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Wk 8: Three Styles…

What is the author’s approach in each of these stories?

• Gardiner’s article used the chronological account of Romona Moore’s missing person’s investigation from the perspective of an event now being scrutinised for racial bias.  The writing is spare, uses a mixture of basic incident description and quotes from participants to add further illustration.
• Weingarten is asking us to evaluate our community and the purpose of life in relating the outcomes of this experiment to us, in an unconventional format.
• Griffiths gives us all a good telling off in this article.  We, none of us, have learned a thing.  We’ve all got our emu heads in the sand. We are blamed for the deaths in the 2009 fires.  He does this by demonstrating how similarly people behaved before and during to the incident in 1939.  It’s a stern, no-nonsense, no apologies condemnation in a relatively formal style.

What writing strategies have they used to engage you as the reader?

• Gardiner, in telling us this murder case is the reason for an investigation of the NYPD for racial bias, immediately puts the reader in an evaluative role.  Each incident told as the story unfolds is looked at to see if there is evidence for racial bias in how the case was managed.  This active role of the reader is the hook that maintains engagement throughout the recounting of events.
• Weingarten seems to unfurl his story in a tantalisingly deliberately slow manner.  First he gives little away while introducing the parameters of this experiment and its purpose.  Then he enhances the suspense he’s building by having an expert make predictions. Once we’re finally told who the musician will be, we are skipping ahead to find out how it comes out we’re so keen to hear this story.  His writing changes pace, incorporates short dialogues, a poem, all caps on some topic sentences which shout their words at you.  He talks to the reader sometimes, but not always.
• Griffiths uses the juxtaposition of Judge Stretton’s report from 1939, and the details of 2009. He offers expert information about what he feels is misunderstood.  Mainly that Australians think they can dominate the bush, and that it’s all one mystery wood to be responded to homogeneously around the country.

Did they work?

• In Gardiner’s case – yes – it certainly did work.  I couldn’t believe how callous and unresponsive the police were to Elle Carmichael, continually.  The sense of injustice to her and her daughter was sustained, but not harped upon.  The treatment was such that the story wasn’t sensationalised.
• How long was this article by Weinstein?   Yet he still managed to keep me curious about the details of the event and how to explain this puzzle.
• His tone was unusual and caught my attention, and starting with that line of there being one thing that ‘we’ hadn’t learned since 1939, was a great hook for me.  I wanted to unearth that thing, whatever it would be.  And along the way I got some good quality extras, like the fire flume classification, the distinctiveness of those gums, and the bunker strategy recommendation.

What sort of investigation did each journalist have to do to write their story?

• Gardiner used the murder trial court reports, some policing statistics on missing persons, and included interviews with 3 people: Elle Carmichael, Defense Attorney Peter Neufeld, and lawyer Robert Barsch.
• Weingarten had either participated in the experiment, or seen the video, and would have taken notes on it. He’d reflected on its meaning and shared some resources he’d used: a poem, film, a book, some philosophy.  Leonard Slatkin, the musical director, had been interviewed after the event, and he hadn’t heard about it before then.  All the passersby, and some shop staff were asked if they could be interviewed (about commuting). Apart from getting Joshua Bell’s biographical details, he was evidently also interviewed at least once, several weeks after the event.
• The Royal Commission of 1939 into the fires on Black Friday were used as a central structure to the story,  texts that identified distinctive Australian botanical and climatic features, a collection of texts reporting on the events of 2009 are also reflected.

WK7 : Teflon man’s entrepreneurial tips

Living in Sydney, in a house valued at 3 million dollars,  driving a bullet-proof Bentley, that’s alright for starters.  Add to this, remodeling your  nightclub every 5 years at $400,000 a pop, being surrounded by chic models, and dating classy socialites like Chelsea Mitchell.  Need I include mention of his having dark, attractive good looks, and still being under 40!   Doesn’t John Ibrahim – and his lifestyle – make every Australian male drool?

