Healthy eating response

This how-to was much better than the one we read last week from Men's Health. I found the expert comments to be much more convincing, the steps themselves to be much more informative, the writing to be better, the premise to be more intelligent, the points to be more convincing, and on and on. This was pretty much exactly how a how-to should read, even if it wasn't particularly eye-opening, and certainly not as eye-opening as I think its writer thought it was.

The intro is much longer than the intro to the previous how-to – it's a full page – but that's easily justified by the fact that the steps (and they are true steps here, not simply separate but related sections) are longer as well. Structurally, it does everything one can ask for from a how-to. The steps come in a logical order, and they're followed up by a neat little addendum that functions well.

The steps here are packed to the brim with information: experts' quotes, statistics, examples from restaurant menus of the points being illustrated. As such, the writer's voice isn't totally allowed to breathe. For a highly informative story like this, though, I don't think that's such a big deal. The article does its job. It isn't supposed to be a pleasurable, aesthetic read; it's supposed to be a wake-up call. Like I said earlier, that child health in America isn't at its best right now isn't necessarily revelatory, but it is important and this article provides suggestions to fix it in however small a way it can. For what kind of article it is, I'm not sure it could have been done much better.

Seduce Any Woman response

That was really dumb.

I like Men's Health for some things. I use a workout that I found in there (The Spartacus Workout) on a semi-regular basis to mix things up at the gym. I think the Eat This, Not That column is interesting. But when it veers into sex and courtship it almost always gets annoying. This article said very little but put that very little in the mouths of experts to make it sound good and insulted me as a reader.

The intro that served as the lead was tame and clearly only there because they needed a lead and not because it contained anything inspired. The sections were neatly laid out and clearly subdivided, but their content was terrible, so the neat organization is basically moot.

I really, really hope my how-to comes out better than this.

Story 2 outline

Fanzine how-to/historical retrospective

-Intro
1. Assemble your team
2. Pick your focus
3. Set up interviews/contacts
4. Put the zine together
5. Print and distribute

Pearls Before Breakfast response

The Washington Post – the source of "The Peekaboo Paradox," my favorite story from the first part of the semester – continues to be nothing short of awe-inspiring. I absolutely LOVED "Pearls Before Breakfast," the sorta-profile, actually-study-of-all-human-beings piece on Joshua Bell's incognito violin performance in Washington. This article was thought-provoking and brilliant at every turn and I have practically no criticisms of it, and the ones I have are petty. Gene Weingarten knocked this one out of the park.

From the lead, I was gripped. It gives a little bit away without revealing the whole picture, but it manages to do so in a way that isn't just annoyingly cryptic, something some articles that try this method are guilty of doing. It kept me intrigued while it revealed pieces of the picture. It even got to the nut graf – paragraph three, by my estimation – before it revealed who the violinist was. And you know what? It didn't matter to me. I was so sold on the article that I was willing to let it take me wherever it wanted to, even considering its rather mammoth length, which, far from bothering me, left me wanting even more.

Structurally, I liked how it was broken into segments based on different people from the video and the ways they reacted to Bell's performance. It kept the sections brief and the reading interesting and varied, and I think the structure was a big contributor to how short the story felt even when it was actually quite long. Not much to say other than that the author used structure to his advantage in a big way.

If I have any complaint, it's that the ending is a little forced and even borderline promotional. There didn't need to be some tie-up to this story about Bell, because the story isn't about Bell. I don't care that he's coming back to the States to accept an award, because this story is more about the way people react to staggering works of genius (sorry, I know Bell wouldn't approve) when they're out of context, not about this particular violinist. Such a minor complaint, though. I absolutely loved this story.

The Courage of Detroit response

Okay, maybe I'm missing something, but I thought this article was basically a trainwreck. I like stories about tortured sports franchises and about standing fast in support of your hometown and all that jazz, but the writer inserted himself into the story so much that this was just a painful reading experience.

I thought the anecdote about getting Barry Sanders, Steve Yzerman, Cecil Fielder and Joe Dumars together was cool, but then it spiraled into a commentary about how players from other cities wouldn't be so humble together. Umm, really? Evidence? The chip on the writer's shoulder as a Detroit resident was so prevalent and annoying that the piece suffered under its own weight.

