3 Kinds of Intros

For the first couple weeks of class, we concentrated on Basic News Leads. These leads can be divided into two subcategories:  The summary lead and the delayed identification lead.  The summary lead is what we first learned--it gives the who, what, where, when, why/how in the first paragraph.  The delayed identification lead gives most of this information in the second paragraph, in order to use the first paragraph as a "hook" to get the reader interested.  Also, sometimes all this information is easier to comprehend when it is split between two paragraphs.
Another type of lead is the Direct Address Lead.  This is when the author writes in the second person point of view.  This kind of writing is used in feature writing because news writing is always written in the third person.  This kind of lead can be helpful when you want your reader to feel or sense something that you are describing, and therefore making them want to invest their time in the article.
This week, I wrote a feature article for my homework.  For this article, I wrote a scene-setter lead.  This kind of lead was originally borrowed from fiction writing, which is why feature articles are not "breaking news".  My topic this week was about the changes that have occurred to the businesses downtown.   This is a feature article because it doesn't cover a specific incident, but rather it is an overall picture of downtown life.  This is why a scene-setting intro was great for my story.  I described the change in the leaves and air temperature downtown and then related that to all the new human-made changes.

"MOB RULE: Middle East Protests Escalate" - The Huffington Post

What is happening with this world right now? People are dying, restaurants are being bombed, embassies are being attack all because of some youtube video that someone (who is obviously not too smart) posted.  I read that it generated from somewhere in California but the name of the creator hasn't been released.  Honestly, I can't believe a clip like this is causing the whole middle east and parts of Africa to turn completely upside-down.  Lets put the shoe on the other foot.... is someone in, let's say Cairo, made a video mocking Protestantism, I would not attack ANY embassies.  Obviously, if someone made a video attacking my religion, that would be their (ill informed) opinion.  Don't get me wrong, I understand why people are upset.  But should people really die over this?  Can't we concentrate on things like feeding kids in Cairo or increasing the value of the Euro?  Come on people, lets start acting like we live on this planet together- because we do.

My "News Diet"

As suggested in class, I've started using the app Pulse on my Kindle Fire.  I love it!!! I can see multiple sources of news, and multiple story teasers for each source.  It works perfectly for me because I can skim through to find the stories I actually care about (I enjoy world politics).  Also, right outside our newsroom there is a stack of The New York Times.  I grabbed one after last class and read it over.  In fact, I think that's where my first reaction post will come from....

What is News?

The news is information given to a society about current events, or topics of interest; the news is any information that affects our lives.