There are a few people here in a prior life who worked for newspapers…<\/p>\n
In the city of my birth (Pittsburgh, PA), they recently opened the “North Shore Connector:, a Federally funded subway that connects downtown Pittsburgh via a tunnel under the Allegheny River to the\u00a0 sports complexes that have been built on the North Shore (and a Casino, I believe).\u00a0\u00a0 This 6,000 foot piece of engineering cost $530 million to build.\u00a0\u00a0 The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently ran this in their paper:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.post-gazette.com\/stories\/opinion\/brian-oneill\/riding-the-new-subway-need-not-be-a-downer-635659\/<\/a><\/p>\n I’m not a journalist, and wouldn’t tout my writing skills as works of art, but I think I have general idea of how something in a newspaper is supposed to be written.\u00a0\u00a0 The story has a headline that concisely summarizes what the story is about.\u00a0 The “Lead paragraph” sets the stage for the rest of the story – what happened?\u00a0 Who did it? When did it happen?\u00a0 Where was it?\u00a0 Why should you care?<\/p>\n After the lead paragraph, the reporter providers supporting details, quotes from people involved,\u00a0 and provides additional material to increase the understanding of the subject being discussed, and then typically ends with a summation and perhaps “what happens now?” looking to how this story might surface again in the future.<\/p>\n The adoption of blogs by newspapers has led to incredible informality in writing style.\u00a0\u00a0 I can’t tell if this was printed as a news story or an opinion piece. or was a web-only story. \u00a0 The article is bylined as “By Brian O’Neill\u00a0\/\u00a0Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “, which I read as meaning he is an employee of the paper, not a “special contributor” or the like.<\/p>\n Issues I have with this story, even without any editorial credentials:<\/p>\n – what the hell is a word like “Downer” doing in the headline?\u00a0 At best, it is slang, at worse it is a pejorative expressing an opinion, and definitely a word without a clear meaning or connection to anything in the story There are a few people here in a prior life who worked for newspapers… In the city of my birth (Pittsburgh, PA), they recently opened the “North Shore Connector:, a Federally funded subway that connects downtown Pittsburgh via a tunnel … Continue reading
\n– the “lead paragraph” contains a single non-sentence that is a poorly constructed opinion, expressed as a negative concept.\u00a0\u00a0 Just as you can’t have a list with one item, it’s normally a problem when a paragraph only has one sentence.
\n– The next paragraph begins with “I’ve” – “I” has no place in a newspaper story, even if the writer was personally involved in the story.\u00a0\u00a0 Maybe this was on the opinion page – on the web, there is no structure comparable to a paper format, especially after the story has been archived, so I don’t know how it was originally presented
\n– 2 more one-sentence paragraphs with tortured sentence structure struggling to get an idea out
\n– a muddled combination of concepts – is this story about…\u00a0 The incident after the concert?\u00a0 The Press Conference with PAT?\u00a0\u00a0 The failure of PAT to anticipate the infinite demand that a “free” service creates?\u00a0\u00a0 The Pirates not wanting to contribute to the operating costs?\u00a0\u00a0 Pittsburgh’s inability to behave like a real city?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"