Analysis op-ed Column
Our column is on a neighborhood dispute by Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune. This is a terrible thing that happened to a family. The family was stacked up against odds, they had no control of. The editorial piece is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to property that the city/government wants. There is not much we can do in the situations such as this one. Cities and government hold all the power and if they want something they will take it without considering the family or families that it affects in the process.
Tim Harrower’s principles are the following: keep it tight, keep it relevant, take a stand, attack the issues not personalities, don’t be a bully, control your anger, and write a strong lead and a solid finish. Keep it tights means do not stray for the topic get to the point and stay on point throughout the article you are writing. I think, Schmich did a good job on staying on topic, she did not stray too far from main point of the article. Keep it relevant to the readers. The more relevant a topic is to the readers the more likelihood of them reading it. Schmich does this, because this could happen to anyone at anytime, anywhere in the world. Take a stand on a topic is pretty much common sense. I liked how Schmich did not give her opinion on the subject until the very end of the article and when she did it was brief and to the point. Schmich gave the opinions of the Harris family and that of the police officers. She supported each side with facts to let the reader decide for themselves which side to take. Schmich attacked the issues at hand without attacking the Harris family or police officers. She presented the facts of both parties involved and did not personal attack anyone in the article. When it comes to don’t be a bully, Schmich lets the audience decide by persuasion. I think she did a great job in this department because, with the facts on both sides, anyone can be swayed against or for the Harris. She plays subtle mind games with the audience. The facts on both sides can persuade the audience a certain way. Controlling your anger is the most important one in my opinion. If cannot be biased when writing an editorial. You have to present the facts correctly without getting steamed about one side or the other. Schmich does a great job with this. She only shows the slightest bit of anger when she says at the end that it shouldn’t have happened this way. You can feel her pain for the Harris family in her writing. Writing a strong lead and finish is the key to any piece. The audience has to be pulled in quickly and feel emotions towards the specific article. If not, the audience will not finish reading the article because it does not interest them. Schmich uses the word “BAM” affectively in getting the audience’s attention; also she gives great back ground information on the subjects. She tells a great story in the first couple paragraphs to keep the reader’s wanting more and more. The finish of Schmich article is her opinion. She gives the reactions of the Harris family to the given situation and then she gives her own reactions to the situation. I liked how she kept the suspense of her opinion until the very end of the article.
I believe Don Murray would be impressed with this particular article. It had a since of grace and balance throughout out the article. Schmich goes by the book and hits every point of principle by Harrower’s stand point. She has a great lead and a fantastic finish. I think that this particular piece is that of craftsmanship thought out and precise.
My overall evolution of the piece is a well-constructed editorial piece. It hits the main points and gives the audience a chance to reply to the article or have an opinion about it. She makes it easy for the audience to see that it is an opinion piece. I actually enjoyed reading this article and kept reading because of the she constructed the editorial.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Analytical Paper
Analytical papers
Donald Murray explains art as a word journalist’s fear. Art is how the application unfolds or the end result of a piece of writing. Craft is what you do and the tools you use it with. This is the application of skill.
In the piece the Boomerang, Michael Lewis uses the definitions of art and craft excellently. He explains the craft is the information he is writing about, which is the financial crisis of Europe and the how the West is going to be affected by this. The art of his writing is the language in which he writes the story. Michael Lewis is an excellent writer in how he can make something as confusing as European sovereign debt interesting for the average American to read it and understand it. Being the average American, I read the story and actually comprehended most of it.
“If Greece walks away from $400 billion in debt, then the European banks that lent the money will go down, and other countries now flirting with bankruptcy might easily follow, destabilizing the regional and world economies further. He also explains why taxpayers in Germany are reluctant to keep bailing out other countries they regard as profligate, indolent and irresponsible” (Lewis 2). Greece should be held accountable for their debt is what I get from reading this statement from Lewis. If not, more countries will suffer and put a strain on all of Europe. Lewis was diligent with his researching this disaster of debt Greece has accumulated. I believe this specific quote is a use of craft. It is giving information to the reader just like Murray states in his book, Writing to Deadline.
