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Lars Anderson's SI piece on Tuscaloosa

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by nietsroob17, May 19, 2011.

  1. dkphxf

    dkphxf Member

    SPOILER ALERT!!!!

    This article wasn't about Harrison's situation, but rather about how Tuscaloosa responded to the tornado. Anderson used her situation to show the impact of the tornadoes, how devastating they were, and how Tuscaloosa will use its sports to rebuild. Bin Laden's story would be about Bin Laden dying, and the device wouldn't work here.

    Did the device work here? Why or why not?
     
  2. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    I don't think it worked. There was too much in between that required reader to switch gears. Perhaps topic was still too current.

    Once Harrison story was on the table it was hard to focus on rest of article until conclusion.
     
  3. dkphxf

    dkphxf Member

    Do you think the story would've been better interspersed throughout the story between section breaks? That's what I originally thought could be done, alongside the Hoffman story and taking the obvious, and sobering, conclusion/ending.
     
  4. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    Yes - Hoffman story should have been separate. Made reader too distracted to read what was in the middle.
     
  5. dixiehack

    dixiehack Well-Known Member

    Having dried off now, I will admit that it was probably easier to follow since I was already familiar with Harrison's story (although I did learn new details.) But in a lot of ways, that's kind of how the tornadoes were. You know multiple people in harms way and your thoughts splinter and dart back and forth between them all.
     
  6. Versatile

    Versatile Active Member

    I absolutely thought the device worked. It's not comparable to a story about bin Laden for three reasons:

    1. Burying bin Laden's death would be very ineffective, as it's doubtful anyone reading your story wouldn't already know.
    2. Harrison was hardly even close to a central character in the story. She wasn't the point.
    3. The transitions weren't forced at all. Each came through as smooth to me, from each vignette to the next. So it wasn't awkward to ransition from Nick Saban's daughter, a sorority sister of Harrison's, to Harrison's death.

    Side note: This week's SI is outstanding. One of the best in recent months, if not years. You've got Price writing a tennis feature, which are often among his best. You've got Rushin writing the Scorecard. Anderson's cover story was great. Cazeneuve's Luongo feature pulled me, a non-hockey fan, in. Wahl's soccer fan story was strong, as is his normal. They returned to "Who's Hot / Who's Not" instead of that awful strike zone gimmick. Hell, I'm a big NBA fan, and the two NBA articles were the two that I've been passing over so far. And Lee Jenkins is rarely bad, so I'll read that soon enough.
     
  7. Johnny Dangerously

    Johnny Dangerously Well-Known Member

    It's SI. Not a newspaper. Not the WSJ. Not The Atlantic. Sports. Illustrated.

    Sports.

    Her death was reported on College Football Live. SportsCenter. Here. All the major sports outlets. Most news outlets.

    Lars knew this. The outcome isn't news at this point. It had already been in the news. It's about the telling. It really floors me anyone who follows sports as much as we do didn't know her story, but even so, the beginning gave you the cues.

    Color me stunned. I thought his choices were perfect.
     
  8. This is my opinion or experience or whatever. I read the first section and thought, Great, all these details to show that she's alive and engaged to the long snapper or married to him or at least they found each other after some long-fought search. Maybe this is me, but I was stunned -- stunned -- the young lady had died and that the writer saved that for the end.

    This isn't about right and wrong, person against person. This is a discussion of narrative characters, and in this case, good Lord, what a decision the writer made to break it up.

    This is a quandary. Because morally, I don't like messing with the details of someone's life and revealing what happened at the end. That's messed up and brutal and insensitive. As a writer -- understand that I emphasis writer -- this is perfect. I'm left with a cliffhanger in the first section, given some details of the overarching scenario throughout and then the shocking ending. I'm telling you, I didn't see that coming; I figured the girl would survive and they would, SI-like, reunite in some two-days-later situation that we would've figured but not necessarily predicted. I was very surprised by the girl's death, and that made the story -- all of it, including the over-detailed first section -- not only work for me but become one of the better stories of the year.

    Kudos to Lars Anderson for taking a chance and breaking up the most interesting part of the narrative. Certainly a bold move and one that will have newspapers across the country wondering how they'll follow it. If they dare try, anyway.
     
  9. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    I really liked the story, but I found the part where Anderson switched to the first person to be a bit jarring. I would have liked it if he would have kept it to his subject's stories.

    I also did find it interesting in that he gave everyone's address in the story. A detail that is pretty important, but is usually left out of stories.
     
  10. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    I don't think story would have lost anything if told as continuum.

    Here is how it transitioned:

    In a suddenly perfect silence, Tinker wandered around the field. He had a broken right wrist, gashes in his head and a large cut on his right ankle. His body moved in slow motion, but with a sense of urgency. "Ashley, where are you?" he screamed. "Ashley!"

    For at least 10 minutes, before his roommates, who were mostly unharmed, found him help, Tinker stumbled in circles, searching for the girl that he had been with almost every day for the past year. "Ashley," he screamed, "where are you?"

    How do you tell the story of the deadliest tornado in the history of Alabama? As of Sunday, 41 were confirmed dead-including six students from the University of Alabama-and hundreds injured in Tuscaloosa and Tuscaloosa County alone. (A total of 238 people were killed by more than 60 tornadoes that ravaged the state on April 27.) But these raw numbers can't begin to account for the damage. Nearly every resident in the town of 90,000 has trouble sleeping, and when they do close their eyes and drift away, most are tormented by please-God-wake-me nightmares.
     
  11. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    Love it when athletes and coaches get out in the community with hammers and saws and work to rebuild things and raise money.

    Hate when they use the "maybe we can provide a few hours of comfort for them by watching us Saturday" angle. Didn't really get it when it was used for Michigan State hoops lifting the hopes of the Detroit downtrodden, either.

    If my house is toothpicks, watching State U. destroy Tech just isn't going to salve the wound.
     
  12. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    Your post really puts things in perspective.
     
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