This real-life Mills and Boon character has overcome poverty and a near death experience to amass a fortune and break into high society. He’s a glamorous Australian achiever, isn’t he?!   Is it any wonder then, that in the latest TV series of Underbelly, set to deliver a dramatised expose on organised crime and police corruption in Sydney’s King’s Cross from 1988-95; that our Mr Ibrahim will be presented royally.

Why is it that Justice Peter Young, at the close of a NSW Supreme Court hearing this month, suggested that it was a shame that Mr Ibrahim would be presented so well, after he had previewed the new series in relation to a defamation case against Channel 9?

Mysteriously untainted by his long involvement with the filthiest parts of society, Mr Ibrahim also known as the ‘King of the Cross’, manages to sparkle like a well-faceted diamond in the media.   In contrast, Wendy Halfield, the working woman who had her head turned by our charismatic hero, will find herself in the stocks again.

Scarlet Wendy was a police officer who made bad choices.  Channel 9′s Underbelly producers of the ‘The Golden Mile’, don’t want her to forget that.  In bringing the defamation case against Channel 9, Wendy tried to defend herself, and failed.  She fears that the producers of the show will shred what remains of her reputation, unfairly.   But what of John, will the new series of Underbelly increase his stocks?

Slinging hash compared to succinctly sending sound bites…

Is better late than never applicable here?
Barbara Ehrenreich’s chapter, Serving in Florida, was an insightful, enjoyable read. She decides to go undercover in Florida, to find out what it’s like to earn minimum wage from service jobs, and have to live on that.

To do this, she cuts herself off from her regular life (almost completely), and sets herself up to lead the lifestyle she sees as possible within the accomodation options, waitressing and cleaning jobs, and other factors that shape this newly acquired lifestyle.

Her acutely personal introspective contains a lot of rich detail about the people she worked with, how the work places functioned.  Occassionally, she  inserted some legal background to put her experiences into a broader context that showed the difference between the legal expectation and real practice.

I liked the legal info inserts.  While her reflections and recounted imagery were a pleasure to read, I enjoyed the contrast provided by those ‘asides’ that gave the ‘outside’ world’s understanding of how minimum wage worked for example.

As a middle-class type person, she was surprised at the indignities imposed on the staff in these low paid jobs, the urine tests, the surveillance, accusations and so on.  The record of those reactions gives the reader a sense of transition, an indication of how many elements of your life experience are altered given a change in workplace alone.  Awareness of the priviledges one group has compared to another, is not an easy thing to convey.   I think this ‘gonzo style’, the participant/ observer approach is effective in making this transition accessible to people who may relate more to her original lifestyle.

For my part, I was uncomfortably zoomed back to my first non-babysitting sitting paid work, washing dishes at a roadside diner in Canada.  In 1977, I was paid $2.85/ hour and didn’t get any of the front of house tips, while waiting staff got the same base rate + tips.  Barbara’s book was published in 2001, and presumably her numbers were fairly recent; so I was shocked that waiting staff got only $2.15 before tips, and George at his dishwasher, only $5.

And I laughed with recognition about that view of smoking, ‘that it was something a person did for themselves’, a cherished and admired act of spirit in a demoralizing environment.  That’s how I started smoking at 15.  I didn’t enjoy it initially, but it was the only way I could get any rest in an 8 hour shift.  Smoking had to be done in the breakroom and was sacrosanct.  Anyone would cover you anytime if you said you ‘had to’ smoke, and it usually took a long, luxuriant 5 minutes to do.

Something that is missing from Barbara’s morbid poetic account of human dilapidation, that I remember as a distinctive part of those workplaces, is the fun side.  There was a lot of laughter behind the bosses back.  I was an interloper in the lives of people of all ages, many of whom had only the low end of the service industry to look forward to.   Even so, I think there was a wider range of emotional meaning in those people’s lives than Barbara was representing; if the similarities to the lifestyles of the Canadians I knew is anything to go by.

Barbara was struggling to cope with this ‘uglier’ world and offered lots of insights to what it might be like for middle-classers undertaking this challenge, but she was still an outsider who couldn’t read the internal satisfactions, motivations, and texture of the other’s lives.