Lewis says in the last 12 years the wage bill of the Greek public sector has doubled with the average government job now paying almost three times the average private sector job. Those who work in jobs classified as arduous can retire and start collecting pentions. As early as 55 for men and 50 for women; more than 600 Greek professions have somehow managed to get themselves classified as arduous: hairdressers, radio announcers, waiters, musicians and so on. This is absurd. I believe Lewis is very professional, because if I was doing an article on this it would be one sided as hell. Murray would be proud of the way Lewis is biased in how he approached writing this article. This is another example how Lewis used craftsmanship in his writing. He took information and explained it in a way which we can understand it.
As far as art goes, Lewis does a great job of working with the information he has been given or sought after. He put a story together and made it interesting to hundreds of readers across the world. Lewis’s tools for craftsmanship are uncanny. In the respect of craft, he uses his skills to create a masterpiece. Even though Lewis is a journalist and the rules apply to him, he uses his creativity to make art become alive in his writing because he isn’t restricted.
As a professional, I think Murray would look down upon Lewis as far as technique. I only say this because I believe Lewis is more outspoken then Murray. Murray’s writing style, I feel, is much more subdued then Lewis. I think reporting to Lewis’s story is essential because people need to know what is going on in Greece because this can happen anywhere. People need to be informed of this and Lewis does just that.
The next article I will be doing is California and Bust by Michael Lewis. The first line says it all about this article. “On August 5, 2011, moments after the U.S. government watched a rating agency lower its credit rating for the first time in American history, the market for the U.S. Treasury bonds soared. The public was going out and buying bonds like no tomorrow. This made everything else as far as stocks and bonds free fall. The U.S. government after this was less likely to repay its debt and the solution was to raise the cost of borrowing not for government but for everyone else.
I liked how Lewis went back a year ago and shared this, “the television news program 60 Minutes are a 14-minute piece about U.S. state and local finances. Correspondent Steve Kroft interviewed a private Wall Street analysis named Meredith Whitney, who, back in 2007, had gone from being obscure to famous when she correctly suggested that Citigroup’s losses in U.S. subprime bonds were far bigger than anyone imagined, and predicted the bank would be forced to cut its dividend” (Lewis 1). This is an example of both art and craft. Lewis uses this information and uses it to the end result with his specific writing style. He presented us with a problem and a fact at the same time. Later in the article, I found a eerie similarity to Greece and the U.S. Meredith Whitney had found a pressure point in American finance: the fear that American cities would not pay back the money they had borrowed. The market for municipal bonds, unlike the market for U.S. government bonds, spooked easily. Some of our states are in debt and the for seeing future does not look good for us as a country.
Lewis’s writing style between this article and Boomerang are very similarly. The attitude in which Lewis writes, and how he presents factual information to the readers is exact. I am not sure if he picks topics that are down in the dumps, but I feel like he sees the world as an evil place, where money rules everything. Lewis goes back and uses a statement from Whitney: California is the scariest state.
Murray would give Lewis a good grade as far as professionalism goes, but as a journalists Lewis is one sided in almost everything he writes about. I only know this now while reading this second article. He tries and disguise what he feel, but if you look closely we can tell how he feels about the article. I thought journalists are supposed to be unbiased on anything they report on. Lewis is a mastermind when it comes to using art and craft in his reporting, but I think he comes off mean-spirited and spiteful in his writings. Once again, that could be just what he chooses to write on.
All in all, I believe there is a close resemblance between Lewis and Murray in regards to art and craft. The journalistic writing styles; however, are totally different. After reading a Murray article you feel more like he is personable and you can speak to him easily. When reading Lewis articles, I do not get the same feeling. Lewis comes off more of a jerk, who thinks everything is bad in the world, it might be, but his writings should come off more unbiased then biased.
Donald Murray explains art as a word journalist’s fear. Art is how the application unfolds or the end result of a piece of writing. Craft is what you do and the tools you use it with. This is the application of skill.
In the piece the Boomerang, Michael Lewis uses the definitions of art and craft excellently. He explains the craft is the information he is writing about, which is the financial crisis of Europe and the how the West is going to be affected by this. The art of his writing is the language in which he writes the story. Michael Lewis is an excellent writer in how he can make something as confusing as European sovereign debt interesting for the average American to read it and understand it. Being the average American, I read the story and actually comprehended most of it.
“If Greece walks away from $400 billion in debt, then the European banks that lent the money will go down, and other countries now flirting with bankruptcy might easily follow, destabilizing the regional and world economies further. He also explains why taxpayers in Germany are reluctant to keep bailing out other countries they regard as profligate, indolent and irresponsible” (Lewis 2). Greece should be held accountable for their debt is what I get from reading this statement from Lewis. If not, more countries will suffer and put a strain on all of Europe. Lewis was diligent with his researching this disaster of debt Greece has accumulated. I believe this specific quote is a use of craft. It is giving information to the reader just like Murray states in his book, Writing to Deadline.