Structurally, I thought the lead was promising, and when the author started bringing in the "we" and "our" bits I thought he would keep it up for a couple paragraphs at most, and that it would be effective as a result. Instead, the entire thing was done in this kind of overdramatized, us-against-the-world love letter format. There was parallel structure throughout the piece, at the very least, but it wasn't particularly engaging and actually enraged me.

Interestingly, there was an article done by ESPN after LeBron left Cleveland that was similar in tone and subject but infinitely better. Here's the link if you haven't read it: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=101201/Cleveland

Interview questions - Story 2

Since all of my sources are at some level involved in the production of extreme music fanzines, and since this is a how-to and I'd like to gather insights from all of my sources on similar topics, I can ask them basically the same across the board. Here are some that I'm thinking about using:

1) What was the height of fanzine relevance? Are we anywhere near that today?
2) Why do people continue to make print fanzines in the age of the Internet?
3) What are the technical and physical considerations that one must take when publishing a fanzine? Paper, printing press, distribution, writers, contact with bands, etc.
4) Fanzines are the most democratic form of music journalism, eliminating the idea that it has to be done by "real journalists." Who do you think that style appeals to, and why do you think it appeals to them?
5) How narrow of a focus does a fanzine need? Is it dictated solely by the personal tastes of the person publishing it?
6) Why has fanzine culture gravitated toward extreme and underground forms of music? Is it sheer necessity, or do you feel that those bands that fanzines cover share a certain ethic with the zines themselves?
7) The people at a magazine like Terrorizer or Decibel are obviously fans of the music that they cover. What makes your publication a fanzine and theirs not one?
8) What is the process of securing paper and a publisher/press? Does that come before or after the collection of content?
9) How do you get in touch with bands? For those who published zines before the Internet, how was reaching bands different then?
10) Are there legal or copyright issues in interviewing bands and publishing the material alongside photos without a company behind you?
11) How do bands react to being approached for fanzine interviews? Do they differentiate between doing press for a zine with a tiny circulation and an article that's going to show up on one of the major metal sites, for example?
12) (For the zine publishers whose works have been compiled through Bazillion Points) What was it like going through a for-profit publishing house when the ethos of fanzines was so fiercely DIY? How did you decide that granting them permission to publish your zines was the right choice?

More will undoubtedly come up as I start to build the backbone for the article but I think these are a good start.

Drinking Games response

The Malcolm Gladwell article we read for today's class was a pretty significant departure from a lot of what we've been reading. While there are quotes that were gathered from reporting, the article reads a lot more like a simplification of an anthropology journal than a true magazine story. Indeed, the sources are all academics, and their work has been (presumably) dumbed down considerably so that average Joe readers of Malcolm Gladwell's website can understand their conclusions. It's a riveting story, but I wouldn't particularly say that that's Gladwell's doing.

The lead is a scene of Professor Dwight Heath, then a Yale graduate student, finding out that he'd be doing his anthropology research in Bolivia. This sets up the first conveniently numbered section of the article, which takes place entirely in Bolivia and back in New Haven while going over research specifically acquired in Bolivia.

The numbered sections make it every easy to pick apart the structure of the article. The second section deals with a reconsideration of the definition of "alcoholism" and the changing research on the effects of booze. The third section deals with different reactions people have to alcohol and how the standard assumptions are likely false. The fourth section draws out the contrast between different societies of drinkers – namely the Bolivian boozers who drink lab-grade alcohol every weekend and the Italian Americans who drink every day in moderation. The fifth section tries to make sense of all the anecdotes and research that have been presented and closes on a somewhat awkward kicker recapping a Coors Light commercial that saddens Gladwell in its simplicity.

While the article is easy to understand and dissect, and gracefully written, I wasn't terribly impressed by the reporting itself. It's one thing to interview experts, and it's another to paraphrase their findings. Gladwell is undoubtedly a genius, but I don't think that necessarily makes him a great journalist.