Still, I found Barbara’s work totally engaging.  I wanted to know more.

But I also really liked Paige William’s article.  Barbara’s work was more affective due to the personal style it’s written in, Paige’s more distantly emotional and intellectualised.  Paige offered intense nuggets of statistical and descriptive data on the situation that made the extreme distress being experienced by poor people in that city, clear.  However, the reader can still remain at an emotionally safe distance with that article, the landscape of personal indignities is less illuminated by that type of writing.

Having said that, I’m sure Paige’s article galvanised a few people into some better decision-making aimed at improving the situation in Atlanta, and it took the wool from many others eyes. I think it’s a very effective form of journalism.

Both writers employ dry humour well, extending the import of what they had to say, and in Barbara’s case helping the reader to cope with the material.

Do I have a preference?  Only in the sense that depending on my purpose for reading I would make a choice of which one to pick up:  Paige’s for a clear overview and easily communicable detail, and Barbara’s for getting information outside of the official collection systems, to glean something they missed.

Week 7: A Chat with Sean

A Chat with Sean Ross

How does a young person who has never had a job get started?

One answer is that they take a job at McDonald’s.  Whatever else one might think of this company, their contribution to youth job training is hard to deny.

Former McDonald’s employee, Sean Ross, brought this to my attention when I spoke to him as part of my investigation of soft targets for young jobseekers.

This young Melbournite started working for the fast food chain in 1999, staying in the job for 3 years until he started university.

Sean is a trainee journalist now, and credits time spent at this first job, with giving him a good start towards his capacity to manage a complex work environment, and be a team player.

At the time that Sean started at Seaford McDonald’s, so did several of his mates.  They discovered that McDonald’s hiring policy meant they were learning on the job with other ‘first job’ workers, in a friendly, fun work environment .

Even so, McDonald’s runs a tight ship Sean says.  Their training system provided him with effective organizational and other foundational job skills.

Tight ship or not, when time allowed the team of friends would find ways to amuse themselves like singing  at the top of their lungs from the back production line.

That collegiality and cooperation with his schoolmates, cemented no doubt by the out of hours whole workplace socializing, gave Sean an enjoyment of teamwork while he was learning these skills as a new worker.

Of particular importance Sean mentioned, was being able to have financial independence, the chance to get his first car and to go on a school trip to the Gold Coast, as a result of having a job during high school.

When Sean headed to university he found he was already in a position to build on the foundation of skills that he had acquired with McDonald’s, and earn a higher wage.   Finding better paid work in the hospitality sector presented no difficulties due to his background at McDonald’s he said.

Week 6 : You want it ‘hard’ or ‘soft’?

The first thing to notice about the writing we were given to read for this week, is that it’s all from online.  So this is really a look at online examples of hard and soft news.  My understanding is that I need to give comment on how effective these stories are in their style, and where each style (hard and soft) gains it’s best expression, from my point of view.

Grouping the first two articles around the issue of housing, both could be described as using ‘hard’ news formats.  The first article isn’t ascribed a particular writer, it’s source is Reuters.  As Reuters is a UK based news service, it strikes me as inappropriate to be sourcing specifically Australian content from a UK service.  (Maybe that’s my ignorance of how this service works perhaps.  Would this article have been generated in Australia and come from an Australian Reuters office?)  The news being reported here is that the Reserve Bank Governor is making a comment regarding expected interest rate hikes on loans.  This article appeared in the Business section which may explain why some terminology is not explained, such as in a part of  a Glenn Stevens quote saying ‘ just to leverage to property’.  (Yes, I can figure it out, but in the general section I imagine the meaning would have to be clarified.)  We don’t find out until the 7th par when Stevens’ comments were given,  which in my view compromises the lead somewhat.  Yes, his position and what he says is most important, but the timing of these comments in the lead up to the anticipated policy unveiling on April 6, is also significant and should really have been stated earlier.  Another odd element is the insertion of the topic of rising housing prices and Stevens’ comments on monitoring Chinese investment.  The topic is underdeveloped and isn’t well-linked to the other information in the article.  The fact that this article was online and had a comments feed clearly allowed some readers to vent their spleens,but the value of their contribution for others appears pretty limited.

