An article by the NY Times. Anyone see anything wrong on how this article is written?
Man Is Shot in Charlotte as Unrest Stretches to Second Night
Man Is Shot in Charlotte as Unrest Stretches to Second Night
Charlotte
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The New York Times calls it "unrest" while other news outlets have used the word "riots". I noted that it took 9 people to write the article. I'll go get another cup of coffee and read it again.
The last line of the article is a quote from some moron activist. What does he know that we don't?
The police, he said, “are out here killing people, and they don’t even know their backgrounds,” he said. “They could be killing the next president.”
The last line of the article is a quote from some moron activist. What does he know that we don't?
The police, he said, “are out here killing people, and they don’t even know their backgrounds,” he said. “They could be killing the next president.”
There are lots of things wrong with how the article is written. While mostly complete, and containing the Five Ws along with the proper local and national context, it is a very disjointed article. It reads like every paragraph was written on a playing card, the deck cut, then shuffled, and then splayed out for viewing. That's because no one actually sat down and wrote the article, as it is almost certainly a compilation of texts and tweets from reporters and other news source reports, collated by editors in New York and given the byline of the Atlanta Bureau Chief and one Atlanta reporter who is in Charlotte covering the story.
Nothing wrong with that, as that particular bit of information is backstory to the main story, that of a man who was shot in the second night of the rioting in an apparent civilian-on-civilian shooting.
The race of the cop who shot Kieth Scott really doesn't matter, though. That issue is the fact that the police, be they black or white, view black men as a threat even when they post no threat. The police's own statements show there is a serious problem with that. Officer go to an apartment complex to serve an arrest warrant on someone who wasn't Kieth Scott.
"Officers observed a subject inside a vehicle in the apartment complex," police said in the press release. "The subject exited the vehicle armed with a firearm. Officers observed the subject get back into the vehicle at which time they began to approach the subject."
[why would the police approach the subject, who has nothing whatsoever to do with their arrest warrant? It's perfectly legal to open carry a firearm in North Carolina.]
The statement goes on to say, "The subject got back out of the vehicle armed with a firearm and posed an imminent deadly threat to officers who subsequently fired their weapon striking the subject.”
[again, it's perfectly legal to open carry a firearm in North Carolina. Why did he pose an "imminent deadly threat" to officers? Is it because he was black and had a gun? If so, then the black cop who shot Scott posed the same exact threat.]
If you are a black man in America, exercising your constitutional right to keep and bear arms can be fatal. You might think the National Rifle Association and its amen chorus would be outraged, but apparently they believe Second Amendment rights are for whites only too.
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It's because 9 dealers had their hands on the deck:
Reporting was contributed by Emily Harris, Erica Berenstein and Megan Specia from Charlotte, and Yamiche Alcindor, Jonah Engel Bromwich, Niraj Chokshi, Christopher Mele and Timothy Williams from New York. Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
Maybe they are waiting for all the facts to come out instead of joining the chorus line of those who say this is just another racial incident.
If it was a white officer who did the shooting, the 'back story' would still have mentioned that at the beginning of the article if not in the headline: ' Second Day Of Unrest After A White Officer Kills A Black Man.' Reporters and editors know what they are doing . Burying the race of the officer near the bottom of this article is dishonest journalism and intentional.
If it's important to mention the race upfront in a news story when it's a white officer who did the shooting, it's just as important to mention it (upfront) if was a black officer.
But they don't do that much. Why? Because it would probably deemed politically incorrect to have a headline that said 'Black officer kills black person'.
But it would be the responsible thing to do.
If it's important to mention the race upfront in a news story when it's a white officer who did the shooting, it's just as important to mention it (upfront) if was a black officer.
But they don't do that much. Why? Because it would probably deemed politically incorrect to have a headline that said 'Black officer kills black person'.
But it would be the responsible thing to do.
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No, the back story would not have been mentioned at the beginning of the article, regardless of who did the shooting two days earlier. The story wasn't about that shooting, it was about the shooting of a man during the unrest. Only after the telling of that story should the back story be given.
Yes, they do, which is why the article is correctly laid out, nearly in textbook fashion.
On the very first day of your first journalism class, the first thing you learn is the basic news format. The format is drilled into you over and over again during journalism school. Learn the format and you'll be able to write news stories, whether you're a naturally talented writer or not.
