InkTank

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.

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.

Well done NYT, 'birthing tourism'

I guess it’s just me acting my age when I don’t want to pay for news. But what does that say for the line of work I want to get into one day. I want to have a pay check someday. Yet, I try to boycott the New York Times when at all possible. I think twice before clicking a link, and I only enter the website through google. I visit the Washington Post for my national news, but there was something about this headline, in google news, that I just had to use it as one of my five daily clicks.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about read this.

Anyways, back to the headline: Arriving as Pregnant Tourists, Leaving With American Babies, yeah that grabbed my attention.

I liked this headline for two reasons: It grabbed my attention, obviously, and tells me what the story is about--how awesome! Way to go NYT.

And the lead, well some may argue it’s a bit long, but who really cares! This is a great story. It’s cleaver and very descriptive. It’s evident that this reporter got out of her cubical to cover this story, and if she didn’t well then way to asks the right questions on the phone. I can see the scenario, and I want to know more.

". . . must be satire piece, right??" I wish.

A recent article on MSNBC.com reported that Transocean Ltd. has handed out safety bonuses to its' top executives. This same company, contracts with BP, and ran the oil rig that exploded causing the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

This tragedy killed 11 workers and caused the worst marine environmental crisis in the history of the United States.

 

I will critique the coverage of the article in a moment, but due to the content of the article I can't help but agree with what one reader commented on the article.

This news article must be a satire piece, right??

I wish.

Unfortunately, this is a straightforward news articles put together by professional journalists. Overall, it's done well.

Here is how the article opens.

It's time to move beyond the same old sad tune

As a Michigander, I am familiar with the sad tune the media has been singing about Detroit. So I was not surprised when I read an article by John Wisely and Todd Sprangler in USA Today with the headline, "Detroit suffers 25% loss, population lowest in 100 years."

Bloomberg, The Washington Post, MSNBC, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis and a host of other mainstream press are also carrying the story.

The USA Today version of the story is more comprehensive then most of it's competition. It also highlights a former resident, giving a human voice to the story, which is good.

One Michigander to move out was John Bessette, 44, who grew up in suburban Detroit and moved to an exurb of Pittsburgh in August 2010 after commuting there for almost two years. His company, Aim Construction, builds medical facilities and wanted to be where that field was growing.

"With the economy, even before the bad times, everybody was tightening up their purse strings," in Detroit he said. "It was really a good time to go look at somewhere else."

But the article is not beyond room for improvement.

E-books in libraries

How do I, a journalism student, critique a mainstream news article? I'm just a student. I read mainstream journalism to learn from the experts. I was sure my critique would be something along the lines of, this story is great! It's covered so well.

But then I read an article on The New York Times website. I had a handout sitting on my desk that Terry Mattingly, director of the Washington Journalism Center, gave to us, his students. It's a list of 1o easy mistakes to avoid. And sure enough the lead was not up to par. 

In the article I learned some book publishers are enforcing expiration dates for their e-books at libraries, but I don't learn this until the third graph. The lead grabbed my attention, but it doesn't tell me anything about the article. You be the judge. Here's the lead:

Imagine the perfect library book. Its pages don’t tear. Its spine is unbreakable. It can be checked out from home. And it can never get lost.

Smoking pot + Teenagers = Lasting effects

USA Today covered a new study that presents (and confirms according to the study) that teenagers that smoke pot are effected differently than adults who smoke pot.

This article was one that seemed well-rounded. There was a good quote to paraphrase ratio, as well as understandable statistics. For example, the description of what was studied by Staci Gruber an assistant professor of psychiatry at Hardvard Medical School and what was found was clearly stated:

Her Study evaluated 29 non-smokers and 35 chronic marijuana smokers- 20 began smoking pot regularly before age 16 while 15 started smoking after age 16. All were about 22 years old when the study was conducted.

What teenagers do not seem to realize about smoking pot, is the effect it has on their developing brain.  Brains are not fully developed until someone is in their mid-20's.

