This weeks article is from the Globe and Mail.
I read this article in preparation for an assignment for another class. But, it is just so well written, I thought I'd share my thoughts on it here.
This is a feature story written by Stephanie Nolen. Her story is about the growing problem of poverty in India and the measures that the government is taking in order to address this growing problem. Specific to this problem of poverty, is the growing number of beggars in Old Delhi and how the government is dealing with them in advance of India hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2010.
Nolens use of description throughout the piece is simple and tightly written. Nolen gives the reader a real sense of the atmosphere and the environment and also creates a sense of movement in the story. Also, she paints (at least in my mind) a colonial picture, placing the reader in Old Delhi and using words like magistrate and mendicant (I looked it up just to make sure I understood it). I like the angle with which she approached this story. Instead of giving the reader a lot of facts, figures and statistics, she paints the problem from the point of view of the people who are tasked by the government to clean-up the problem. She gives this story a human element, not just by telling the story from the perspective of the police whose job it is to arrest beggars, but by telling the story of some of the beggars too. Ultimately, Nolen creates great pace through her story and provides the reader with a great sense of where she is and what she saw without involving herself directly in the story.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Blog Post #7 - The National Post
This week's article was from the National Post.
This article is about the now infamous handball by French forward Thierry Henry, that lead the French national soccer team to victory over the Republic of Ireland.
Personally, I like the way this story is written. It does a good job presenting all of the necessary background for the story without in a very succinct way. Like all newspaper stories, it has the very familiar inverted pyramid structure. Also, I think with a story like this, it would be easy to add an personal opinion. Interestingly, instead of adding his own opinion, he uses sources from other papers and uses their opinions to write his story.
One other thing I liked about this story is how the story was linked to a video broadcast of this story from Global News. This convergence of media gave that story another dimension adding sound and video.
This article is about the now infamous handball by French forward Thierry Henry, that lead the French national soccer team to victory over the Republic of Ireland.
Personally, I like the way this story is written. It does a good job presenting all of the necessary background for the story without in a very succinct way. Like all newspaper stories, it has the very familiar inverted pyramid structure. Also, I think with a story like this, it would be easy to add an personal opinion. Interestingly, instead of adding his own opinion, he uses sources from other papers and uses their opinions to write his story.
One other thing I liked about this story is how the story was linked to a video broadcast of this story from Global News. This convergence of media gave that story another dimension adding sound and video.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Blog Post #6 - www.susanorlean.com
This week I read a feature article by Susan Orlean.
Orlean's article is about Robert Lang, a professional origami artist.
I really enjoy Orlean's writing style. She uses language so effectively, but at the same time her writing is simple, easy to follow and funny:
"People expecting him to be kooky -- or, at the very least, Japanese -- find his academic accomplishments and his white male Americanness puzzling.
"They were dense and crisp and precise but also full of character: his mouse conveys something fundamentally mouse-ish, his ant has an essential ant-ness."
I also like how descriptive her writing is:
"Lang is now forty-five. He is tall, with slim, fine-looking hands, a tidy Silicon Valley-style beard, and the clean, comfortable good looks of a park ranger.
"He started designing his own origami patterns when he was in his early teens. He diagrammed them in detail on letterhead from the Chrysler Corporation Airtemp Division, where his father was in sales."
"He was using large squares of tweedy-looking mauve Hanji paper from Korea, which is sturdy but still slightly translucent, like the flesh of a fish."
Orlean's article uses a couple of the structural techniques that we discussed in class. She seems to be using a 5 boxes structure: she begins with an anecdote, moves to the nut graf, continues with a very detailed and descriptive story, then provides the reader with some boring but interesting information, and then finally ends the story. Her ending concludes the story extremely well as it gives the reader the all important lesson learned.
One thing that I wonder about the article is how Orlean makes herself a part of the story and refers to herself in the article a few times:
"A few months ago, I went to a meeting of the Orange County offshoot of the West Coast Origami Guild, which is one of several groups near Los Angeles.
"Before we left, I couldn't help but ask him to do something pretty with his placemat."
Is this something that journalists are allow to do in feature pieces?
Orlean's article is about Robert Lang, a professional origami artist.