The End of Men response

The Atlantic's "The End of Men" is one of the longest and most powerful pieces we've read. Not powerful in the same sense as "The Peekaboo Paradox" or "Can You Say Hero?", but merely staggering in its scope, its presentation of facts, and its workmanlike (workwomanlike?) style. It's clearly a trend piece, but it has a lot more oomph than the Gideon Bible piece we read for Tuesday, partly because of its length but more so because of its content.

The lead is both a scene-setting/anecdotal lead but also a historical one. It doesn't put us right there with the sperm racing each other in the present tense, but it provides enough color that the summary is fleshed out enough to be interesting and entertaining. It also lets us meet the cowboy biologist and we really get to know him through the descriptions and quotes we're offered.

The nut graf is a bit ambiguous to me but seems to come in the 8th paragraph, starting with "Man has been the dominant sex since, well, the dawn of mankind." This paragraph gets at the broader heart of the matter than any of the anecdotal grafs before it. It explains the broader societal shifts toward a preference for females and, more importantly, why that shift has begun. If I can roll the 9th paragraph in with it, you have pretty much all of the information that the article will expand upon.

The rest of the article's incredible length expands on the trend and points to numerous examples and ways in which women are perhaps the better-off sex in today's world and the world of the future. It intersperses this by taking us into scenes -- the men's support group, the community college, the sorority house -- but it keeps hitting us with more facts and figures as well. It creates an almost exhausting feel, not because the material is boring but because there's just so much overwhelming evidence (at least in this reporter's estimation, we don't hear much from studies done to prove the opposite) that women are the gender of forever and that men need to pull their acts together.

The style remains consistent throughout, but it's worth noting the revisiting of the lead towards the end. At this point in the reporter's arguments, the cowboy rogue seems so radically out of step with the world that his reintroduction, and the reporter calls attention to that. The kicker is as humorous as it is harrowing -- or maybe that's my testosterone speaking.

Gideon Bible response

Newsweek's Gideon Bible piece is easily the shortest story we've read for class thus far, and as such, it lacked a lot of the depth of some of the articles. I thought it was still a pretty good read, even if I have a small criticism.

I understand that this is a trend piece to show that fewer hotels are stocking their classrooms with Bibles, but it would have been nice to get a quote or two from a staunchly religious hotel mogul arguing in favor of keeping Gideon Bibles around. A longer piece would have no excuse not to include a few paragraphs from someone with that viewpoint.

For what it is, though, this is an interesting story, albeit one without much to dissect. The lead is a good, somewhat newsy one, and it does an excellent job of setting up right away what the story will be about. In a sense, the lead also serves as the nut graf and the Colonel Trautman moment all at once. The first paragraph introduces the story, tells what it will primarily be about, and drops a few "shocking facts." It makes sense due to the story's short length, and it's done pretty effectively.

The tone is pretty objective and uncommitted, though the aforementioned omission of any real opposition is problematic. The kicker tries a little too hard to be cute and isn't very effective, but it still fits the content of the story.

Sources for Story 2

Print sources:
Touch and Go: The Complete Hardcore Punk Zine '79-'83 (Bazillion Points)
Metalion: The Slayer Mag Diaries (Bazillion Points)
Glorious Times: A Pictorial of the Death Metal Scene 1984-1991 (self-published)

Human sources:
Dayan Weller
Tesco Vee
Dave Stimson
Steve Miller
Jon "Metalion" Kristiansen
Alan Moses
Brian Pattison

All human sources except for Weller are pending response at this point, so alternately, I can radically localize the piece by talking to people involved in the Bloomington scene who I know through friends rather than give the piece its current, historical bent.

Dark matter alternative lead

No one knows what dark matter is, or if it even really exists.

But that hasn't stopped a team of physicists from commandeering a mile-deep hole in the ground left behind by a boarded-up gold mine in South Dakota with the express intention of finding some.

The 50 researchers staked out in Lead, South Dakota (pop. 2,848) comprise the membership of the LUX project, so named for the Large Underground Xenon dark matter detector that is the crux of their operation. LUX is one of ten projects in the world right now searching for dark matter, and its members are driven not just by the usual pride that scientists take in the onward march of knowledge but also by wanting to be first.

