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Upcoming J371 Deadlines
Short Feature Draft Today (Thursday) @ midnight via email
Mini-profile of classmate Friday, 1/18 @ midnight via email
Short Feature Final Sunday 1/20 @ midnight via email
Profile analyses Monday 1/21 @ midnight – post on blog
Three potential profile candidates: Tuesday 1/22 by class time (I’ll post this assignment within the next day or so)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/sports/cycling/hard-questions-for-lance-armstrong.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130117
Standing atop the podium at the 2005 Tour de France, Lance Armstrong addressed the crowd after he won a record seventh Tour, looking into the sea of cycling fans gathered along the Champs-Élysées in Paris and publicly challenging those who had suspected he had doped to win.
“I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the skeptics, I’m sorry for you,” he said. “I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. I’m sorry you don’t believe in miracles.”
In an interview with Oprah Winfrey set to be broadcast on her network, OWN, on Thursday and Friday night, Armstrong will finally reveal that those skeptics were right: he did use performance-enhancing drugs and blood transfusions to win. And he used those drugs and methods repeatedly.
Winfrey interviewed him on Monday at a hotel in Austin, Tex., and Armstrong “teared up and cried” during the inquiry, a person with direct knowledge of it said Wednesday. The person, who called the stories Armstrong told Winfrey “a classic Shakespearean tale,” insisted on anonymity because that person is not authorized to discuss the contents of the interview.
It is unclear what made Armstrong lose his composure when he spoke with Winfrey, who is known for her teary-eyed guests, because her network has not released any excerpts from Armstrong’s comments.
Here are the questions Winfrey needed to ask if she wanted to “go deep” with her inquiry, as Armstrong suggested she should.
‘ARMY OF ENABLERS’ The United States Anti-Doping Agency said you had “an army of enablers” helping you dope. Who were the accomplices who were essential in your getting away with it?
When you briefly retired from cycling after winning the 2005 Tour, you said you did so to spend time with your children and be a better father. Do your five children, ages 2 to 13, know about your doping past? If so, when and how did you tell them?
As a teenager, you began training with the then United States national team coach Chris Carmichael, the man you said became your longtime personal coach. (The infamous Italian doctor Michele Ferrari, who is serving a lifetime ban from Olympic sports for doping athletes, is thought to be the real brains behind your success.)
Carmichael, who founded a successful training business on the fact that he was your coach, was accused of doping national team riders in the 1990s at the same time he began working with you. (Carmichael eventually settled the case out of court.)
Did Carmichael have anything to do with your doping, or have any knowledge of your doping? If not, when did you first begin using performance-enhancing drugs and who provided those drugs to you?
DISPUTED ADMISSION Frankie Andreu, one of your former teammates and closest friends, said he and his wife, Betsy, heard a doping confession from you in October 1996 when visiting you in a hospital while you fought cancer. They said they were in the room with several of your friends when they overheard two doctors ask if you had ever used performance-enhancing drugs. They said you had answered yes: EPO, testosterone, human growth hormone and cortisone.
Stephanie McIlvain, your personal representative at Oakley who is married to a man high up in that company, told the three-time Tour winner Greg LeMond in a 2004 phone call that she heard that doping admission. “I’m not going to lie,” she said in the conversation that LeMond secretly recorded. “You know, I was in that room. I heard it.”
When you denied, again and again, that the admission never occurred, were you lying? If so, how did you keep most of the people in the hospital room that day quiet about your doping? Did former sponsors, like Nike and Oakley, know about your doping? Did they ever ask you about any of the doping allegations? If not, why do you think they never asked when the evidence against you was mounting?
WHAT DID YOUR EX-WIFE AND SUBSEQUENT PARTNERS KNOW? According to the United States Anti-Doping Agency, at least one of your former teammates said your former wife, Kristin, was complicit in your doping. At the 1998 world championships, one rider said Kristin Armstrong handed out cortisone pills wrapped in aluminum foil, prompting another rider to say, “Lance’s wife is rolling joints.”
How and when did Kristin become involved in your doping program and was it difficult to tell her about it at first? Were your subsequent partners — including Sheryl Crow and current girlfriend, Anna Hansen — also privy to your doping?