The three main parts of a news story are the
Headline
The Lede (or Lead, if you like - it's written as lede to distinguish itself from other possible meanings of the written word, such as the molten lead used in typesetting machines)
Body (The Rest of the Story)
And to break it down even further, most basic news stories should have:
- A headline
- A lede
- A backup quote
- Attribution
- Reaction
- A “nut graph” (or graf)
- Background
- An ending (more for feature stories than hard news stories, though)
- A lede
- A backup quote
- Attribution
- Reaction
- A “nut graph” (or graf)
- Background
- An ending (more for feature stories than hard news stories, though)
The Headline should grab attention and be representative of the story (news headlines are rarely written by reporters and are written by editors)
The Lege should be a one sentence paragraph (the Times article in question screwed up the Lede with a second sentence that doesn't belong there).
The "nut graph" is the "nutshell paragraph" (get it?) that explains the news value of the story in one succinct paragraph. It is usually found in feature stories and not as often in hard news stories, as the news value of hard news stories is usually self-evident. There is no need for a nut graph in this story, but it's the first sentence of the fifth paragraph. A clearer example of a nut graph can be found here. The nut graph should be up near the top of the piece, certainly within the top third.
The Rest of the Story should be short paragraphs of one or two sentences each that five us the Five Ws (Who?, What?, When?, Where?, Why?, And How?), and it gets formatted into a very specific format known as the Inverted Pyramid Structure. It means that the most important, or heaviest information goes at the top of the story, while the least important information goes at the bottom. The lede focuses on Topic A, the most important aspect of the story, and then the the paragraphs that come right after the lede (The Rest of the Story) should also focus on Topic A, since that's what the lede deals with. After Topic A has been adequately dealt with you can move on to Topic B. Deal with Topic B (either a directly related, adjacent or simultaneous topic... or the context) for as many paragraphs as you need, then move on to Topic C (context and background, usually), and so on.
The Pyramid Structure allows editors to scratch paragraphs, or cut the story, from the bottom up without losing the most important parts of the story. The structure was invented during the Civil War, by the way, when correspondents covering the battles would do their reporting, then rush to the nearest telegraph office to have their stories transmitted, via Morse Code, back to their newsrooms. But the telegraph lines were often cut in mid-sentence, sometimes in an act of sabotage. The reporters realized they had to put the most important facts right at the very start of their stories, so that even if most of the details were lost, the main point would get through. The inverted pyramid structure is also why, in part, that most people stop reading after the 4th or 5th paragraph.
But in this story, we have a properly written headline, a good lede except for the second sentence that belongs at the end of the third paragraph, the nut graph, the required backup quote, plenty of attribution, several reactions along with quotes, the background for context, and then it rambles to the ending. because of the nature of the story, it follows more of a hybrid between the classic inverted pyramid and the martini glass, with "the kicker" being a mention of Hillary and Trump.
But like I said, other than the story being disjointed and the clear problems with how all the paragraphs were composed, the story is properly constructed and formatted with the key points being in exactly the right places.
Newp. The exact opposite. You're advocating for agendized news reporting, the crafting of a news article to further an agenda, the same kind of news reporting we see on the highly partisan, highly biased "news" blogs that pretend to be news (so it's understandable why you're used to that and think it's the correct way to write a story, I suppose). The race of the officer who did the shooting two days earlier was not at all important to the story of a man who was shot while protesting by another protester. The race of the officer has nothing to do with the man who was shot in the lede. Placing the race of the officer near the top of the article, where the most important facts belong, would be the epitome of dishonest journalism.
Incorrect again. It's only important to mention it up front when it's important enough to be mentioned up front. In this story, who shot whom two days earlier is only contextual backstory to the focus of the lede.
The story wasn't 'Black officer kills black person,' it was 'protester killed by protester while protesting.' Everything else about the piece is context and backstory.
Responsible to an agenda-driven biased narrative, sure. To an unimpassioned reporting of the facts, not so much.
I used the title 'Black officer kills black person' not as a reference to the NYT article but only to give example that it his highly unlikely you would see it as a Headline. I should have used an initial story instead of a back story. Maybe i can find one.
Regarding reading highly biased articles, yes I read some, but also read from other 'mainstream' sites as well. What you'll find is also highly partisan headlines.
My point is if the initial incident involved a white police officer and a black person, the race of the officer would be in the headline.
If the officer was black instead, it wouldn't be.
Regarding reading highly biased articles, yes I read some, but also read from other 'mainstream' sites as well. What you'll find is also highly partisan headlines.
My point is if the initial incident involved a white police officer and a black person, the race of the officer would be in the headline.