Science hasn't settled on just what dark matter is or what it's made of, but the prevailing theory holds that it is composed of WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles, so that's what LUX hunts for in the enormous pit beneath Lead. Of course, there's always the chance that they're wrong.

“If it ends up that dark matter is not made of WIMPs, it will be much more disappointing in a philosophical sense than in a personal sense, in that humankind won’t know what dark matter is,” project co-founder Tom Shutt says. “We’re fully prepared that we might not find it ourselves. But if we as a community don’t find it, that will be awfully disappointing.”

Dark matter article response

"Almost a Mile Below South Dakota, A Race to Find Dark Matter" from Popular Science read a lot like the Apple article in the sense that it took a topic that is difficult for laypeople to understand – namely the concept of dark matter, an unproven physical phenomenon – and successfully communicated it to people not in the field. That's exactly what Popular Science's job is, even implied in its name, so that should come as no surprise. But I always think it's neat when journalism can be used to take something technical and make it not only accessible but engaging for people who wouldn't necessarily be interested in it at face value.

Structurally, "Dark Matter" read a lot more like an extended newspaper feature than most of the articles we've read this semester. The lead is historical, but not particularly scene-setting or "cutesy," like so many of the stories we read get away with. The story then goes through and basically just tells the story of this mining town and its unusual present circumstance. There's no real scenes, and if there's sections, it's just where the writer takes time away from telling the story to provide additional science and background on dark matter. It's an interesting story, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot to say about it from a structural perspective.

Apple article response

"How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong" from Wired is exactly the kind of business story I like: one that barely reads like one. For a year in high school, I subscribed to The Economist and I always flipped right to the section on entrepreneurs doing interesting things. This article takes that premise and disseminates it to an even wider audience, taking a company that most of the Wired target audience is intimately familiar with (Apple) and digging into its inner workings.

It's a borderline profile, too, though it certainly has a much wider cast of characters than a typical profile typically yields. We really get to know the way Apple CEO Steve Jobs works, namely, that he's an asshole but no one cares because he's so good at what he does and inspires so much creativity in his employees. More than being an article about Jobs, though, the piece is a rumination on the Apple business model, why it works, and why even minor disappointments lead to what it terms "post-Macworld depression."

The article isn't terribly critical of Apple, though it does bring up some complaints consumers have. It's a slightly fluffy article that has no shortage of praise for Apple. As a satisfied MacBook Pro and iPod Classic owner, it didn't bug me, but perhaps as a critical reader of magazine stories, it did a little bit. Regardless, the style of the article was all in place and made for an enjoyable, breezy read on two subjects – business and technology – that are rarely enjoyable and breezy.

Story 2 Ideas

I have two plans for my second story, both of which zero in a little bit more on my personal interests than my profile did. I'd like to write a how-to article on starting a fanzine, specifically a metal/hardcore fanzine, using people who have launched their own as sources, and taking a look at the state of the handmade, Xeroxed fanzine in the era of the Internet. The other story I'm interested in writing is about the separation of art and artist. There have been similar articles on some sites I read, usually talking about people like Roman Polanski and Michael Vick. I'd like to take a look at it from the extreme metal perspective, dealing with bands like Arghoslent who believe in genetic racial superiority or Burzum whose sole member has been convicted for murder and arson. Right now, I'm leaning toward the how-to fanzine article as I have some sources lined up already.

If I decided to do a profile instead because these two stories don't come to fruition, I have a subject for that as well: Mr. Chris Davis, my high school English and journalism teacher who also plays in bar bands. It's a fallback, though. My primary interest would lie in the fanzine piece.

Descriptive writing

It glows, but not with pure light.

It's more a half-light, merely hinted at by the beams that sneak through the plastic sheath that adorns it. It can't be fairly called white – that would be an insult to the color – nor quite yellow, as its brightness is questionable at best. It's sort of an indescribable shade between the two, and it emanates from long, fluorescent tubes whose outlines are only visible behind the thick plastic thanks to the photons they're emitting.