HARASSMENT ACCUSATIONS Did you ever have any concern about disparaging and harassing so many of the people who claimed you had doped, like the Andreus, the former bicycle mechanic and personal assistant Mike Anderson, the former masseuse Emma O’Reilly or LeMond and his wife, Kathy?
The Andreus testified in a 2005 civil case that you had admitted to drug use in the Indianapolis hospital room in 1996, and you subsequently called them liars. Frankie Andreu said he had trouble keeping jobs within cycling because you had blackballed him for speaking out. Is it true that you used your power in cycling to try to crush him and his family?
You called O’Reilly a prostitute and an alcoholic and harassed Anderson so much that he and his family had to flee Austin, Tex., for New Zealand. LeMond claimed you sought to destroy his bike company by pressuring the manufacturer of those bikes, Trek Bicycle Corporation, to undermine him.
Do you regret anything you said or did to those people? How will make amends with them?
BRIBERY ACCUSATIONS At least two riders have claimed that you bribed officials at the International Cycling Union, cycling’s world governing body, to cover up a positive drug test at the 2001 Tour of Switzerland. If that is true, whose idea was that bribe and how did the transaction occur? Were Pat McQuaid, the cycling union’s president, or Hein Verbruggen, the union’s honorary president involved?
The investment banker Thom Weisel is one of the defendants named in a federal whistle-blower lawsuit that was filed by Floyd Landis, one of your former teammates. Landis said that Weisel and other principals of the United States Postal Service team, including you, used taxpayer dollars to fund the team’s doping when doping constituted a violation of the sponsorship contract.
How much did Weisel know about the team’s doping? He also has been an integral part of USA Cycling, the sport’s national governing body. Did officials within that organization have any knowledge of your drug program? Did they ever question you about the doping accusations that have dogged you for more than a decade?
EPO Dr. Craig Nichols, an oncologist who treated your cancer, gave written testimony in a lawsuit in 2005 that you never admitted, suggested or indicated to him that you ever used performance-enhancing drugs. He testified that he checked your blood levels periodically from 1996 to October 2001 and that your blood levels “remained consistent and did not fluctuate outside the normal range.”
“Had Lance Armstrong been using EPO to enhance his cycling performance, I would have likely identified the differences in his blood levels,” he said.
If Nichols was telling the truth, but you were taking EPO during the time he had been monitoring your blood, how did you keep your blood levels consistent? Did it worry you that he would discover your drug regimen?
COMING CLEAN Before the United States Anti-Doping Agency released its 1,000 pages of evidence against you last fall, did you ever think you would come clean? Or did you think you would go to your grave with your secret?
Brian Stelter contributed reporting.
Writing the Short Feature
You are telling a story. It has the same elements as any story you tell a friend at a party, after work or while at the gym:
First: What is my story about? (Write down in one sentence). This is your story’s theme. Writing it down will can help keep you on track.
Truffles: About the biggest black truffle ever found in Oregon.
Hold on: A woman who makes dolls for sick or injured kids in the hospital.
Patriots: Tight-lipped but winners
A Compelling Beginning focuses your readers’ attention. How will you invite readers into your story?
Use description, a scene (with action) or an anecdote as your lead to introduce your story and place your readers’ focus.
Examples:
Now for the meat of the story. What do you want readers to know about your story? How will you communicate that information?
Organization is the scaffolding of your story. Like scaffolding in many buildings, it is necessary, but essential for the story to work.
Organization means you think out the order in which you want to present the information and quotes you have gathered. You can present that material through:
Truffles:
Large truffles are rare in Oregon (explanatory)
How one guy found the truffle “How the truffle met the plate” (anecdotes and quotes)
What the chef will do with the truffle (description of food)
Hold on Tightly:
Who the dolls are for and why (explanatory)
How she came up with the idea (anecdote and quotes)
What’s next (explanatory)
Everybody Dances
A dance workshop for people with different physical abilities (explanatory)
How the founder of DanceAbility runs the workshop (scene and quotes)
Background of Danceability (explanation)
Focus on participants (mini scenes and quotes)
Wind-up. How will I end this story?
