Krissy’s Blog

One issue facing Duluth was brought up at monday’s City Council meeting: the withdrawl of troops from Iraq.  Obviously, this is an important, world-wide issue…so why should Duluth’s City Council be discussing topics of a national status? That’s why this is controversial.  Councilor Russ Stewart proposed his plan to slowly remove the numbers of troops from Iraq, including those of Duluth’s 148th fighter wing.  His plan passed at the meeting with a 6-2 vote.  The 2 ‘no’ votes were from councilors opposed to second-guess the national government.  Stewart expected a few to be opposed, but knew he needed to present the topic in hopes of smaller types of gov’t sticking together to be heard.  He believes that all levels of gov’t should send messages of a national level.

A second issue discussed at the Duluth City Council meeting was whether or not Mayor Herb Bergson should be allowed to collect more of a profit from Duluth events, mostly, the Bayfront Blues Festival.  Bergson originally proposed that Duluth should see at least 25% of the earnings of such events, but that means taking away income from the founder/president of the Blues Fest, Chris Mackey.  Mackey’s income is shared with his vice president and is only around $75,000 a year.  Bergson is considering only charging a set rental fee for the park instead of getting a percentage of each of the event tickets sold, but nothing has been decided.  This is important because if the income’s of the founders are cut into the event will no longer be able to have as many entertainment groups, suffer from a limited alcohol supply/other merchandise, and ticket operation would go to TicketMaster’s control.  Festival goers wouldn’t be thrilled with the changes and thus overall profits would decrease.

            One of the most useful pieces of information I found was how news stories today are based in an order or most to least important.  It was interesting to learn some of the ways in which news writing has evolved.  The chapter contained many examples of earlier news reporting, and the difference in today’s writing was very evident.  Our news stories got right to the point, making sure people can read the important information first, and then the endings of the stories seemed to sort of fade away with the ‘fluffy’ elements.  I think that when writing our news articles the order of events is a very important detail to keep in mind. 

Another tidbit I found useful was how the chapter told how a reporter should remain objective to the story.  In other words that means not to take sides with one view over another.  The point of news stories are simply to tell the story, and, in doing so, allow the reader to perceive their own view.  The reader shouldn’t be subject to bias views of a reporter, unless it’s in an opinion article. 

The chapter also highlighted ways in which to make your article more factual and concise by using “primary sources.”  They suggested using other printed sources (newspapers, magazines, documents, etc) and to conduct interviews with people involved first-hand in the story.  It’s very useful to use quotes from sources or interviews, but they suggest that we translate the text/verbal rhetoric into easy-to-read parts.  The background information can be used for the body of the news story.

Going back to the history of news stories – - earlier stories seemed to have a definite ending, whereas ones nowadays seem to just fizzle out.  Lately, more people have been using a sentence or small paragraph to tie in the whole story and result in people pondering the subject matter more.  I think that’s a good suggestion because why would someone waste hard-work if not to instill questioning into the reader?