Final Project Pitch

For one of my classes we had to interview a classmate, I interviewed senior Joy Addison.

Joy’s father is a war veteran and now has PTSD. Their family has struggled throughout her whole life and due to their struggles Joy wants to go to school to help others with PTSD especially in the workforce. She also does pageants and uses bettering those with PTSD as her platform to help spread awareness.

I think this would be a good feature story because it has an emotion factor as well as a relatable factor. There are many families who struggle with this and there is a lot of facts and stats to add to this story.

What Joy is doing is really inspiring and I think it would be a beneficial story to share with others what she’s doing and how they can help too.

 

What Works: Week 8

Russian shopping mall fire killed 41 kids, 23 others; Putin blames ‘sloppiness’

This story caught my attention not only is it sad and very newsworthy, but one of my good friends is studying abroad in Moscow right now and I immediately needed to read it.

This article definitely has a hard news lead, stating, “Thousands of Russians took to the main square of a Siberian city Tuesday to confront local officials after a shopping mall fire killed at least 64 people, most of the children.” We learn who, what, when, and where all within one sentence.

I think on thing the writer does to help pull readers in is he doesn’t just say what happened, but he also writes about what Putin thinks and how officials are reacted to it. Many people are fascinated with leaders thoughts and actions and probably saw the title and needed to read more.

Also people generally always look for someone to blame and having that blame accused in this article probably pulled more readers in to see what went wrong and who’s responsible.

The writer used many officials and investigators as sources which added a lot of creditability to the story. Pretty much all of the sources agreed that it was pure sloppiness and there’s no explanation for the bad decisions that were made.

I personally find it so frightening that the doors were locked and no one could get out and that no alarm system went off signaling to anyone to get out in the first place.

 

What Works- Week 1

Why isn’t there a universal flu vaccine?

I came across this story while on twitter. It popped up on my feed and it caught my attention due to the statement “37 child deaths reported”.

The lead is definitely a hard news lead because it get rights to the  point. It starts out stating, “Health workers are facing a huge challenge trying to contain this season’s flu outbreak. It’s the most widespread in recent years, with at least 37 child deaths reported so far.” I like this lead because it states what’s going on, then backs it up with an actual fact.

I really like how the reporter explained why the flu vaccine isn’t working. He states that this years vaccine is “likely to be only about 30 percent effective”. He then goes into explaining this is happening because it has to do with the flu virus’ “drift” and “shift”. What’s called antigenic drift has to do with small changes in the genes of the influenza virus year to year, while an antigenic shift has to do with a major change, which can cause pandemics.

I think this is an important part of the story because I’m sure a lot of people don’t understand why people are still getting sick when maybe they’ve had the shot. This fact about the “drift” and “shift” also helps to further the argument of why there is a want for a universal flu vaccine.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is the only source used in this story. I think he adds the credibility to the story, however I think it would of been better if there was another source, like a doctor or other specialist. I think this step would of added more value to the story.

An already added value in the article is the video up at the top. I think this adds to the story and gives the reader more information and insight.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this article. The flu epidemic is huge right now in our society and I was eager to learn what has been going on.