What Endings do:
Truffles: “Along with Higgins, several stopped what they were doing, picked up the biggest black truffle they’d ever seen and inhaled.”
Hold On: “In the future….”
Everybody: Quote: “I forgot I had one…That’s the sign of a good workshop.”
Short Feature check-list
Organization
Style
“I don’t like how truffles taste,” said third grader Mark Jones.
Conclusion
Do not wrap up story with an editorial comment: “It is clear the City Council is taking steps to deal with the head-ache of pot holes.” OR “Delilah Duck is a shining example of her sorority’s shining spirit.” A source can say those things, but you, the reporter, can NOT make judgments or draw conclusions.
A Moveable Feast
Party Cart dishes up ever-changing menus of fresh, seasonal, “subversively healthy” cuisine.
By Shirley West
The lead of this story doesn’t grab at the reader very well but I continued reading because I like food. I wanted to know what was so special about this “creative take on urban comfort food.” I like the description of the cart, right down to the hand made cloth napkins, giving the reader a real picture of what the cart is like and how it feels to eat there. The author lists off several of the dishes offered at the cart, giving the reader an idea of how the food is different from the norm. She also talks about the different “guest chefs,” the local foods, and the cart owners getting to know the people, creating a real community atmosphere that makes the reader want to go there and to be part of the mission. The author obviously spent a lot of time at the cart and talked to customers and friends to get some background information which gives the story a lot of strength. She could have done without her additional ending, though. She should have left it at “So far, it’s been a good ride. ‘We’ve been surprised pretty much since day one about how many cool people we’ve met,’ Norton says. ‘We really didn’t think of that; that we’d make friends.'” But then she adds the word Party at the very end making it weird.
Living with pain
A Springfield woman endures a debilitating facial condition
By Randi Bjornstad
I’m still having trouble deciding if this isn’t a profile. I’m going to say it’s not. I think it’s a short feature on a certain type of health issue with Jenny LeCompte as the central figure suffering from this disorder. The description of LeCompte’s pain is fantastically done in the lead. It gives an incredible idea of what this woman has to go through on a daily basis. I felt like the use of the French term was unnecessary. If our doctors call it trigeminal neuralgia, then call it trigeminal neuralgia. Although, saying that many call it the “suicide disease” really gives an idea of how bad it can get.
It’s obvious the writer did plenty of research and has specific details on the topic. The middle of the article gets a little dry in the discussion of the disorder on a medical basis. But then the anecdotes about her surgeries and the elation she felt when the first one worked and then the crushing blow when the pain came back again, they really put emotion into the story.
The ending was good, but sad. The reader finishes the story with the knowledge that the subject isn’t going to get better. But it ends with a quote from the subject that she just needs to keep on pushing forward. It’s inspiring.
This article is about a man who has started a thriving free newspaper in Texas and how he has been so successful. Instead of forcing people to subscribe he mails the paper to every single home in his area for free. Advertisers are attracted to this due to the sheer magnitude of people they can reach through this strategy, thus providing the paper with plenty of revenue. First of all, I liked the headline which uses an action verb to bring the story to life. I also liked how the article starts out by catering to popular belief that the only way to survive in journalism is to have an online presence .. unless you are this guy. It may be a little cliche and recycled but it works for this story. As you would expect the article focuses on his operating procedures and success of his business. It also provides a dissenting opinion about this strategy in order to give the reader a multi dimensional experience. I’m glad that this was written as a short feature story instead of a regular feature story because I kind of got the gist of the story early on and found myself a little bored towards the end of reading it. Still, I thought it was an interesting article because it provided the reader with a fresh outlook on how a struggling industry can still succeed without catering to technological advances. I also liked the multitude of sources it utilizes to give the story more perspective.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2013/01/02/new-shoots-in-old-growth/
Article 1: National Geographic, “Restless Genes”
The piece explores whether humans are genetically geared towards migration and exploration, as modern humans have covered more ground in 50,000 years than any other species has been found to in millions of years.