Marika Dobin’s article gives an overview of the problem involving Victorian real-estate agents underquoting, as well as a quick introduction to the political/legal, some of the industry and consumer’s perspectives.  I think she did well in this article.  We don’t get a lot of background, but it’s meant to be a ‘breaking news/hard news’  format designed to provide us with the what, where, when etc.  – and it does.  The use of quotes to express the emotion that some of the participants involved are feeling was effective, and I think the reader manages to appreciate the significance of this problem as a result.   Having said that, I found the insertion of the live chat invitation between paragraphs of the text, trashy and annoying.   I assume its presence is to enable readers to have an opportunity to participate in a debate on the topic, potentially contributing their own knowledge and experience.  Even so, I found it distracting and inappropriate in that location, in particular.

Moving along to softer news format articles.  Bella Counihan’s article seemed poorly written and frustrated me.  I presume that it arrived after a more informative detailed account of the attacks referred to had taken place in the media.  She started from the perspective that we all knew what she was talking about, and as this is an opinion piece I guess it’s considered acceptable to do that.  I thought it was poorly written as I had to reread several passages and try and make sense of them, for example: the pie analogy at the beginning, isolated reference to New York, the third sentence in the second paragraph.   She also alluded to  financial and legal challenges faced by Indian students, but chose to focus on how kooky yet  popular Northcote’s campaign was.

‘Flying in the face of convention’, by contrast, followed a structure that informed and illustrated in a hybrid form of hard-soft presentation.   We learn the Whs of the situation, and we get some background, and a little extended developement of the topic. Yes, there’s more film profile than review here.  It’s not providing a critique; in fact, it’s almost an advertorial, particularly with the flourish of the film’s location details being provided at the end.

Claire’s Melbourne Gastronome made my mouth water.  This is like an internet ‘art gallery’ of food with your own chic and cheerful tourguide.  This is clearly, unabashedly – her subjective views.   There’s no ambiguity for the reader/ consumer when they access this blog.   Another clearly observable characteristic is that the photos are integral to the understanding of the text , with the combination of text and image generating a vicarious, almost virtual reality experience of the event being described.  (Is being hungry influencing my appreciation of this site?) This blog’s interactive components were more tastefully relegated to the side column, yet they invite usuage quite readily in that position.  She’s my winner for using the online facility to enhance ‘soft’ news.  It’s definitely the softest of all the pieces we were given, but the most effective in that format as Claire provided all the Wh information and exploited the platform facilities well.

Of course, Claire’s blog presentation wouldn’t be available in a broadsheet.  There are approximations in the lifestyle sections of broadsheets, but they don’t offer the user the capacity to find related, past postings, make requests  or comments.  It’s this interactivity that is an advantage of online media for both soft and hard news formats, yet if this is not managed well (Miranda’s, and also Reuter’s articles), then this facility may detract from the experience of the information exchange rather than add to it.  Hard news articles often raise a lot of questions in the reader’s mind that don’t attempt to be answered in that format.  If the reader is online they can then access other resources to try and find those answers for themselves, either on that site or by using other sites.  A definitive advantage.  In longer, softer pieces the reporter may answer those questions for the reader and save them that work, or not.  Again, if the piece is online, the reader has an easier time of supplementing  that information delivery with other resources.  Both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ formats can be enhanced online for the reader’s benefit, however only a broadsheet is going to provide that quick opportunity to scan the headlines (plus a little extra) anywhere, anytime so cheaply- still.

Week 5 : Second News Story – attack

Car attack leaves one man unconscious

Two people sustained minor injuries in Frankston last night, after being pulled from their burning car by police.

The driver, Darren Brown, lost control of the vehicle after four men threw objects at the passing car, in what appears to be a random attack.

Mr Brown, 25, was knocked unconscious when a rock thrown by the group smashed through the wind shield and struck him in the head.

