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.

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