The lead featured hard facts and dates, but skillfully hooked the reader with enough detail to intrigue, but not enough to answer any of the questions it brought up. While the piece begun with some background about the process of exploration itself, telling about James Cook, an 18th Century explorer, it quickly segues into a description of human exploration and migration and the study of them today. There wasn’t as much of an emphasis on a physical “scene” so much as the act of exploration.
The writer details his own dialogue with researchers and professors that he talked to, lending the piece an investigative feel – parts of it read almost like a journal or a thought process, which I enjoyed because the whole subject is still being figured out, so the article didn’t come across as condescending, but rather like the author was sharing the information they had learned.
The piece was supported by many interviews of University researchers and professors, and was full of facts and statistics. The sources tended to stray from the direct point of the article and go into more detailed evolutionary philosophy, which was a little dense but overall relevant because the article talks about migration and exploration from a genetic perspective.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/restless-genes/dobbs-text
Article 2: Register-Guard, “A Moveable Feast”
The story features two people who run the 28th and Friendly food truck, “Party Cart.”
The lead is a bit cliche, and doesn’t stress anything remarkable about the cart. I found it weak. The writer provides good background – not an overwhelming history of the pair’s past in the food industry, but enough about how each of them came to be where they are. She sets the scene by describing the location and focusing on detailed images of the food that the vendors serve and the process they go through to make it. The quotes are supportive of the story and a few stand out in highlighting the unique features of the cart, such as when one owner, Tiffany Norton, notes how one of their friends described their food as “just weird enough and just comfortable enough.” The author doesn’t cite any outside sources, but they do a nice, thorough interview of the two owners, Norton and Mark Kosmicki.
Article: No-book library? BiblioTech Is Coming by Joanna Stern, ABC News
http://news.yahoo.com/library-without-books-bibliotech-open-193118588–abc-news-tech.html
I chose this article because it discusses an example of the interesting movement in today’s tech-savvy culture.
It may be assumed that this article was written for an online audience for a few reasons. First, its hook and point of the article were summed up in a couple sentences. It did not include an anecdote or put a face on the story. Second, it was written in a very conversational tone. It has been commonly said that we live in a fast-paced culture where thanks to the Internet, our attention spans have significantly decreased. This is probably why this article was written this way.
An obvious weakness of this article comes from the lack of sources. In the entire article, only one person was quoted and cited. Although it is an article that features a project that has not yet been built, the article would have been stronger if another source’s voice was heard. Particularly, it would have been nice to hear from a civilian that goes to a traditional library in the same city where the bookless library will be built. Getting the perspective of a librarian would be even better.
I assumed that the point of this article was to showcase the novelty that this electronic library exudes.
Article: Fast Food Linked to Asthma, Eczema in Kids by Lylah M. Alphonse, Yahoo! Shine
http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/fast-food-linked-asthma-eczema-kids-144300118.html
For my second article, I really wanted to analyze an article that focused on a health or science topic since I was always curious in the differences in a typical human-interest story and a scientific article. It was then after surfing through the web that I came across a handful of health-related articles that were short in length. I selected this article because I felt that it brought a fresh angle to a topic that is so often reported on. Within the first couple of paragraphs the author cited statistics and findings from a medical journal saying that fast food might put children at risk at developing asthma and eczema.
The reporter of this article chose to open the story with a statement that the audience would relate to: “we’ve all heard of the dangers of fast food…” I find that this type of hook is interesting because it is something that I commonly see in science or health-related articles. My guess for the reasoning is because nowadays, content or information must be catered or relate to the individual on a more personal level in order to compete and hold someone’s attention on the Internet. I find myself reading these types of leads in many online articles.
It is pretty clear that this article is directed at parents. In my opinion, the actual study featured is the strongest aspect of the article. The featured study is one that studied not only focused on thousands of American children, but also focused on children in 51 other countries. The data not only offered a variety, but it stemmed from a large data set; they had entered over 300,000 children onto their study.
I thought the article did a nice job of acknowledging other possibilities for the symptoms, such as food allergies, that scientists believe is the “culprit.” It ended the article nicely with discussing ways for parents to prevent the negative health sym