I really enjoy Orlean's writing style. She uses language so effectively, but at the same time her writing is simple, easy to follow and funny:
"People expecting him to be kooky -- or, at the very least, Japanese -- find his academic accomplishments and his white male Americanness puzzling.
"They were dense and crisp and precise but also full of character: his mouse conveys something fundamentally mouse-ish, his ant has an essential ant-ness."
I also like how descriptive her writing is:
"Lang is now forty-five. He is tall, with slim, fine-looking hands, a tidy Silicon Valley-style beard, and the clean, comfortable good looks of a park ranger.
"He started designing his own origami patterns when he was in his early teens. He diagrammed them in detail on letterhead from the Chrysler Corporation Airtemp Division, where his father was in sales."
"He was using large squares of tweedy-looking mauve Hanji paper from Korea, which is sturdy but still slightly translucent, like the flesh of a fish."
Orlean's article uses a couple of the structural techniques that we discussed in class. She seems to be using a 5 boxes structure: she begins with an anecdote, moves to the nut graf, continues with a very detailed and descriptive story, then provides the reader with some boring but interesting information, and then finally ends the story. Her ending concludes the story extremely well as it gives the reader the all important lesson learned.
One thing that I wonder about the article is how Orlean makes herself a part of the story and refers to herself in the article a few times:
"A few months ago, I went to a meeting of the Orange County offshoot of the West Coast Origami Guild, which is one of several groups near Los Angeles.
"Before we left, I couldn't help but ask him to do something pretty with his placemat."
Is this something that journalists are allow to do in feature pieces?
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Blog Post #5 - CBSNews.com
The article I read for this week is from CBSNews.com.
This article is about a bizarre and very public battle between two Chinese bureaucratic departments, the Ministry of Culture and the General Administration of Press and Publications. These two departments are fighting over who has the right to oversee the administration of the World of Warcraft, a popular online game.
The General Administration of Press and Publications, the bureau that licenses publishers, has shut down the game servers saying the game's Chinese operator failed to obtain required import approval and should stop signing up customers. The Ministry of Culture said that it is the regulator of online games and that the operator's paperwork is in order.
Because the gaming industries in China has a lot of potential for growth, whoever gets to oversee this game would then have claim to oversee the entire online gaming industry. This would mean a larger budget and more administrative power for that department and more importantly, control over the Internet.
The one thing I noticed in this article, was the stylistic differences between The Canadian Press style and The Associated Press style. These differences forced me to refer my CP Stylebook and Caps and Spelling book many times while reading the article and writing this post. While I may not have learned anything specific from the stylebook, continually having to check that my writing conforms to CP style, is helping me to learn how to use the stylebook better.
In my opinion, the story could be tightened up by eliminating the repetition of information that occurs at the top of the story and midway through the story. I also noticed that there were some instances where the writer had not sourced his information. This left me to wonder where he got his information. In general, I think this was a decent piece of writing though and I liked the way the writer used his quotes.
This article is about a bizarre and very public battle between two Chinese bureaucratic departments, the Ministry of Culture and the General Administration of Press and Publications. These two departments are fighting over who has the right to oversee the administration of the World of Warcraft, a popular online game.
The General Administration of Press and Publications, the bureau that licenses publishers, has shut down the game servers saying the game's Chinese operator failed to obtain required import approval and should stop signing up customers. The Ministry of Culture said that it is the regulator of online games and that the operator's paperwork is in order.
Because the gaming industries in China has a lot of potential for growth, whoever gets to oversee this game would then have claim to oversee the entire online gaming industry. This would mean a larger budget and more administrative power for that department and more importantly, control over the Internet.
The one thing I noticed in this article, was the stylistic differences between The Canadian Press style and The Associated Press style. These differences forced me to refer my CP Stylebook and Caps and Spelling book many times while reading the article and writing this post. While I may not have learned anything specific from the stylebook, continually having to check that my writing conforms to CP style, is helping me to learn how to use the stylebook better.
In my opinion, the story could be tightened up by eliminating the repetition of information that occurs at the top of the story and midway through the story. I also noticed that there were some instances where the writer had not sourced his information. This left me to wonder where he got his information. In general, I think this was a decent piece of writing though and I liked the way the writer used his quotes.
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