Wednesday 9/28

I loved the photos on page one. They give a sense of urgency and speak to the fact that people are protesting and suffering all over the world, and in that way it unifies us. This was a large article, and I often wonder how long it takes them to research/write it all. The Christians Fear article had a really long lede, and lost my interest within the first paragraph. Despite this, I carried on and read. I just realized that many of today's ledes are longer than necessary.

By the way, I think the picture of the chicken lying on its side to promote the chicken skin article on D1 (along with the line "More Than a Guilty Pleasure") was hilarious.

Tuesday 9/27

I agree with the decision for the reporter who wrote the Fighting Cancer article to begin with a delayed lede. While it's an amazing story, I don't feel like it's the type of breathless news we've been discussing in class these past weeks. I couldn't find any lede types I disagreed with on the front page - go figure - so I decided to try the next few pages. Like I suspected, most were direct ledes, with only one or two delayed ledes in the first ten pages of section A. These articles that had normal ledes were "breathless" news stories, and deserved the regular ledes, but I found myself wanting more variety as I read through. After a while, none of the articles stood out to me except the Fighting Cancer article. I had more of an emotional connection to that article because - in the lede - a woman found out she's cancer-free and celebrated.

Wow. I really just killed the emotion of that lede in less than 25 words!

Monday 9/27

It seems to me that the NYT uses the same type of image over and over after a natural disaster destroys someone's home: the family/couple/owner standing in front of the wreckage. While it is a powerful image, it's overused, and I feel like I see it every other day. The article painted a better picture than the actual picture displayed. I did like the article about Saudi Arabian women being allowed to vote. I like how they interviewed a female history professor and had that as their first quote.

Thursday 9/22

First off: the picture on the front page is poor quality, their jackets blended in with the black background and had little impact. I think that the hikers released from Iran should have taken the top spot. In that article, I wish that the writer interviewed the hikers, but I understand that they were probably very difficult to reach. I do expect an interview in the next week or so. I also read the young adults with health insurance article because it related to me. I'm glad that the NYT put an article about 18-25 year olds for that age group to read. I'm not sure how they find the young adult sources though. They had one from Illinois and another from Maryland, and I wish I knew how they found these sources.

Wednesday 9/21

To be honest, the headline for the same-sex sex squid attracted my attention because I thought it was funny. On the other hand, I really liked the piece about Marines recruiting at a gay center. The picture showed exactly what the article was about and I thought it was a good idea to include the fact that the recruiter had an escape plan just in case. Other than those two articles, I didn't see hugely interesting pieces that grabbed my attention. However, the picture of David Hallberg - being the first American ballet dancer to leave for Russia, instead of the other way around like the trend. It reminded me of what we talked about in class as to what is news. One answer was trends and their changes, and that's exactly what this was.

Tuesday 9/20

While the picture on the front page today did look cool, it didn't make me feel like reading that article. Instead I read the small-town, vicious gossip article. I didn't like the lede, however. It was kind of boring. Also I think they should have gotten to the point quicker. A more interesting article was the 12 arrested for selling pest poison 60 times stronger than the legal limit. I guess just because it was weird so I found it interesting.

Monday 9/19

I saw some of the Emmy Awards last night, so I decided to read about it in the Arts section today. I don’t know if it was just my copy, but the quality of the red-carpet pictures was terrible. I could barely tell who was who. Again, it might have just been an ink issue with my copy. The summary lede for the main Emmy article made the right choices as to what to include. I don’t know if they needed to mention that Fox was advertising their fall season, but that was at the end of the article so it wasn’t as important.

Wednesday 8/31 through Thursday 9/15

Wednesday, 8/31: I felt that the article about the damages due to Hurricane Irene ended abruptly. I wanted more of a human interest aspect to it in that I wanted interviews from homeowners affected by the hurricane. Maybe I’m being naïve because – obviously – it’s The New York Times, and they’re focused more on the officials. I didn’t like the piece on A9 about the Nigerian militants, despite its length, or lack thereof. I was annoyed at how the author quoted two officials – it might have even been the same official – who was “not authorized to speak publicly.” It annoyed me because I wanted to know who has the authority to criticize the governments, both Nigerian and American. Lastly, I read the front page/A8 piece about the Dominican Republic’s actions against Haitian refugees, and saw that on A8 there’s a picture of Benie Boner, but there was no mention him in the article. I wanted a quote from him about his story, because the caption just said he was fingerprinted and part of the deportation program in the Dominican Republic.