In 2005, the Washington Post wrote an article about teenage drivers and laws being passed. Even then the study of how late brains are developing was in progress:

A National Institute of Health study suggests that the region of the brain that inhibits risky behavior is not fully developed until age 25, a finding with implications for a host of policies, including the nation's driving laws.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, marijuana is the most commonly abused drug. They conducted a study the showed that as many as 10.9% of 8th graders has tried marijuana and as many as 32.4% of 12th graders had.

Nov. 2 was the election, and one of the major issues in Calif. was the legalization of recreational marijuana, which was not legalized.  There are 15 states that currently allow medicinal marijuana. ProCon.org covers the history of the legalization of the medicinal use of marijuana as well as stipulations in obtaining it.

Protection and Prevention for HPV

In 2006, Gardasil was approved as the human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV). Since then another vaccine was approved, Cervarix, but fewer and fewer women are actually getting the vaccine according to USAToday.

This article was filled with statistics, which is appropriate in an article related to health and the use of vaccines, however there were a lack of "human" sources and quotations, as well as a single sided point of view that contained several holes.

The two sources used were both appropriate academics who seemed qualified in their fields. Both covered the fact that less women were actually getting the vaccine and speculated why that may be.

Tracy speculated that women aged 18 to 26 may be caught up in life's transition at that point, like leaving home and going to college. For many young women, this is the first time they are making their own medical decisions.

J. Kathleen Tracy is an assistant professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Maryland. Dr. Mark Wakabayashi, the chief of gynecologic oncology at City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte, Calif., suggested the correlation of the vaccine and autism.

Beyond the worry of autism, several other medical conditions have come up (unmentioned in this article), along with 56 deaths as of Sept. 30, 2010 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Why so serious?

Last week I was sent to the Supreme Court to cover oral arguments on a video game restriction law in California. The hearing was actually quite entertaining and I was excited at the chance to write a story about it.

As usual, before I turned my article in to my editor, I checked to see how other major publications  chose to write about the arguments. The story that captured my attention the most was one in the New York Times.

This article had a good balance of serious and intrigue. The Court that day had been in rare form, and those watching broke out into laughter on  more than one occassion - mostly on account of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.

“What’s a deviant violent video game?” asked Justice Antonin Scalia, who was the law’s most vocal opponent on Tuesday. “As opposed to what? A normal violent video game?”

“Some of the Grimm’s fairy tales are quite grim,” he added. “Are you going to ban them, too?”

While the NYT article provided adequate background information, it added an extra element that is missing in a lot of journalism today: human interest. There is certainly a fine line between making a story interesting and editorializing, but I think this article is an excellent model.

Where's my happy meal toy?!?!?

Last Tuesday was the big election which led to a shifting of power throughout the American government. But something bigger was also voted upon, the future of happy meal toys. 

 San Francisco is the second place to enact toy restrictions on unhealthy happy meals.

The New York Times featured a brief, thorough article on the happening. But there were a few holes in the story, primarily in the choice of sources.

The group primarily effected by this enactment are children, and not one is mentioned. Instead used are spokespeople from McDonald's and for the mayor.

Perhaps the  McDonald's spokeswoman was standing up for this misrepresented group, as quoted by the NY Times:

McDonald’s called the bill misguided. “It’s not what our customers want,” said Danya Proud, a spokeswoman for the company, in a statement. “Nor is it something they asked for.”

 The Associated Press, on the other hand, supplied a child's point of view.

But 13-year-old David Sanchez, of San Francisco, said getting rid of the toy giveaway in the meals shouldn't deter sales.

Another missing link in the NY Times article was the lack of nutritional reference. They mentioned what some of the parameters sould be, however, the point of reference was not there.  Many fast food chains now have easily accessible.

For example, if they had looked at McDonald's website, a cheeseburger happy meal with apple dippers and a chocolate milk (the highest calorie counts of the "healthy" meals) the count is approximately 575, which is below the maximum of 600 calories.