No, the lights in this classroom aren't the most brilliant on the planet, but they get the job done.

And right now, they're working overtime.

Mr. Lambersie mini-profile

There's a dinosaur in the New York Museum of Natural History called a lambeosaurus.

Mr. Lambersie – Lambo, for short – probably didn't discover it, but Ali Martin still emailed him after she saw it just to make sure. Given Lambo's multitude of interests, it isn't at all unlikely that he might have had a stint as an archaeologist and dug up a pile of bones that no one had seen before.

"He was learning with us," Martin said of Lambo's role as coach of the academic decathlon team at Crown Point High School in Crown Point, Ind. "Whether it was history or English or art he was really dedicated to learning it."

In title, though, Lambo is an English teacher. Martin met him during her junior year of high school when he taught her AP Literature class. That class, she says, set her on her life course.

"I credit him as the person who gave me the initiative to start writing seriously," she said.

Lambo's pedigree as a phenomenal English teacher isn't the lone trait that made him so influential on Martin's life, though. He's also "an absolute asshole" who is "so funny" and "hilarious."

As much of those revelations came from Martin's time in his class as it did from spending two hours after school with him twice a week as a part of the academic decathlon team. It was there that the two were able to forge even deeper bonds.

Still, his presence in that AP Literature classroom junior year, the hilarious asshole that he is, made his biggest mark on Martin's life.

"If I ever write a novel, I plan to dedicate it to him," she said.

Sidney Crosby profile

I'm a huge sports fan, but I've often sat on the fence about whether I'd like to become a sportswriter because my allegiance to my favorite teams is too great. I couldn't be like Mike Wilbon, who loves his Bears but can speak with great admiration for Aaron Rodgers, or Bill Simmons who concedes that Magic Johnson was better than Larry Bird despite his lifelong love affair with all things Boston. I'm concerned, I guess, that my writing might come off a bit too much like Sean Conboy's, the author of "Don't Trust Sidney Crosby With Your Car Keys" from Pittsburgh Magazine. I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume this guy doesn't think too highly of Alex Ovechkin, but I could be wrong.

That's not to say there's necessarily anything wrong with biased sports journalism. I read a Spurs blog, a Bengals blog and a Reds blog every single morning when I wake up, and none of those blogs' authors are remotely objective about the teams they cover. But when you're writing a profile piece like Conboy's, there might be at least some obligation to be even-handed. Our author feels no such responsibility.

Don't get me wrong; I like Sidney Crosby. I think he's probably the best player in the NHL today – although as a Blue Jackets fan I'd give anything for Rick Nash to be better. I just didn't find this article to be anything that needed written. I guess I felt the same way about the Megan Fox article we read during the first week. Is there some new, interesting insight on Sidney Crosby in the piece? No, we pretty much learn that he's really nice, really hardworking, and really good at hockey. Well, no shit. But wait – he's kind of a prankster! Uh, he plays professional sports. Why are you telling me this?

I guess if I was a huge Penguins fan this would be an awesome article. But I'm not. From a style perspective, it's decent, but never once is it gripping. The lead and kicker are both about as manufactured as it comes. "Whoa, this guy is a paradox, check out these opposite-sounding things that he is both of!" and "Ha, ha. Watch me quote the title of my own article!" both come off about as sincere and interesting as the liberal use of puns. This is a fluff piece written for a Pittsburgh audience that will eat it up, and no one aside from Penguins fans and people told they needed to read it for a class likely read the entire thing. Or am I somehow bitter? Go Jackets!

Medical Marijuana response

I guess I'm not entirely sure what the Time article we read for today's (canceled) class, "Medical-Marijuana Schools Grow New Industry in Michigan," was supposed to teach us. The story was definitely the most newsy thing we've read in the semester thus far, and it was certainly competent, but it failed to grab my attention. An unaccredited college that teaches kids how to grow pot could be fodder for a really juicy, interesting feature piece, but the only thought that I walked away from this article with was "Oh, that's something that exists. Huh."

