Last Profile

Here's a profile of a teenage violinist.

Let's discuss it Wednesday for our finale.

Tweeting about "Off the Record"

There's a discussion of what "off the record" means in the era of Twitter. Link here.

Discussion at Poynter here.

Poynter letter-writers weigh in here.

Profile Readings for Week of April 26

Here are profiles we'll be discussing in class the last two weeks. I'll get to them roughly in this order:

"Nails Never Fails," a profile of former ballplayer Lenny Dykstra.

My profile of Don Schrader. NOTE: You'll find the main story itself after several sidebars. The story proper begins with the quote from Thoreau.

My profile of Jim Villanucci, the radio guy. NOTE again: The story proper starts with the line: Jim Villanucci is where he wants to be.

And there's this profile of a copy editor who began suffering from dementia. She died recently. This is a profile from a few years ago.

We will use a framework for discussion similar to the one a few posts below that we are using for the Gene Weingarten feature about parents leaving their kids in cars.

In the News

• That movie "The Joneses" opened today. Here's a link to the trailer.
• The Associated Press made a bombshell announcement that rippled through the journalism community and was the talk of the meeting in Philadelphia of the American Copy Editors Society. The word website is now one word and lowercase. It takes effect immediately, including on any future quizzes in this class.
  

Event Feature

In anticipation of next week's assignment, the event/feature, let's discuss THIS STORY on Monday (4/19). (You can stop on Page 5, when you get to the mention of Lyn Balfour.)

It is Gene Weingarten's gripping story of a man on trial for absent-mindedly leaving his child in the car to die. It just won a Pulitzer for feature writing.

WARNING: It has graphic detail in it. Feel free to skim over the parts that may trouble you, but know that such detail can be crucial to the telling of such a story.

Pay attention to:

• The opening.
• The details of descriptions.
• Narrative techniques, like creating questions in the readers' minds.
• The extended list he employs on Page 2.
• The Sections method.
• The juggling of characters, including parents, as well as medical and legal experts.
• The general writing style: types of words used; sentence structure; scene descriptions.
• Ask: How long does he wait to give you the verdict? Too long? Just long enough?
  

Libel Part 2: The Tupac/Diddy story

Back in 2008, the LA Times was duped by a con artist who linked P. Diddy to the Tupac Shakur shooting.

Here's the story about it that The Smoking Gun broke.

Here's the LA Times' mea culpa. (Note, it's two pages.)

Here's Jack Shafer's analysis at Slate. Note the list of ways to have avoided the problem. Be prepared to discuss them.

Libel Part 1: Boston Herald, TV station sued

Let's discuss this case when we go over libel this week:

Here's the overview story.

Here's a mini-analysis from a respected blogger.