After hearing about another Charlie Sheen debacle on the news this morning, I thought it would be interesting to see how different print publications were reporting about this actor's troubling behavior. I will compare stories about Charlie Sheen and how he trashed a New York hotel room after using drugs and alcohol. The stories are from The New York Post as well as USA Today.
The New York Post dominated this story. The story gave the most interesting and important facts right away in the lead. The rest of the story went on to describe other good facts and quotes. I liked this story because it gave me all the info I wanted to know right away, and I didn't have any annoying or burning questions that the story didn't answer after I was done reading.
USA Today, however, did a terrible job of getting the important info out right away. The lead was too cute and feature-like for this story and it took forever to get to the good, interesting details about this incident. To put it simply, this story was just frustrating to read. I would read the New York Post any day over USA Today.
The winner this round: The New York Post
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
In the midst of the recent chaos surrounding Gopher football and head coach Tim Brewster being shown the door, every big news organization across the state has been writing their fair share of stories this week about the Gopher’s dire coaching predicament.
But when the news of Brewster’s termination first broke out late last weekend, two stories from different newspapers caught my attention in particular. The first story I read about the topic was plastered on the front page of the Minnesota Daily Monday morning, while the second version was a Pioneer Press story I read online later that day.
In all honesty, I have some mixed feelings regarding these stories in terms of which one is “better.” The Pioneer Press has a straightforward, hard-news lead and this story does not hesitate getting to the news—which is a key element in a breaking news story such as this one. It gives the who, what, when, where, and even the why in the first three graphs of the story. Overall, this story is short and to the point.
The Minnesota Daily, however, took a somewhat different route in reporting on the Brewster story. The way this story is written had a bit of feature-like feel to it, even though it’s essentially a hard-news story. In the second graph, it mentions Brewster’s record along with a bit of history about when he started. It also takes quite a bit of reading until the story tells the reader who will be filling in for Brewster, which was one of the big questions I wanted answered right away.
That being said, I must say that I enjoyed reading the Daily’s version of this story much more than the one from the Pioneer Press. It’s more detailed, has more interesting quotes from good sources such as the players and Brewster himself, and it touches on possibilities for a permanent coaching replacement.
Although the Pioneer Press published a solid, simple hard-news story faster than the Daily (the Pi Press posted their version online Sunday afternoon), the Daily’s version was more intriguing and fun to read.
The winner of this round: The Minnesota Daily.
But when the news of Brewster’s termination first broke out late last weekend, two stories from different newspapers caught my attention in particular. The first story I read about the topic was plastered on the front page of the Minnesota Daily Monday morning, while the second version was a Pioneer Press story I read online later that day.
In all honesty, I have some mixed feelings regarding these stories in terms of which one is “better.” The Pioneer Press has a straightforward, hard-news lead and this story does not hesitate getting to the news—which is a key element in a breaking news story such as this one. It gives the who, what, when, where, and even the why in the first three graphs of the story. Overall, this story is short and to the point.
The Minnesota Daily, however, took a somewhat different route in reporting on the Brewster story. The way this story is written had a bit of feature-like feel to it, even though it’s essentially a hard-news story. In the second graph, it mentions Brewster’s record along with a bit of history about when he started. It also takes quite a bit of reading until the story tells the reader who will be filling in for Brewster, which was one of the big questions I wanted answered right away.
That being said, I must say that I enjoyed reading the Daily’s version of this story much more than the one from the Pioneer Press. It’s more detailed, has more interesting quotes from good sources such as the players and Brewster himself, and it touches on possibilities for a permanent coaching replacement.
Although the Pioneer Press published a solid, simple hard-news story faster than the Daily (the Pi Press posted their version online Sunday afternoon), the Daily’s version was more intriguing and fun to read.
The winner of this round: The Minnesota Daily.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)