From a style perspective, there's not a ton to talk about, but the journalism is quite solid. There's lots of good quotes and sources, and some of the anecdotes – like the 52-year-old student whose stash and grow lamps were stolen – were pretty interesting. I suppose this was meant to be an example of extending a news story to magazine length and adding a little bit of the analysis that a magazine can offer. Its relative objectivity was comparable to that of "The Girl Who Conned the Ivy League," but the story wasn't nearly as inherently interesting.

Furthermore, the content of the story is a little bit eye-roll-worthy, in my opinion. A whole bunch of dudes rented space across the street from a KFC to grow weed and are calling it a college? It's great that people who need medical marijuana in Michigan are able to obtain it, but this kind of seems like glorifying pot subculture and trying to put a stamp of officialdom on it, and nothing drives me up the wall quite like that. It's like if NORML could give out fake diplomas. I realize this is ancillary to the point, but it certainly didn't help my thoughts on the article.

I thought the journalism work done for this article was pretty good, but at the end of the day, I just wasn't that high on the total package. Huh-huh. I said high.

Story outline

-Lead, describing some aspect of my subject's (Jackie Matava) first scene onstage in Faust
-Transition into "where it all began" – spend some time on her childhood
-Fast forward to high school/college applications, shifting focus
-Spend some time on her undergrad at Vassar
-Spend a good deal of time on her semester in England, where she (finally) had the revelation that she wanted to sing for a living
-Grad school application process
-Her time at IU thus far
-Kicker back at the opera, presumably with closing scene

**Also going to try to intersperse scenes from the opera into the narrative of the story, hopefully going so far as to hint at parallels between Jackie and her character. Need to see the opera first.

Interview questions

I kind of envision my interviews for my profile to be free-flowing conversations that lend insight on the character who I'm profiling. However, here's a few of the questions I hope to walk away with decent answers to:

-How did you get involved in opera? Was it parental pressure, or did you take enough of a liking to it independently to want to do it for your life?
-When you were an undergrad what level of participation were you able to have in performances?
-What is it about opera that makes you love it enough to center your life around it?
- What's the daily routine of someone in graduate school for opera?
-What is your favorite aria/character, and what part would you most like to sing someday in your career? (generic questions like this can get people talking, anyway)
-What's the relationship of a singer in an opera to the musicians, the director, the conductor, and everyone else involved in the huge production?
-Why IU?
-How do you balance performing in operas with the coursework inherent in graduate school?

There will undoubtedly be more, but some of it will come right out of the conversation. I'm hoping to get more about her childhood, since deciding to be an opera singer seems like a weird thing for anyone under about 18 to do. I'm also going to try to play up some of the "high pressure life" angles, and hopefully she'll be receptive. I've sort of got to let the story breathe and let her guide me, but I think this is a good starting point.

Mister Rogers profile response

It's tough to put into words how good the Mister Rogers profile we read for class really was. It's difficult to imagine a better magazine article than this one. It takes Mister Rogers, a symbol of the simple and uncomplicated and beloved, and fleshes him out more fully while doing nothing to dispel the idea of his simplicity. He's as great a person as we all imagined he is, but not necessarily any more complicated. He does the same thing every day, he loves everyone, he prays for everyone, he asks for prayers, and he's generally just one of the best people ever, if this profile is to be believed.

Structurally, the article was definitely the most modernist, stylized piece we've read. It's almost stream-of-consciousness at times, and there's a handful of brief vignettes about people whose lives were touched by Mister Rogers in some way interspersed throughout the article at seemingly random times. They aren't random, though. They're crucial to the story, and they serve only to flesh it out and make it a better piece. All of them brilliantly show another side of Mister Rogers' seemingly endless kindness and generosity, and they make his story more complete.

I thought the lead was pretty interesting. The writer doesn't insert himself into the story as a character so much, but he decided to lead with a memory from his own childhood in an article figuring heavily on childhood and memory. We don't get introduced to Mister Rogers until after the first formal break in the story. The lead reads a bit like a vague, half-remembered fever dream, but to the writer, it's special, and that's what the entire article means to communicate: what's special to different people, and how Mister Rogers is tied so indelibly to so many of those people.

