King Donko’s Blog City

Minnesota Tuition Hikes

Minnesota has the second highest tuition rates in the nation.  One way of looking at this is that the schools can afford to offer more courses and extra curicular programs.  The other side is that school is more expensive.  School is a neccesitiy to do well in life these days, and it is hard for lots of people to  afford it.

City Workers and DUI’s

Local officials are debating wether or not to fire city workers after they have recieved DUI’s.  One side wants to suspend DUI’s for city workers so they can keep working for the citiy.  They say that getting a DUI of duty does neccesarily mean that they are unfit for driving plows and trucks.  The opposing side says that it is dangerous for people with DUI’s to be driving public utility vehicles. 

    The seciton of this chapter that pertained to paper 1 the most, in my opinion, was the section on structure.  “Anatomy of a News Story” covered how to structure a proper news story.  The biggest point was the inverted pyramid.  The inverted pyramid structure goes as follows: News leads (summary first), most important details, and finally the least important details.  This is a new concept to me.  When i read new stories I don’t always read the enitre article.  Instead, i skim them looking for the main points and information.  I find this is good way to avoid the biasis found in lots of news paper and magazine articles.  Because of this I have never taken the stucture of any article into thought.  It will be difficult for me to write paper 1 because I am more acustom to creative writing rather than structured, censored writing.

    Another section that will help with me with my interviews in the paper is the section about quotations.  I learned that when you quote someone you always follow the quote with “said” then the speaker and their title.  In creative writing one can replace the word “said” with any word that fits: “Sighed”, “explained”, etc.  Also, in creative wrting one may place the speaker infront of the quotation in ored to to add a different mood or structure to the piece.  In a news story placing the speaker before the quotation only serves to slow the story down.  This does not benefit the article.  When people read news they want well executed, concise information.

    This chapter did help me to understand more about writing news articles.  More so, it made me realize how little I actually knew.  If I had not read this chapter I would have been in the dark on this paper.  Hopefully I have enough of an understanding to earn a decent grade on paper 1.