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.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
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.”
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
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.
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.
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.
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