them: ‘W-W-W-White demons.’ Laughs all around.”

I think that in the specific case of music reviews that are written in this style, from the vantage point of an ‘expert’, a lack of outside evidence/opinions can be compensated for if the author really asserts him/herself from the beginning as someone the reader can trust, but again that’s not always easy to do.

By comparison the Star Tribune review “Foo Fighters pick core crowd for apple orchard gig in White Bear Lake” is written in a completely different style. The tone, as one could rightfully assume from the corny headline, is incredibly informal.

The lede is, “The winners didn't know the location until the van came to pick them up. Even 93X's longtime program director Wade Linder -- who will have a lot less friends once they find out he didn't hook them up -- swears he also was kept out of the loop.” In this case, we can tell from the lede that the tone of the article will be very casual, but the focus of the piece is on the experience of the lucky winners who were chosen to attend this intimate concert, not the voice of the author. The author doesn’t even really devote any time to talking about the Foo Fighters as a band, or what their music is like, he really only covers how “cool” the experience was for people who attended.

“"It was such an intimate performance; I was just entranced the whole time," gushed Cool, who sounded even more impressed of what happened afterward. Like when Foo frontman Dave Grohl "photo-bombed" some lucky girls posing for a friend (jumping in the background behind them with his middle finger raised).” While I guess this is a noteworthy detail given the angle of the piece, I’m not particularly impressed with hearing about how Dave Grohl photobombed a couple of teenagers. It’s probably a good thing that the article doesn’t dig much deeper, because based on what I’ve read so far I wouldn’t trust the author farther than I could throw him, and I certainly wouldn’t want to hear his opinions about whether the band’s performance was a departure from past shows, or if they’re continuing to evolve as a band.

Reading Journal 9/7/2011

For our first blog assignment I decided to focus on how different papers and journalists tackle ledes, because they’re one of the most important parts of a news story, and also because I’m not very good at writing them. Ledes are crucial to a story not only because they set the tone for the entire article, but also because they’re responsible for catching the reader’s attention (or not!), and if a reader isn’t interested in your lede they’re not going to bother to read the rest of your story.

What I noticed in a lot of the front page stories from The New York Times throughout the past week, was that although they obviously differed widely in content, many of the ledes they employed shared a similar formula. The author would begin with some kind of an assertion that seemed pretty logical and straightforward, and then immediately either contradict it, or give the reader some version of “but this is what is happening instead...”

An article on the front page of the Times today, begins this way: “DAMASCUS, Syria – As protests broke out across a restive Syria on a recent Sunday, and crowds were dispersed yet again by gunfire that left many dead, the conversation dwelled not on the uprising but rather on nails, along with the choice of polish and hair color and the latest in makeup trends.” I think this is an effective lede because it surprises the reader (we don’t expect an article that begins with news of violence and rebellion to segue into nail polish and makeup), and also sets up the rest of the article.

The story continues on in the next paragraph: “It does not take long to realize that there is a disconnect between Damascus and the rest of Syria.” I really liked the way this author introduced the story, and thought there was a smooth transition from an anecdote about Syrian life, into harder news. My only concern with it was that the bit about the makeup and nail polish could maybe have been perceived by readers as a slightly trivializing introduction into a story, that there really wasn’t anything cute about.

Another article in the Times, below that one, starts off with a similarly structured lede: “Here’s a back-to-school math problem: There are 62 kindegarten seats at the Trinity School this fall, and 756 children wanted them. What percentage made the cut?” The author lets you consider these odds for a second or two before going on: “The answer seems straightforward: 8.2 percent. But private school admissions are hardly straightforward.” Again, I liked how the lede teases the reader with a piece of startling information that grabs their attention, but also sets an appropriate tone for an article which is about changing practices of nepotism at private schools.