If the officer was black instead, it wouldn't be.
As that situation is currently a newsworthy problem, you're probably right.
Probably not, as it's not particularly newsworthy.
Nevertheless, thinking that because this particular article didn't mention the race of the cop until well down into the backstory section of the piece is somehow playing liberal politics is simply incorrect. Go find any journalist, or any journalism student or journalism teacher, have them read the article, and they will tell you the same thing.
Disagree. The fact that the officer happens to be black IS particularly newsworthy. Considering they're protesting, marching, rioting, and targeting white people in some instances because of this incident.
Again, whether it's the initial story or a back story, if it involves a white officer, the article will let you know in the headline or in the first few sentences. Example: (initial story headline) 'White police officer kills unarmed or armed black man.' (Back story ) 'City unrest for third day after white officer kills unarmed or armed black man.'
I mean, I have seen it written like this multiple times before,
You won't see it with this incident though.
It will just say 'police officer' kills black man.
And let everyone just assume it's a white officer. I wonder how many of the people in the crowd know that isn't correct.
Taking an online journalism course will solve that for you.
Not in a story that's NOT about the officer-involved shooting.
The "incident" is the backstory.
I get it. You're just ever so angry that there's a double standard in the press when it comes to race-related shootings. This double standard has been around since before the days of slavery. Nevertheless, you started a thread that asked if anyone saw anything wrong with the way the article was written. Other than a couple of relatively minor miscues, there isn't. The whole 'City unrest for third day after white officer kills unarmed or armed black man' thing is the narrative you want the story to have. In order to do that, you'll need to become a reporter for the New York Times, or a Blogger. Because NONE of that double standard applies to this NYT story.
The story wasn't about the officer involved shooting, it was about a protester being shot by a protester. A headline for the story that reads, "Protester Shot During Second Day of Unrest after Black Office Shoots Black Man" is an utterly ridiculous headline that you're more likely to find at Brietbart or TownHall, because it's 100 percent agenda driven.
I don't know what to tell ya other than... there's always barber college.
From all reports I've seen and read, all of them knew, and know, that the cop is black. As bad as it is regarding white officers killing black people, it's really more of a thing about cops killing black people. No matter how badly you or anyone else, including the press, wants to make it about something else. But in this case, the mainstream press has reported it straight up. The story is about the police, yet again, killing a black man, yet again. That's why people are protesting.
Wow. You found the confirmational bais you were looking for. Good job.
Would you like for me to tell you what all is wrong with that piece? He blatantly misrepresents what the lead stories were in all three instances of the NTY, WaPo, and the WSJ. Then he make a patently false statement in his 5th paragraph to justify those misrepresentations and to set up a false premise. The anger in North Carolina’s largest city is NOT driven by outrage over a high-profile series of deaths of black men in confrontations with white officers, it's driven by outrage over a high-profile series of deaths of black men in confrontations with police officers.
Then he says, "It doesn’t resolve the question of whether Vinson acted properly or recklessly in firing the bullets that killed Keith Scott. But it does upend the narrative that this might have been a trigger-happy white cop who was more likely to see a black man as threatening."
The problem with that is, every study that's been done on the subject shows that black cops are just as likely as white cops to see a black man as threatening. That's because police officers are trained in "us versus them" mentalities and to put themselves first over those they are sworn to protect and serve.
"And the story has been lumped together with the earlier fatal shooting by a white officer of Terence Crutcher, a black Tulsa resident who police say did not have a gun."
Notice there where he says "fatal shooting by a white officer" and doesn't even mention that the white officer was a woman. A trigger happy white chick? That's kind of an important piece of information that he conveniently, or hypocritically, left out.
And the kicker is his final paragraph, where he lauds the reporters for NOT making a bigger issue than is necessary of the black and white situation. The piece starts off and is composed chiefly of a rant on the fact that the press isn't making a bigger deal out of the cop's race, and then he winds it up by congratulating them for not making a bigger deal out of the cop's race.
Kurtz is kind of a tool. We know that. When he was at CNN he made a career out of criticizing Fox News, but since he's been with Fox News he's been largely silent on his employer. Did you know that he was fired from the Washington Post, by Bob Woodward, for "sloppy research," and was fired from The Daily Beast and CNN at the same time for, in the words of The Beast's edit-in-chief, "serial inaccuracy." So his lead characterizations of the stories from the NYT, WaPo and the WSJ aren't at all surprising.