Unlocking a new lease

(Photo courtesty of Google)

The article I chose to review for this blog assignment is from The Washington Post. "What Every Renter Should Know," by Stacy Gilliam, is about, in short, how to find an apartment or home to move into. The article discusses topics from finding residences within a particular budget to making your home uniquely yours through splashes of color on the walls. One quote that was interesting to me was "Your quality of life is really far more about who you live next to, then how much square footage you have in your apartment" (Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan). I only have two real objections to the article:

1. No topic is covered in detail longer than two sentences and


2. The excluesively online article only provides one link (a reference to a source) to help readers find more information about the topics she discusses.

I would add these pieces of information for readers to the article. I would also include more sources of information. The only source included was that of an interior designer. I would most likely speak with leasing agents or possibly a lawyer to talk about common issues with leases.

Overall, the article was informative but as a reader, I wanted more. The article stopped short of telling me beyond one sentence on each subject, everything I need to know about moving out.

The Pleasure Really is in the Pain!

(Photo courtesy of Google Images/ Compiled on February 23, 2009 By Amber Gillette)

While searching online at the Washington Post, I found many articles did follow "The Wall Street Journal Formula." It is suprising because I didn't think so many follow this format in putting together a more creative feature news piece.

One article that I found to be a particularly good example of the format was published on February 18, 2009. Andreas Viestad's article, "The Pleasure is in the Pain," presents the reasoning for why people love to eat spicy food, even though it brings can bring us to our knees.

Reasons why this article follows "The Wall Street Journal Formula":

• The article begins with Viestad telling readers that a lot of people eat hot foods no matter what their personal tastes tend to be. The author also tells about the history behind the pepper. She begins to discuss the different tastes of different peppers.


• In the nut graf, Viestad talks about her own experiences with pepper spray. She also talks about how with the pain can actually bring pleasure through the release of endorphins.


• A few facts used to support the story are: a personality study published in 2008, a sensory study done in Naples, Italy and the use of capsaicin as a topical cream.


• The article concludes with a story about what "Piri-piri" means in Swahili. The story brings humor to the idea of not being able to breath after taking a "pepper pepper."

Don't mess with the Jazz!

In high school, when I first learned about journalism, my teacher taught me about feature stories and what makes them different from news in a way that I will never forget. He said a feature story is like jazz music. It is smooth and beautiful. It tells a story unlike a news article would. In teaching me about a feature lead, he told my class that it is more artistic and free-forming (when compared to a summary lead). The feature lead can ask a question or tell a story while a summary lead must get straight to the point of the important information. A feature lead, like jazz, has the freedom to move around and eventually make its point.

My first example of a feature lead came from "The Washington Post" on Sunday, February, 15, 2009. Headlined, "Coloring Perception" author Blake Gopnik, a Washington Post staff writer, begins his story with the following lead:

CHICAGO -- Can an artist get much more successful than Kerry James Marshall? Museums everywhere own his work. (The Corcoran was one of his first buyers. And the Baltimore Museum of Art is displaying his "Ladder of Success," a recent purchase.) In 1997, he won the $500,000 MacArthur "genius" award, an ultra-prestigious invitation to Germany's twice-a-decade Documenta show and a place in the Whitney Museum's biennial.

Gopnik begins his feature story with question. The book suggests that it is almost never necessary to use a question lead because as a reporter you should be giving information not quizzing the reader. However, I think in the case of this story the lead works. When I first read the lead, I asked myself why I didn't know who he was. I think this was the authors main intention to pull in the reader.

My second lead came from "The Washington Post" on Monday, February 16, 2009. Headlined, "Venice Dresses Up for Carnevale" author Mathias Wildt wrote the following lead:

On a foggy February morning a few years ago, my wife and I were walking down an alley in Venice when we turned a corner and were confronted by an amazing sight: a procession of 30 human figures seeming to glide on the stone pavement in complete silence, like aliens.

This is a good example of an anecdotal feature lead. In this case, the lead works well as the author tells a story about his own experience at Carnevale, a huge celebration.