His vehicle careened into an embankment and burst into flames near McDonald’s on the Nepean Highway just after midnight.

Two detectives, Senior Constables Glen Paxton and Craig Small, were witness to the car explosion and quickly rescued the two car occupants. “Once we had them out, I grabbed a fire extinguisher from our patrol car and put the flames out,” said Senior Constable Paxton in a media release from Victoria Police.

The couple have been taken to Alfred Hospital for treatment.  Passenger, Sally Winestein, had a possible broken arm, but was otherwise unhurt, while Mr Brown was unconscious.

According to Detective Senior Sargent Peta Hockingsworth, Ms Winestein reported that the four men initially threw a bottle at the back of their red Nissan Pulsar.  Mr Brown then turned the car around to return and confront the attackers, when the men threw the rock  that smashed through the wind shield.

Neither victim knew their attackers.  Police are asking anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 33 000, to assist with the investigation.

Week 4 – Media Release Exercise

Here’s a go at producing ‘hard news’:

Ineffective GM food labeling laws are under attack in a damning report released by Choice consumer advocates this week.

According to Choice, many Australian consumers are still buying GM products at their local supermarkets without knowing it.  Choice reports that numerous foods containing genetically modified ingredients are sold without GM written on the label.

Existing GM labeling laws in Australia, could promote a false belief by consumers that they are being informed as to the use of GM products.  However, Choice asserts this is not the case.  Consumers are not being informed as to the presence of GM ingredients in foods.

As a result, Choice is encouraging all Australians to register their concern with the Food Labelling Review Panel set up to assess current laws.

(OR – A government review of food labelling has prompted the group to ask Australians to call for more comprehensive labelling by contributing their views to the Food Labelling Review Panel.)

Choice research indicates a wide range of foods may include GM ingredients from GM crops such as: corn, soy, canola, cotton, and their derivatives.  These foods include breakfast cereals, breads, cakes, cooking oils, chocolate and snack foods; as well as meat, egg and diary products where GM animal feed was used.‘

A full disclosure on the use of GM materials is sought as many consumers have both environmental and ethical opposition to the use of GM products, and Choice points out that their right to make an informed choice is not being respected in Australia at present.

Week 3 – Ahh -story ideas…

Our brief is to come up with three short news story ideas that will be of public interest, and we need to provide at least two potential interviewees for the research of this article.

First idea: Disappearing public amenities: public phone booths, water fountains

• When I arrived in this country again after being away a few years.  I found that I needed to have a mobile phone to contact people when I was out, as it was a real effort to locate public phone booths.   And likewise, I had to buy water at a shop, as I couldn’t locate any water fountains (or remember to carry my own – in something).  Not to say that there aren’t any of these amenities around now, it’s just that there seem to be very few and I didn’t find them easy to locate.  As a new arrival this caused me inconvenience and discomfort.  I ended up buying coffees to also drink their water.   Buying plastic water for more than it would cost to buy a coke.   And lots of having to physically go to places, cut visits short etc because I couldn’t make a phone call when I was out.  If I was a child, a migrant, an older person, a person who didn’t like using mobile phones (or didn’t charge their phone – forgot it), a person (like myself) who doesn’t like to buy water in plastic bottles,  would all be affected.
• I thought I could find some statistics from the council on water fountains past and present numbers and locations (city and a suburb).  There’s probably a spokesperson for comment on public amenities or town planning, that I could interview there.
• And Telstra would be my first port of call for information on public phone booth provision.  And then there may be a govt body looking at telecommunication delivery and participation: user types, frequency, rights etc., that I could interview for this part.

