The times 3/23-2/26

Monday
an article that i thought had a pretty good lead was the one about violence in Tuscon. This lead started out by setting the scene. it made it more dramatic by mentioning the blood and the bullet hole in the home, which was a very good start to the story.
Also, there were a couple articles that I noticed doing a good job of trying to keep the reader reading past the jump to the later page. These articles were the story about international trade and then the one about economics and roads or urban sprawl.
The article about trade was in the middle of discussing a seeming contradiction between countries agreeing to promote trade and actually implementing barriers to trade. since it was an interesting discussion, I wanted to keep reading to find out what was going to happen.
The article about expanding urban sprawl with stimulus money made me go on to the next page because it mentioned New Hampshire right before the jump. Since i live in NH, I naturally wanted to know what was going on.
This made me think how the sentence or two before the jump to a different page is almost like a second lead: in the first lead you need to get the reader interested in the story as a whole, and right before the jump you need to re-catch their interest so that they will actually go on reading.

Tuesday
an article in today's paper that i think qualifies as a local issue story is the one about the strip-search of a 13-year-old girl at her school. since there seem to be some people on the side of the girl and some on the side of the school, it seems to be a very interesting issue.
another interesting story was the one that discussed how candy sales seem to be rising since the start of the economic crisis. This is interesting because it gives a completely new angle to the economics issue.
it was interesting to see that there were two different stories about suspected terrorists and their trials. this is something that you don't see too often, so i wonder if they meant to put them both in the paper the same day as some sort of larger strategy, or if it just happened to work out that way.
then there was a development in the AIG case: someone is trying to convince people who work there to pay back their bonuses. I think with stories as big as this one, it is important to follow up with developments as they happen.

Wednesday
and interesting front-page story was the one about how a school is trying to implement a new grading system. it discussed a NY school that has changed to giving out number grades instead of the normal letter grades. This story then went on to make it a national issue as it discussed the fact that this school is not the only one implementing this new grading system, and by talking about what educators in general think of this strategy.
in yet another article with an economic twist, today's paper discussed prison costs. this was something that i had never really thought about as an important cost, but it was an interesting thing to look at through the economics lens.
another article that caught my eye was the one about the debate over the first amendment and political campaigns. this seems to be an issue that is focused on politics but could lead down a slippery slope of banning things in the future.

Thursday
one of the stories in today's paper started out as a local story and then broadened out to a national issue. this was the story about tent cities and homelessness. it began talking about one man, and one city, and then broadened out to discuss similar situations across the nation.
the budget story, although not the most interesting topic for me, had a couple of writing things that I thought were well done. The first was in the lead. While this was not a dramatic story, and therefore could not have a tremendously dramatic lead, this story did a good job of using creative words like "loped" to set the mood. This story also made me want to keep reading past the jump to a further page because of the way the writer set up the story right before the jump. the sentence before you would have to move on to a later page was in the middle of explaining what the writer called a "paradox," and then ended in the middle of explaining what paradox s/he was talking about.
The story about Mrs. Clinton going to Mexico is one that probably would not have caught my eye if Mrs. Clinton was not involved. This is an example about how stories are much more newsworthy if they involve famous people.
And finally, I liked the story about the online age quiz. I'm not sure exactly what I liked about it, but it almost made me want to go online and try out that quiz for myself.