Stovall Page 129 Exercise 5.10
Writing News Stories
People are concerned with drinking at fraternity parties; recently at LSU and MIT students died from alcohol poisoning. Two weeks ago the University’s president Harvey Smithville went over the policy banning alcohol from fraternity houses, “Any fraternity in which the members have alcohol will be immediately suspended. A second offense within a year will result in the banning of that fraternity for five years.” Â The IFC president, Bart Addison, agrees with the statement.
This past weekend three students from Alpha Beta Zeta fraternity were admitted to the local hospital with alcohol poisoning. Press Martin, Al Amalek and Rob Smith were the three students who were admitted earl Sunday morning at different times. From the university, ” Our initial investigation indicates that these young men were at a party in the ABZ house. A number of witnesses say alcohol was being consumed by them. Based on that we are suspending the fraternity and all its activities on campus. We have not decided how long the suspension will last.” Jan Mize from the university’s public relations department said that usually a suspension like this one is for about a year. Addison is shocked to hear this and is going to ask President Smithville to reconsider the suspension of AZB since it was only the act of a few men and not the whole fraternity. Â The University is considering increasing its police patrols of fraternity houses on the weekends.
February 25, 2010 @ 3:45 pm
This isn’t nearly as bad as you told me it was, but I do have a couple of suggestions:
1 – The story is about the three kids who got alcohol poisoning. You should use that information in your lead, and mention the LSU and MIT students later on (for example, your first sentence of the second paragraph is actually a decent lead).
2 – Work a different angle. In the first paragraph, Addison agrees with the President’s original statement, but disagrees with the decision to suspend people in this case. This is actually a really interesting angle, and shouldn’t be buried at the end. Find a way to work that in earlier.
3 – The first two sentences of the second paragraph are VERY similar, with the exception of names and dates being thrown in. For brevity, you could consider removing one of those sentences. If one of those sentences is critical to the length, you could add the types of students they are (business, liberal arts and engineering), the years they are (junior, sophomore, freshman) or both. You do have to stay away from calling it “under-aged drinking” though, because it doesn’t directly mention their ages (despite mentioning their years in college).
You do have a good start, but a few tweaks could help you a lot.
– Jason
February 26, 2010 @ 12:25 am
1. You’ve organized the information basically the way it was presented. Find the most important info and make that your lead — specifically, local kids getting alcohol poisoning this past weekend.
2. Short, journalistic paragraphs, 2-3 sentences long.
3. Good job paraphrasing Mize and Addison’s quotes; consider how you present the other quotes. Do they need to be direct quotes? Re-read the Stovall section on using quotes in Chapter 5.