Second idea: water behaviour

• I have water on the brain.  (No – fortunately not literally, I understand that’s quite painful.) Again focusing on topics that have presented themselves to me as a re-entering person, I was gobsmacked at how water conscious my friends and communities had become.  When I first saw the ‘tank water in use’ signs I assumed it was some localised problem between neighbors.  I had no idea it had become something like a normative behaviour to avoid censure by neighbors or the city council. I’m wondering about the actual behaviours of people in their homes.  I think my friends are a bit unusual – they’re more political responsible than most.  Are other people really having spongebath days to avoid excessive water use? Are my dear friends turning themselves inside out to be find ways to reduce their water consumption because everyone is, or have they just become specialists in a new form of water torture?
• To investigate this I could interview some water researchers.  I could look for them at universities – water / environment research centers/ sustainability centers.  Someone is sure to be doing research on consumer behaviour.  And the corporate water providers, could also be appropriate to interview.   A local or national environmental group may have people to interview as well.

Third Idea: Plastic water bottles

• Yes – water again.   Since I left , the amount of water in plastic bottles for sale has exploded.  They’re everywhere.  It used to just be bottle sparkly water, to get that fix of European sensibilities on a special occasion, or hide your alcoholic absention.  Is our water water quality that bad?  Or, why are people buying these bottles – and at those prices?
• I thought I could look for data on usuage : past and present, water quality data : local supply and in the various types of bottles (plastic in the heat of the trucks and storage areas!), data on users – who’s buying? where? when?, environmental impact data: bottles, importation of water from os/other locations,
• Interviews could be found with govt bodies/ university centers assessing water usage and quality and sustainability, someone managing distribution of water in bottles, someone involved in price setting (any ideas??)

Fourth idea : Deathbed comfort

• A friend who is doing a pastoral care course, has told me that hospices and other service providers dealing with dying people, are looking for people to provide pastoral care from all belief groups.  She’s a Buddhist nun and will provide specifically Buddhist support to those who request her services. I asked her if anyone would be nice to atheists like me.  She told me that there were atheists doing the course with her.  Our conversation made me wonder about how people today were dealing with the end of their lives.  Our constructed images of the elderly are generally depressingly stereotyped, they’re a much more diverse group than the TV sitcoms allow, for example.  Worn-out whores – male and female, dilapidated nuclear scientists, born-again Catholics,  jihadis, and dying pagans could all be together in the same facility trying to deal with the closure of their life.  I had thought they’d be preyed upon by religious zealots who’d try to frighten them into converting before death.  This idea sounds paranoid, stereotyped and outdated too.  So, what is it like?
• I could interview someone responsible for organising ‘support’ for people in hospices about the current practice.  I could go to a couple of hospices and interview dying people…  I could find some reseachers looking at current and anticipated needs for aged care.

Week Two : Williams & McKenzie

A friend of mine was telling me that a journalist job is to scrutinize the halls of power in a community and bring them to task for any indiscretions.  That was her version of the role of the fourth estate.  Both of these articles performed this function.  Paige Williams in a thoroughly well-researched article brought the appalling state and treatment of too many of the residents of Atlanta to the attention of the world.  In my view, she did this effectively, giving the overall picture through statistics and examples and the way individuals are experiencing this situation through profiles.  The formatting of that article was constructed in chunks interspersed with graphics and photos making the density of text more manageable for a casual reader.  No-one who wanted to zone out at the dentist’s office would pick up this article, but that is in no way a criticism of what she’s written here. We read different kinds of text for different reasons, her writing speaks to someone who is looking for well-constructed research on a particular topic that’s in an amalgamated non-academic form.

Nick McKenzie’s piece also performs the moral guardian role my friend was telling me was the job of journalists.  His article relies heavily on interpretations of the personal diary entries that Ms Lui made, and her personal letters. In the article we didn’t learn how he managed to possess those texts, and I think that was pertinent information being omitted. It could influence the perception of the validity of this information, or at least offer another layer of understanding about how this drama was unfolding.  And drama it is.  If it weren’t for the significant fact that our top politicians are implicated in these unethical transactions, this article would be tabloid fodder.  Not to criticise Nick’s writing.  (May I do have as well as him this year!) It’s simply that the intrigue described is heavily dependent on speculation, provocative and interesting, yet not satisfyingly pegged by support information.  This type of story has a different purpose perhaps.  Nick may be trying to encourage more disclosure by posting what he has to date.  Is that possible?