InkTank

Children's Obesity Problem Turns Chocolately

Thanks to our First Lady the ongoing  problem of childhood obesity is a well known fact. Recenly, the culprit has been identified as chocolate milk. This sinfully sweet drink, a favorite in school lunches, has been deemed a major player in the issue of children and their weight. The Washington Post reported on the drinks past disapperaing from school cafeterias, and its recent return, presenting both sides of the controversy. 

According to the article last year districts in Fairfax Co. and D.C. completely banned the chocolate drink from the lunch menu. As letters and complaints poured in from both sides of the arguement, schools decided to tweak the drink and reintroduce it with less sugar and fat. 

"Several other school districts in the Washington area are changing the formulations of their chocolate milk to switch sweeteners and lessen the amount of fat and sugar." 

"The stakes are high because more than 70 percent of the milk distributed in school cafeterias is flavored, according to the Milk Processor Education Program, an industry group. Fairfax alone serves 62,000 gallons of chocolate milk a year. And the formulations used in many cafeterias across the country have more calories, ounce for ounce, than Coke."

The writer clearly did his homework. The article flowed nicely, and had a lot of statisics.

Dodgers stink, but the story doesn't

Fourth place out five teams in the National League West Division is not where the Los Angeles Dodgers want to be. The Los Angeles Times coverage of the Dodgers 9-2 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals shed light on what was going on in the clubhouse after the tough loss.

"After the Dodgers lost by seven runs on Saturday, Mattingly closed the door to the manager's office and had a meeting with General Manager Ned Colletti and player development chief De Jon Watson," (LA Times).

The lede for this article did a good job of telling the reader what happened in the game without becoming a Who, What, Where, When, Why and How lede. It flows nicely into the second paragraph which goes into more detail about what happened after the game.

The only issue that I have with the lede is that it might confuse those readers who don't bleed Dodger Blue and have no idea who Don Mattingly is. It does not say his role in the organization, even though the lede is the first time that he is mentioned. He could be the manager, the general manager, or the owner for all we know.

U.S. high speed rail initiative slows to a halt

Two weekends ago, I took the Amtrak train from Baltimore to Washington DC. The trip only took about 30 minutes, but as I watched the landscape crawl by it made me wonder why high speed rail hasn't been seriously invested in yet in the U.S., especially between major cities on the coasts.

Even though I grew up in the rural midwest, where everyone owns cars because their just isn't an economic support base for reliable public transportation, as I have spent time living in the metro Washington DC area I've seen plenty of people relying on public transportation. 

So here's a thought, if people are willing to by plane tickets to fly from DC to Baltimore, why wouldn't they by high speed train tickets?

So it was with a renewed sadness, that I read this article on the CNN Politics website.

Here is how the article opens. 

President Barack Obama's plan for a national high-speed rail network suffered a serious setback as a result of the fight over budget cuts. No money will be allocated for high-speed rail projects for the remainder of 2011.

Supporters have pointed to the plan as a job creator and economy booster, while critics have expressed doubts about whether spending billions of dollars on high-speed rail is the best use of federal funds.

Biased? Covering Nationals' Phenom Harper

Bryce Harper made his home debut Friday for the Washington Nationals' minor league affiliate the Hagerstown Suns. Harper, the Nationals' number one pick in the 2010 draft, went 0-for-3 with a strikeout out, and that is what most newspapers went with as the lede of the story.

The Washington Post article reported Harper's rough home debut, but they also went in a more in-depth direction in the coverage of the 18-year old phenom.

The lede paragraph the writer went with in this story was more of a one liner about the crowd coming to see the top prospect, but they saw a slumping 18-year old instead. That one sentence lede set up the next paragraph well and led to a good transition of what happened in the home debut for the rookie. The following paragraph seemed to be a descriptive type of lede that I thought worked well.

It was opening night for the Hagerstown Suns, after eight games on the road, and when Bryce Harper strode to the plate in the bottom of the first inning, the voice of the public-address announcer got a little higher and louder as he introduced the batter, and the sellout crowd of 6,017 at Municipal Stadium, bundled up against the chill, came to life, wrote The Washington Post.

Information Or a Story?

Coming from Minnesota, I have seen some of the after-affects of tornadoes and have heard the stories of friends losing their homes.  It seems like no matter how hard they try, the media can never always capture the full emotion behind the story. 