Still, it's not an overly effusive, panegyric article. It's real, it just happens that the real Mister Rogers is a great person.

The Peekaboo Paradox response

Gene Weingarten's "The Peekaboo Paradox" is undoubtedly my favorite thing we've read so far this semester. Over eighteen printed pages, it consistently reinvents itself, sets up tantalizing cliffhangers then aptly rewards its audience's patience, and gives a privileged look into a somewhat tragic and inherently relatable story. "The Great Zucchini," as protagonist Eric Knauss (whose real name isn't revealed until halfway down the third printed page – a technique I quite liked) calls himself when hosting kids' parties, is a complex character whose bizarre life is fleshed out extremely well in the piece.

I won't recount plot details since that seems a bit superfluous, but I do want to call attention to the three completely separate phases that I was able to break the article into as I was reading. First, we meet the Great Zucchini, a do-no-wrong child entertainer whose simple, effective act has made him the toast of Washington, D.C. This section is as heartwarming as it is anything else, and serves to provide context for the life that we eventually get introduced to. The second phase shows the shambles of the real Eric Knauss' life. He lives in an empty apartment, he owes huge gambling debts, he doesn't know what he owes the IRS but he knows he isn't square with them, he's had his license suspended for forgetting to pay parking tickets – in a nutshell, he most certainly does not have his shit together. The third and final phase tries to find a reason for the ruins of his life. His mother is interviewed and speculates about her divorce from his father and an episode in which their neighbors were shot to death while he was home, but it's unclear what really made Eric the way he is, and he either doesn't know or isn't telling. Perhaps the final mini-chapter or postscript throws us back into the world of the Great Zucchini, and in a fashion fairly typical of these "unanswered questions" articles, opines that it doesn't really matter why his life is the way it is as long as he can keep doing his job so well.

Breaking the article up into those parts communicated the story as effectively I could imagine it being communicated, and the cliffhanger moments, such as when the writer tells us that Eric's mother told him what happened across the hall then waited several paragraphs to tell the readers what that was, only add to the piece's page-turning quality. The structure only serves to strengthen the already-great story, which is what any magazine article should do.

Sources for profile

Jacquelyn Matava, subject of the profile

Mary Ann Hart, Matava's mentor and a professor in the Jacobs School

David Effron, conductor for Faust

Tomer Zvulun, stage director for Faust

C. David Higgins, costume designer for Faust (maybe)

The Girl Who Conned the Ivy League response

Sabrina Rubin Erdely's profile piece on Esther Reed (and her many other identities) was a poignant, tragic that took the story of someone currently in prison and implicit in a number of identity theft and fraud-related crimes and made it completely sympathetic. The lengthiest article we've read thus far for this course by far, "The Girl Who Conned the Ivy League" manages to stay wholly engrossing throughout its duration, and its even-handed tone while dealing with myriad controversial issues takes it to the next level into being a really fantastic article.

The lead is interesting because it doesn't take place chronologically near the beginning of the story, nor does it take place at the end. After the first part of the story, we're taken back in time, and from there, we move forward and eventually well beyond the point in time expressed in the opening. It takes us through some uncomfortable territory but always in a fascinating way.

I was especially moved by a bit near the ending: "To look around Brooke's hometown today — a once-proud textile town haunted by unemployment, methamphetamine
and teen pregnancy — is to glimpse what her future might have held, had she not vanished." It reminded me very much of the fantastic 2010 film Winter's Bone, which indeed had been flashing through my mind quite often while I read the article. The story doesn't end on a positive note, or a necessarily negative one – it just kind of hangs there. One girl is missing, one is found but in prison. Life goes on.

Arthur Kade profile response

Dan P. Lee, the Philadelphia Magazine writer responsible for today's profile of Arthur Kade, had a tall task before him when he set out to write that piece. He had to humanize one of the most despised "unmitigated douchebags" in America and make a lengthy profile on him more than just an excuse to trash the guy. He rips the self-aggrandizing wannabe actor a new one when it's necessary, but he also paints a picture that shows that having the balls to do what he did is a two way street. It requires great hubris, but also great courage. Lee's profile does a good job of illustrating that duality while supplying plenty of head-scratching moments and laughs along the way.