Lewis says in the last 12 years the wage bill of the Greek public sector has doubled with the average government job now paying almost three times the average private sector job. Those who work in jobs classified as arduous can retire and start collecting pentions. As early as 55 for men and 50 for women; more than 600 Greek professions have somehow managed to get themselves classified as arduous: hairdressers, radio announcers, waiters, musicians and so on. This is absurd. I believe Lewis is very professional, because if I was doing an article on this it would be one sided as hell. Murray would be proud of the way Lewis is biased in how he approached writing this article. This is another example how Lewis used craftsmanship in his writing. He took information and explained it in a way which we can understand it.
As far as art goes, Lewis does a great job of working with the information he has been given or sought after. He put a story together and made it interesting to hundreds of readers across the world. Lewis’s tools for craftsmanship are uncanny. In the respect of craft, he uses his skills to create a masterpiece. Even though Lewis is a journalist and the rules apply to him, he uses his creativity to make art become alive in his writing because he isn’t restricted.
As a professional, I think Murray would look down upon Lewis as far as technique. I only say this because I believe Lewis is more outspoken then Murray. Murray’s writing style, I feel, is much more subdued then Lewis. I think reporting to Lewis’s story is essential because people need to know what is going on in Greece because this can happen anywhere. People need to be informed of this and Lewis does just that.
The next article I will be doing is California and Bust by Michael Lewis. The first line says it all about this article. “On August 5, 2011, moments after the U.S. government watched a rating agency lower its credit rating for the first time in American history, the market for the U.S. Treasury bonds soared. The public was going out and buying bonds like no tomorrow. This made everything else as far as stocks and bonds free fall. The U.S. government after this was less likely to repay its debt and the solution was to raise the cost of borrowing not for government but for everyone else.
I liked how Lewis went back a year ago and shared this, “the television news program 60 Minutes are a 14-minute piece about U.S. state and local finances. Correspondent Steve Kroft interviewed a private Wall Street analysis named Meredith Whitney, who, back in 2007, had gone from being obscure to famous when she correctly suggested that Citigroup’s losses in U.S. subprime bonds were far bigger than anyone imagined, and predicted the bank would be forced to cut its dividend” (Lewis 1). This is an example of both art and craft. Lewis uses this information and uses it to the end result with his specific writing style. He presented us with a problem and a fact at the same time. Later in the article, I found a eerie similarity to Greece and the U.S. Meredith Whitney had found a pressure point in American finance: the fear that American cities would not pay back the money they had borrowed. The market for municipal bonds, unlike the market for U.S. government bonds, spooked easily. Some of our states are in debt and the for seeing future does not look good for us as a country.
Lewis’s writing style between this article and Boomerang are very similarly. The attitude in which Lewis writes, and how he presents factual information to the readers is exact. I am not sure if he picks topics that are down in the dumps, but I feel like he sees the world as an evil place, where money rules everything. Lewis goes back and uses a statement from Whitney: California is the scariest state.
Murray would give Lewis a good grade as far as professionalism goes, but as a journalists Lewis is one sided in almost everything he writes about. I only know this now while reading this second article. He tries and disguise what he feel, but if you look closely we can tell how he feels about the article. I thought journalists are supposed to be unbiased on anything they report on. Lewis is a mastermind when it comes to using art and craft in his reporting, but I think he comes off mean-spirited and spiteful in his writings. Once again, that could be just what he chooses to write on.
All in all, I believe there is a close resemblance between Lewis and Murray in regards to art and craft. The journalistic writing styles; however, are totally different. After reading a Murray article you feel more like he is personable and you can speak to him easily. When reading Lewis articles, I do not get the same feeling. Lewis comes off more of a jerk, who thinks everything is bad in the world, it might be, but his writings should come off more unbiased then biased.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Hunting Blogs
http://www.buckhuntersblog.com/
1. what appeals to me is anything you would want to know about hunting or questions about hunting, you can find your answers on this website. The different topics from day to day keep me guessing and it is never the same thing.
2. Different pro staff members contribute to the blog, but the main blogger is on all the time. He is easy going when he talks on the blog and doesn't try to confuse to much.
