1. Here's an interesting article on Caroline Kennedy and her desire to become the next senator from New York. While I find the entire piece well written, pay particular attention to the opening paragraph. The lead is quite catchy. What is the author trying to accomplish with this anecdotal lead? Is the author successful? Is the author successful at bringing the topic back to Whitney Hoffman? What are your thoughts? In what kind of article could we employ this technique?
2. Check out this piece on Obama's speech writer. It's a well written piece, but I find the topic of more interest than the execution. What do you think? Many writers want to be famous in their own right, not because they're good at making other people look great. Thoughts?
3. For some fun, check out this news quiz. Not going to lie -- I struggled a lot with this one. Then I just started guessing.
5 comments:
I don't have any actual comments yet, but it looks like that Obama logo video has been removed...
=(
Thanks, Ben. I removed the link. I'll look for the video elsewhere as it was a great discussion with the logo designer.
That quiz was incredibly hard...I had no idea that most of those elections happened, let alone whether they were democratic. Also, where is Kosovar? I didn't know that was a country (which makes me feel really, really ignorant). And doesn't Pakistan have a Prime Minister? I didn't know it had a President too...What an eye opener. It makes me think that I need to brush up a lot on world politics. What did everyone get? I got a measly 50%...
I thought that the piece on Obama's speechwriter was extremely interesting. What amazed me most was that a 27 year old could become so immersed in what he was writing about to the extent that he could trudge on for 16 hours. I also appreciated Favreau's approach to writing. The article said that he moved around from place to place when writing Obama's speeches so that he wouldn't become "stale." Obama's ability to keep his speeches fresh was one of his key attributes in the campaign.
The thing that amazed me most about this article was how Favreau was still able to continue his work despite the enormous pressure on someone so young. The article shows how maybe Obama really is going to mix up Washington politics, because he now has the youngest advisor in history working for him. Favreau's ideas, in my opinion, are a welcome new contrast to the same speeches that I have heard from Congressmen and George Bush over the past several years. One of Obama's key demographics that he won were the younger voters. Perhaps Favreau's youthful and insightful speech writing played a role in Obama's ability to attract young voters. Either way, Favreau deserves a lot of credit for what has happened to Obama over the past year.
I also read the article on Obama's speechwriter and was totally amazed. It is such an incredible opportunity for someone so young to be able to work with the President so closely. I think that this shows how different Obama's administration will be. Also, the fact that people are simply accepting a young person's voice says a lot about what the public is looking for in Obama's presidency. It is also encouraging that so much trust is placed in such a young person.
In terms of the article as an article, I thought that it was very well written. It provided a close up look into the life of Favreau, but also through this it showed insight into Obama and his administration as a whole.
In general, I really enjoy reading human interest articles that focus on one person's life. I like the specific area of focus. I think that this is something that the Voice could look to incorporate more into the paper.
Post a Comment