One strategy Lee uses to keep readers from dismissing Kade despite his misogynistic female rating system and completely delusional belief that he'll one day win an Oscar is to garner sympathy for him. The most effective way he does that is by showing some of the comments from Kade's website, which range from incredulous pleas that he's just kidding, to profanity-laced namecalling, to death threats/suicide requests. It's hard to imagine being so annoyed with someone's Web presence and misplaced confidence that you'd go that far, and Lee exploits that.

He also tries to diffuse some of Kade's hubris by showing that he had a tough childhood. Unfortunately, Kade ruins this by being completely aware of his desire to be the center of attention. If you can diagnose yourself with being psychologically inclined toward egotism and still choose to behave the way that Kade does, some of the sympathy that comes with that dissolves.

The reporting technique of following Kade around to his two major stomping grounds (besides the Internet) – nightclubs and auditions – worked tremendously well. It gave insight into his live that at the same time suggested that he's an insufferable prick and an alright, misunderstood guy, without doing much to judge or conclude either way. His closing is elegant and almost melodramatic as he hopes the best for Kade and the other "actors" from his audition, and in turn, we do, too. It's a nice closing for one of the best "defending the indefensible"-type profiles I've ever read.

"Good Morning, Megan Fox" response

My first reaction when I sat down to read Esquire's "Good Morning, Megan Fox" story, written by Greg Williams, was "Wow, I can't possibly take this publication seriously with all the links to 'sexy Megan Fox video' and 'Megan Fox Thong Naked Pic' cluttering the page." So admittedly, I went in with a little bit of a bias.

The lead – "Megan Fox won't kick her horse" – did little to assuage my skepticism. It reads like your standard-issue vague opening designed to force you to read on, but it was too vague, and I just didn't care. Upon reading the rest of the article, I wasn't exactly blown away. Yes, it was generally well-written for its intended audience – men who want to look at Megan Fox naked, no doubt – and did a good enough job of humanizing her and demystifying her sex symbol status in a reasonably persuasive manner, but that intangible thing that would have pushed it into being a great article, in my opinion, was missing.

For one, no one is interviewed except for Ms. Fox herself. We get an image of the actress that is completely created and perpetuated by her. I'm not calling it inaccurate, but it's far from fully fleshed out. The sole quote from the horse tour guide Michael hardly has anything to do with the story, aside from providing a little more background color for the setting of the interview. A sentence from an old flame, a family member, or a costar could have improved the article tenfold. As it stands, it reads as hugely egotistical, even while it takes great pains to demonstrate that it isn't.

Second, even though the writer lets Ms. Fox tell her side of being thought of as a sex symbol, between the quotes, he's still incredibly flippant and plays up her sexuality endlessly. Between lines like "She's not licking her fork seductively, or smearing barbecue sauce all over her face, or dripping mashed potatoes down her chest" as though he half-expected her to do those things and the interruptive links to "Esquire's exclusive sexy Megan Fox video!" the agenda is evident. Maybe that's fair, maybe that's what the audience wants, but I didn't care much for it.

As it stands, I found this article to be a fairly well-written but pandering profile of an inexplicably iconic figure of a vapid culture. Some women are sexy and interesting, but Esquire didn't choose to go that route with this article.

Story Ideas

Ten story ideas:

1. Profile of a semi-local boxer
2. Profile of an ex-IU basketball player who still lives in Bloomington, preferably elderly and curmudgeonly
3. Story on the "real Pawn Stars" of southern Indiana interviewing local pawnbrokers
4. Trend story on international graduate students at IU who did undergrad back home
5. Story on the advent of the IU Cinema
6. Story on the independent coffee shops in town, with a focus on competing with the hugely popular Starbucks locations on Indiana Ave. and in the Union
7. Piece on the decline of record stores and the ones in Bloomington that have managed to stay in business and how their business models have changed
8. Profile of an ballet student
9. Profile of an opera student
10. Profile of Tom Crean