3. I need to use the way he blogs in my blogs more often. Short and to the point. he decribes the ins and outs of deer hunting and life in general and how they relate to eachother.
4. Any beginning hunter could use this site to learn much more about the outdoors and deer hunting, then experience would. Many of the questions that first time hunters have are answered very well in this blog.
1. what appeals to me is anything you would want to know about hunting or questions about hunting, you can find your answers on this website. The different topics from day to day keep me guessing and it is never the same thing.
2. Different pro staff members contribute to the blog, but the main blogger is on all the time. He is easy going when he talks on the blog and doesn't try to confuse to much.
3. I need to use the way he blogs in my blogs more often. Short and to the point. he decribes the ins and outs of deer hunting and life in general and how they relate to eachother.
4. Any beginning hunter could use this site to learn much more about the outdoors and deer hunting, then experience would. Many of the questions that first time hunters have are answered very well in this blog.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Minas gave us a look into how 9/11 directly impacted his life and those around him. He gives us a understanding of the American dream, he never gave up. After all that has happened, he still wants to go back to ground zero and re-open his shoe store. That is a sign for the American people.
His story should told as an eye opener for America. He looked devistation in the face and beat it. That is what his story should be.
His story should told as an eye opener for America. He looked devistation in the face and beat it. That is what his story should be.
Blogs are your opinions on specific stories your read on the internet. Blogging helps you gain greater knowledge on a specific topic by reading the thoughts of other people. You recieve the story from different perspectives when reading peoples blogs.
Everyone can use blogs for careers, sports, hobbies, or life in general. Blogging is a great way to get your opionion out in the open for the world to see.
Everyone can use blogs for careers, sports, hobbies, or life in general. Blogging is a great way to get your opionion out in the open for the world to see.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Bowhunting
I took my first hunting adventure with my dad at age six. From the smell of the woods on a fall night to sighting out and feeling the cool breeze go across your face while you look at the stars. I get this feeling everytime I go hunting it takes me back to that specific place in time.
I have going hunting for basically from rabbits and squirrels to deer, ducks, and geese. But my passion lies in bowhunting. It is almost primitive in an aspect. the rush you get when you let your arrow fly but the stength and ability to pull back a bow.
I have been bowhunting for the last three years, and I took my first buck and I never felt so alive in my life. To think you are sitting twenty feet off the ground bow in hand and waiting to get your one chance at maybe taking your first buck. Everything has to be right from wind to you controlling your breathing and calming yourself down to make a good shot on the deer.
This is what gets my adreniline pumping and there is nothing else like it in the world to me. I will continue to hunt until I physically can not go to the woods anymore and bowhunting is and always will be my passion.
I have going hunting for basically from rabbits and squirrels to deer, ducks, and geese. But my passion lies in bowhunting. It is almost primitive in an aspect. the rush you get when you let your arrow fly but the stength and ability to pull back a bow.
I have been bowhunting for the last three years, and I took my first buck and I never felt so alive in my life. To think you are sitting twenty feet off the ground bow in hand and waiting to get your one chance at maybe taking your first buck. Everything has to be right from wind to you controlling your breathing and calming yourself down to make a good shot on the deer.
This is what gets my adreniline pumping and there is nothing else like it in the world to me. I will continue to hunt until I physically can not go to the woods anymore and bowhunting is and always will be my passion.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Ode to Fluffball
To the writer:
I am writing a how-to-guide for you on copywriting. There are several ways you can obtain information on copywriting such as the internet, dictionaries, or books from the library. The easiest way to obtain information on copywriting and here are some websites that can be helpful in understanding the wat copyrights work. Click here
Copyright is making sure your work won't be published by anyone without your concent. It will garauntee that if your poem makes it to the "big time" that no one will make money off of you unless you let them. However for information that copyright does not protect follow this link Click Here
But if your cat can do this we have a whole new probelm click the link Click Here
I am writing a how-to-guide for you on copywriting. There are several ways you can obtain information on copywriting such as the internet, dictionaries, or books from the library. The easiest way to obtain information on copywriting and here are some websites that can be helpful in understanding the wat copyrights work. Click here
Copyright is making sure your work won't be published by anyone without your concent. It will garauntee that if your poem makes it to the "big time" that no one will make money off of you unless you let them. However for information that copyright does not protect follow this link Click Here
But if your cat can do this we have a whole new probelm click the link Click Here
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