Thursday, 9/1: I don’t have as many negative opinions as I did yesterday. While the piece about the London housing market slump and rich homeowners’ solutions, I don’t see how that pertains to me, seeing as I am not rich and am pretty sure I don’t own property anywhere, let alone London. I did like the piece about Florida’s efforts to stop pill mills, including getting the sellers/prescribers. I also liked the phone merger piece because it attempted to show both sides – the phone companies and the government – in an unbiased way.

Monday 9/5: Labor Day, Hamilton Smith was locked so I couldn’t get my copy of the NYT.

Tuesday 9/6: I decided to change it up a little and went straight for the science section. I loved the article about children born from sperm donors and the possibility of a registry to find their half-brothers and sisters. While it the article didn’t make front page, it was mentioned at the bottom. I did like the article about how our brains hear sound and psychoacoustics, but I felt that it was too long. It seemed to drag on for too many paragraphs and shouldn’t have been a full half page of text (continued on D4 from D1).

Wednesday 9/7: I went to the arts section believing I would find pieces about music, theater, films, etc. only to find pictures of the Real Housewives taking up quarter of the page and a story of how Bravo is selling itself. After I read it, I gave up on the rest of the arts section and read about strikes in Italy on A4. I had no idea that Italy was going through so many financial problems, but I that’s why people need to read/watch/listen to the news.

Thursday 9/8: I decided to give the arts section another chance today. I like the arts section because of their shorter articles (not that I don’t like to read longer news articles, I – like many readers – had less patience today than in the past week. I like the piece on C-SPAN’s new series about the presidential candidates who didn’t win. I’m considering watching it this weekend at some point. I also read the Spirit of the City piece. I liked the writer’s description of the images; I could imagine it which – I’m sure – was the writer’s intention.

Monday 9/12: I liked the lede for the Kennedy article, at first it didn’t seem like a summary lede until I read it again. It had who, what, when, and where pieces in it. We went over the Medvedev article in class. The lede for the piece on families visiting the 9/11 memorial was correctly written as a delayed one. It was emotional and shouldn’t have had a fact-based lede.

Tuesday 9/13: I like the piece about the Libyan women taking part in the war and the writer’s decision to compare them to Rosie the Riveter. I think the gay bullying article took too long to quote anyone. Also, I wanted to know which conservative Christian groups the writer was talking about in the second paragraph. Not much else stood out to me.

Wednesday 9/14: I decided to take a break from the sad news and to read the dining section. Some of the review articles were over my head, and I decided that I would never really want to write reviews for restaurants (that and I’m a picky eater). However, I did find the article about different measuring techniques interesting. I didn’t know that people put so much thought into proving that an amount of an ingredient is really that amount.

Thursday 9/15: I went directly to the Palestinian demonstration preparation piece because of the picture of a soldier helping a Palestinian girl past the barbed wire. It shows how design – especially pictures – in a paper can affect the reader. I didn’t think that the story about the University of Maine’s uniforms quite deserved front page. I feel that it would have been better if it had a smaller section saying where the article was.

Practice Article, 9/19/2011

                Over 100 swimmers were stung by a giant, dead jellyfish at Wallis Sands State Beach in Rye, NH, resulting in the beach’s closing on Wednesday, July 21.

                While hospital officials reported no serious injuries, five children were taken to Portsmouth Regional Hospital, and medical responders were afraid of severe allergic reactions from the stings.

                “It was as big as a turkey platter,” said Ken Loughlin, Wallis Sands’s manager. “The thing was probably about 50 pounds.”

                Despite working at the beach for 30 years, Loughlin said he had “never seen such a thing” as the giant jellyfish, which was taken out of the water with a pitchfork.

                Robert Royer, an aquarist at the Seacoast Science Center, said that the creature was probably a lion’s mane jellyfish.

                “That’s the largest we have around here,” he said. “I’ve never heard of them getting 50 pounds, though.”

                Lion’s mane jellyfish are common in New England waters. They have tentacles up to 100 feet long; each with barbs that can sting even after the jellyfish is dead and broken up.

                At 2 p.m. rescue officials were called in from towns around the Seacoast area, including Stratham, Portsmouth, Greenland, New Hampton, Newington, and Rye. These officials treated the jellyfish’s victims in the beach’s bathhouse.

                Among the victims were about 50 children, who ran to the shore screaming because of stings on their legs.

Alysia Bennett, from Hampstead, said her three children ran crying from the water due to the stings, which one rescue official described as feeling like bee stings.

                “They were terrified,” she said.

                Officials closed the beach after the incident, and will reopen Wallis Sands State Beach today.