After reading the headlines of 17 deaths in the southern states, due to the streak of tornadoes, I could not help but notice how the stories like ABC News and BBC News seemed to list the deaths as statistics.  It was information more then stories. 

I came across the Huffpost Green that caught my eyes with its narrative lead describing the home of one of the victims who died after a tornado ripped through his neighborhood. 

I could tell this story was much more descriptive than the other versions by the poetic use of verbs and phrases.  The writer did a better job of painting the bizarre scene of the town.  By describing the surroundings, Philip Rawls was able to explain how the tornadoes demolished some areas, causing death, while leaving some of the most delicate sections of the town untouched. 

This quote said so much more than just saying that the tornado destroyed some and left others.

"All he (Henley Hollon) saw were a set of wooden steps and flowerbeds, the blooms still on the plants as though nothing happened.  An American flag once displayed outside Cheryl's home had been draped over a tree about a 100 feet away."

Which green do we need?

In Oregon, where there is a strong emphasis on environmental sustainability, a new study shows that the 40,000 Oregonians enrolled in the medical marijuana program are contributing to a large carbon footprint. The Oregonian published an article explaining Evan Mills', University of California's Lawrence Berkeleys National Laboratory's energy analyst, study. 

The article reports the facts of the study and relates it to the Oregon for the local paper. It gives basic background information about the significance the industry has on U.S. electrical assumption. Although, the article is about a scientific study, the article is understandable and the facts are clear and concise. 

Here is an example of the Oregonian's clear way of explaining the environmental impact of growing marijuana indoors: 

Using the research techniques with which he analyzes the energy efficiency of appliances in cars -- the report has 22 footnotes -- Mills said a single "cannabis cigarette" represents two pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. That's equal to burning a 100-watt lightbulb for 17 hours.

Koran Protests

The burning of the Koran by Rev. Terry Jones' church sparked protests in Afghanistan. The line between freedom of speech and hate crime has been blurred. However, The Washington Post's article, Florida pastor Terry Jones's Koran burning has far-reaching effect, on the current protests occurring over the March 20th burning of the Koran doesn't say much about the protests or the public opinion. 

Another article on the same issue by Fox News  does explain the views of these as a hate crime and the potential of it being excused as an act of freedom of speech. 

The Washington Post discusses the events that took place in plain terms. It starts with a symbolic lede by explaining the current state of the burnt Koran. The article gives a long introduction to the threatening and the final decision of the Dove World Outreach pastor to burn the Islamic holy book. 

How to break breaking news

There are certain stories which are across the board, difficult for journalists to write.

One of these story archtypes is that of a serial killer and the finding of his many victims.   This, however, is precisely what the media had to deal with as eight bodies were found in Long Island, New York.

CNN was one of the major networks that picked up the story, and it was CNN's coverage of the news, as opposed to Fox News' or the New York Times' that left me with a question.

``How much voice, should one put in an article this dark and serious?''

New campaign for safety of pedestrians

After a long day at my internship, sometimes all I want is a little silence once I return home. But, my roommates and I often joke that an hour doesn’t pass without hearing ambulance sirens.

According to the lead in a Washington Post article, I'm lucky I made it home from work.

About three times everyday in the District, someone walking on a city street gets hit by a vehicle and an ambulance races to the scene. This year, four of those people have died.

It’s no wonder the first week in Washington D.C. students get warned not to listen to music or talk on the phone when out and about.

Already humiliating the hopefuls

The 2012 presidential election is over a year away, but that is not stopping the press from already trying to weed out the competition. The unconfirmed competition, that is. Let’s take Donald Trump, for example, who is just one person on the long list of potential Republican candidates.

Trump has yet to launch a presidential exploratory committee or make an official announcement, declaring his intent to run, but said on multiple occasions that he is considering it. I would say, he is more than considering it. Rather, he is already putting himself in prime position to campaign.

The business mogul has made numerous TV appearances in recent days, where he often makes stout demands for Obama to present his birth certificate to the public. This fervent fixation Trump has on the validity of Obama’s citizenship has officially lumped him in the “birther” category.

A birther is defined by Urban Dictionary as “a conspiracy theorist who believes that Barack Obama is ineligible for the Presidency of the United States, based on any number of claims related to his place of birth, birth certificate, favorite birthday, or whether or not he has heard the song Africa by Toto.”

Obviously, this is a degrading term, so is it okay for an American press to label someone a birther? (I smell something resembling libel. Sniff. Sniff).